Alva Edgar Mix Diaries of Crawford County, Indiana

(Click on the Diary Pages Below)

Alva Edgar Mix My grandfather, Ala Edgar Mix, was born 19 May 1830 in Leavenworth, Crawford County, Indiana. He lived there until the 1940's when he and his family moved to New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana. This is where he died on 03 July 1975. He is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Leavenworth. Alva Edgar Mix

During his life, he kept a diary and several notebooks. The diary cover states that it is a "Five Year Diary", however, the entries date from as early as 1919 to after his death as other family members continued to make entries. The notebooks contain mostly information concerning his wages but do contain markings of events and family information.

The entries in the books (especially the diary) range from notes about the weather, the river gauges at Dam #44, visits from relatives, the 1937 flood, WWII to buying a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Far more entries were made, however, of the deaths and births of his family, friends and acquaintances. Scattered throughout (sometimes taped to the pages) are newspaper obituaries of some of the people. In all, I have extracted several hundred deaths and births, mainly deaths. (Please reference the separate obit section) Most of these people had ties to Leavenworth. Alva Edgar Mix

The following pages list these names along with the dates entered. Sometimes the entries are made in more than one of the books, occasionally with additional information. For example, the "Five Year Diary" for the day of 31 July 1863 "P.L. Houser 1919 wife 1878-1926". Still another book has the entry "July 31, 1919 P.L. Houser died Thur. evening at 9 o'clock".

The entries were not always made by my grandfather. The handwriting of my grandmother, my mother, my father and several aunts is also found.

I have listed most of the information found in these books on the following pages, trying to write it as it was in the books. When a number appears beside the name, I assume it was the person's age at death. Sometimes he wrote "95 years", other times just "95". When an obit is included I have written "OB" next to the name. I tried only to include data pertaining to genealogy in the hopes that someone related to the people with world benefit.

Contributor for this information is: Jayne Dunn.


This page was last modified: Wednesday, 05-Dec-2018 12:41:00 MST