Writers abound.

These are a fun little joke newspaper that Henry Fontaine Burdon - a pastor, put together. He was Ruth McGown's father. This side of the family certainly seems to be filled with writers of all sorts. Henry did this fun little paper, his daughter Ruth, and her husband, Russel (also a minister) did numerous fun little Christmas cards. Russel's mother - Abbie Orodell Grimes, and her sister Lucy, put together a number of little "magazines", and their great-grandfather, Robert Dinsmoor, was a published poet, known as "The Rustic Bard".
Ruth and Russel had a daughter, Dorothy (my Grandmother), who worked for a number of years in the newspaper business, and one of her daughters (my mother), wrote little newspapers as a kid. Then, of course, there's me at the end of this line, and I like to consider myself a writer of some kind. No wonder why, looking at the history of writers in my family!
This is a clipping from a newspaper article about H.F. Burdon's resignation from his post at a church. Look for more to come soon -- I want to get into some of the handwritten stuff, but I want to make sure that I get a chance to try and transcribe them a bit (and get my history that goes along with them straight!)

Let's start with the more recent papers

This is a birth announcement for Russel Miller McGown (Next to the envelope that it was being stored in). These are roughly their real-life size. The announcement was printed on some heavy-duty paper -- a bit thicker than card stock.
Russel was my Great-grandfather (my Grandmother Yoders Father.) He would go on to become a minister in the Congregational Church. He married Ruth Orodell Burdon as this wedding announcement shows.

Along with this announcement we also found the metal plate that was used in creating the announcement, so we could theoreticaly re-produce it. (it was one of a number of printing blocks that were kept by Russell McGown, there was also a printing block with both his, and Ruth's name, as well as picture of him)
Ruth Burdon McGown was "Nanna" to her grandchildren. My mom has a lot of fond memories of Nanna - and I'll get into some of those, as well as putting some more pictures in here later. But consider this a start.

You can click on the images to view larger (and easier to read) pictures of them.
I'll have to do what I can on here for recording this all, but I know that I have more documents than I think I have space for so... I'll do what I can :)