All My Ancestors

24 December 2006

“….of Christmases long, long ago.”

Filed under: Holidays, Mom, Oklahoma, Perryton, Photos, South Dakota, Texas, Unruh Family — allmyanc @ 6:16 pm

Christmas 1964

This is my brothers and me at the house where our great Aunt Lorene (of bladder training fame) was working as caretaker for an elderly woman in Beaver County, Oklahoma, probably about 1964. Check out the wallpaper in the background.This picture re-appeared out of my grandmother’s things–it was probably one my mom had sent her and she had it enlarged and framed which is how I found it.

The gifts aligned in front brought back all sorts of memories. The basket of apples, the horse and the clock, which also helped me date the picture, reminded me of Mom and Aunt Lorene “decorating” the room for the boys that had been built on the back of the house we moved into when we moved back from South Dakota. The year I was in the 6th grade, and that Thad was in the 5th, and that Mike went to kindergarten, we lived in an apartment above our grandmother’s country store in Canning, South Dakota. When we decided not to buy land there and stay, we moved back to Perryton to the small house my folks had lived in right after they married and that I’d come home to after being born. It was two bedrooms, and now it was too small for we three, so a room and (I think) another bathroom had been built on the back for the boys.

This mean bedspreads and curtains had to be made, so Mom and Aunt Lorene sprang into action–I don’t know if Aunt Lorene already had the fabric–it’s possible, but it was red with insets of horses and apple trees–hence the things under the Christmas tree. It was certainly a different time–I’m not sure 8 and 12 year old boys would go for that now. (Maybe they didn’t then, but they certainly didn’t say so.)

It looks like Mike and Thad have also been the recipients of an ear of corn with a harmonica implanted. I think the transistor radio was Thad’s, though I’m pretty sure I coveted it. And the walkie talkie-was undoubtedly theirs as well. The game of Concentration was undoubtedly a family game–I remember playing it a lot–it took forever to set up, but it was fun. I really didn’t have much call to use a muff in that part of the county, but I liked having it as a fashion statement, along with those glasses, don’tchaknow? Don’t think I wore the hat much–it would have mussed that great hair. I think there’s also a photo album of some sort and a some sort of Christmas ornament. Mike’s truck is red–to match their room, no doubt.

I wish I could seee the boys’ boots better–those and the Levis and the buzz cuts were constants for them. I sort of remember getting that lavendar outfit–out of some sort of polyester, as I recall, which was great since it meant no ironing–”wash and wear” we called it. And I’m pretty sure there was an argument about the hemline.

Youngest brother Mike recently told my sons that he’s looking at me like that because I’d just hit him and he didn’t know why–hmmmmm. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have done that.

Here’s hoping for the generation of some great family memories for you and yours this holiday–and that someone’s taking pictures.

15 December 2006

Don’t Mess with Texas

Filed under: Cooper Family, How to, Osborne Family, Texas — allmyanc @ 2:05 pm

Remember this?

Yesterday I got the letter saying I wasn’t a blood relative and I wasn’t qualified to have these records.

I am not happy. So, of course, I called ‘em up. I tried being nice, being reasonable, being mad, being loud, being rational, being irrational–nothing worked. They just kept saying someone like the parents or children of these folks were the only ones qualified to order death certificates before 25 years had lapsed. Well, their parents have been dead since the 1970’s, but that had no effect. Two of the four had no children and their spouses are dead. Their living siblings are not exactly able to go through this process–one with dementia is in a veteran’s home, another is in a nursing home, and the third is a young 78 still farming.

I asked how they would know if the person sending in the request was really a sibling. They kept spouting the company line–I began to wonder if it was code for “Lie on your next application and we’ll send them to you.”

So I called my uncle and asked him if he would sign the requests and send them in for me. He said he would–but he also asked when I was going to get my great-aunt Margaret Cooper Crabtree’s memoirs published.

I hate it when that happens. quid pro quo?

9 December 2006

No Love Lost

Filed under: Ball Family, Ephemera, Green Family, Indiana — allmyanc @ 8:56 pm

Through interlibrary loan, I ordered a roll of microfilm from Clark County, Indiana, hoping to find a “local” record of Anne Pamela Green Ball’s death that I’d found in the New York City newspaper.

I haven’t found one yet, but I did find some other information on the family I’ll post in another entry.

Much of the business of the day was printed in those early newspapers. I found lots of advertisements for merchants, minutes of the local medical society, ads for sheriff’s sales for back taxes, a few notices of runaway slaves, and then notices of spousal abandonment– usually the husband writing about the wife. As a child in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I remember seeing notices like “I will be responsible for no debts other than my own” in our small town local newspaper and asking my mom what they were for. She told me it usually meant the people were getting a divorce and this was part of the process.

The earlier matrimonial-distress notices I saw in the Indiana Intelligencer and Farmer’s Friend were much more descriptive. Here’s on from William W. Love, posted 1 January 1822.

William's Post

Doesn’t he sound pained? I thought this was was a little more dramatic than the others I’d read, but what made it really different was what immediately followed:

Mary's Ad

I looked up “Replication” at Online Etymology Dictionary, and sure enough, it’s meaning has changed from how we use it most often today. It was formerly a legal term for a reply, “to answer to a legal charge.”

Mary is the only wife I’ve found who published a response. And she’s obviously not shy about answering each of William’s points. Now I’m curious about Mary. As far as I know, she wasn’t one of my relatives, but I’d be proud to be her descendant.

There is, by the way, in the paper about a month later, a statement that Mary has filed for divorce from William. Looks like Mary was indeed free to express her own opinion, despite William’s notice to the contrary.

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