This is a brief history on the life of Emmaline R. (Current) Bird:

Author of "A Trip Through Yellowstone National Park in 1896.

Emmaline's Great Grand Father, James Current, was born in Northern Ireland in 1730. He immigrated to the United States in about 1751 and settled in North-western (now West Virginia) Virginia, trading a "gray" horse for Thirteen Hundred acres of land where the city of Grafton, West Virginia, is now located. James's first wife died with no record of their marriage. He then married Margaret Richardson and they had five children. He and his wife are buried in the Bluemont Cemetery which was part of their land at that time.

One of his sons, James, married Margaret Johnson and they had ten children. The first child was named Peter Current and he married Rebecca Jones.

A note about Margaret Johnson as written by Annie E. Current in her Family Genealogy Book, "Genealogy of the Current and Hobson Families" dated: 1906.

"Margaret Johnson was born in a blockhouse within a stockade, in Pennsylvania, August 1777, and died in Henry County, Indiana, January 23, 1875, at the age of ninety-eight years. A stockade was an enclosure for the protection of live stock, made of large posts pointed at the top and planted close together in a line surrounding a strong wooden fort called a blockhouse, where the pioneers in time of danger from Indians, assembled from their homes, taking their stock and valuables and remaining until the danger was over."

Emmaline R. Current was born in Virginia (now Grafton, W. Virginia), December 27th, 1830. She was the sixth child of Peter and Rebecca Jones Current. When she was two years old her parents moved to Henry county, Indiana, where she lived a happy life in a pure Christian home.

In Emmaline's twenty-fifth year, on July 5th, 1855 she was married to Lewis Bird at the home of her parents in Red Key, Jay county, Indiana, where they moved the year previous. With her husband she lived in Indiana eight years, then in 1863, they moved to Nebraska and bought a farm and they were then able to say that their happy home was their own.

They had six daughters, the two eldest, twins. Their first three children were born in Indiana.

In 1893 they retired from farm life and moved to Union, Nebraska, leaving their farm to a Grand daughter and her husband. It was after they retired that they made their trip through the Yellowstone National Park in 1896.

At their home in Union, on July 5th, 1905, they celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage. All of their daughters had not been under the parental roof for 15 years until this "Golden Anniversary".

Lewis and Emmaline (Current) Bird and their 6 Daughters

Taken in 1905

Editors note: Emmaline and Lewis Bird came from tough pioneer stock and were very religious. When you read the Diary on her trip through the Yellowstone National Park in 1896, take note of the fact that they rested on some of the Sundays during the trip. I believe that this was because of their religious heritage and beliefs.

One of Virginia's poets has written of these people:

"Upon their dinted shields no crests;

No glittering orders on their breasts,

But IRON in their blood."

Return to her Diary "A Trip Through Yellowstone National Park in 1896"

Editor; Charles Everling e-mail address: chareve@mninter.net

See my Home Page at; http://www.mninter.net/~chareve

Updated 5 July 2008