Historian tells her tale

By Bri Brasher
NLJ Reporter
 
Ilo “Irene” Tunnell is 86 years young and still hard at work compiling and publishing genealogy records related to her family and the city of Newcastle. Tunnell shared some of her research, which will be published in the coming issues of the News Letter Journal. To begin her saga, Tunnell told the personal history behind her historical interests. 
“I’m an endangered species because there’s not many people left that were born here,” said Tunnell, a Newcastle native. 
Tunnell said her husband, Aaron Gordon Tunnell, was the city treasurer in Newcastle for 42 years. Tunnell worked for the Bureau of Land Management for 23 years and Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Services, now Farm Services, for seven years. The couple raised their three children in Newcastle, though the kids are now scattered across the country in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and in West Virginia and Casper. Tunnell has nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. 
Tunnell said that the formation of the genealogy society in Newcastle in 1989 sparked her interest in history. She said she started working on her own family genealogy when a cousin from Iowa found her in Newcastle. Tunnell began by researching her mother’s family before eventually moving on to her father’s side. Her father, Walter, and his family came to Newcastle from Missouri in 1892, and her mother, Ilo, came to the area from Iowa at age 11. Tunnell published her research in “Freel Cousins and Kin”  (her mother’s side) and “Good Cousins and Kin” (her father’s side). She said that many of her family members purchased the books. 
However, Tunnell grew up with the last name of Walker in Newcastle because she was adopted at a very young age by Fred Walker and Anna (Steer) Walker. According to Tunnell, her birth mother died when she was born and her father died shortly after. Her older siblings were placed in an orphanage in Casper, and she later found them when she was 16 years old — apparently good at research even then. While Tunnell has also done research on her older siblings, along with relations tying to the Bouts family,  she has not published that work. She also has some information on the Walkers and Tunnells yet to be shared. Tunnell said she found she had second, third and fourth cousins in Newcastle that she grew up with and hadn’t known she was related to until she did the genealogy. 
To gather her records, Tunnell said, she went to the courthouse and copied records in the vault for an hour every day after work. She said the News Letter Journal also gave microfilm of its first 60 years to the library. The state had done the microfilming.Tunnell also extracted county records for the benefit of everyone.
“I did the Weston County marriage records from the very beginning in 1890 up to 2000 and had those published. And that took me 10 years,” said Tunnell, whose book is titled  “Weston County Marriage Records.”
Upon retirement, the Tunnells bought a motor home and traveled all over the eastern United States, doing their family history research at cemeteries, courthouses and towns. She said they did a lot of research in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas to trace family lineage. 
When the genealogy society disbanded, Tunnell put together a book of all of the club’s quarterly newsletters from 1995-2010 with the money left from the society. Penny Bonnar, editor of the News Letter Journal at the time, helped Tunnell print 15 copies of the book to give to the genealogy society’s members. Later on, Tunnell said, the members had computers and printers to continue where she left off. 
Additionally, Tunnell did research on Ethel “Babe” Williams, her birth mother’s friend. Tunnell grew up on Birch Street in Newcastle, two doors down from Babe’s mother, whom Tunnell calls Grandma Williams. Tunnell said she was more of a grandkid to Grandma Williams than some of the woman’s own grandchildren, though eventually the Williamses moved away and settled in Washington. The Tunnells, who had a sister and brother-in-law in Washington, went to visit Babe every two to three years, and Babe came to Newcastle to celebrate her 80th birthday at Tunnell’s house. Babe too had handwritten notes of her family’s history, which Tunnell typed up, sending the originals to Babe’s niece in Missouri. She said the Williams family were early people in Newcastle, making their way to the area in the 1920s from Missouri. 
While Tunnell still has projects she’d like to see through, she said she’s put most of her genealogy away and spends her time crocheting, sewing and knitting, though her eyesight limits her sewing these days. She said she’s made clothes for most of her grandkids and great-grandkids.  
“When you get to a certain age, I just can’t travel and do that anymore,” Tunnell said of her research. “And it costs a lot of money to publish those books, like $3,000-$5,000 per book for each family. But maybe someday I’ll take up the Tunnell side.”
Tunnell also said she is thinking about going to the library to sift through the 1940 census. She wants to research all of the people and kids she remembers growing up with those 18 years on Birch Street. 
“There was lots of kids on our street! I thought it would be kind of interesting just to go down the street,” said Tunnell.
She said her fondest memory is all of the friends she’s acquired, and she finds it most interesting to watch Newcastle change over time.