All My Ancestors

Anyone in the blogosphere used Blurb?

I have the memoirs of a great aunt that I’ve been supposed to publish for way too long now. She died almost 10 years ago now and I’m still guiltily holding on to them. I couldn’t find a way to make copies available to the rest of the family without sinking a lot of my own money into it. One of my cousins and I have worked and thought and reworked and rethought the process but it’s still in manuscript form.

He recently sent me a link to Blurb, saying he’d seen a couple of very nice books from them. So I’ve investigated and I’ve downloaded the software. It reminds me of a more sophisticated version of the process I recently used to make a calendar at Walgreen with my photos from my recent trip to Ireland.

Seems like a good deal to me–I can order one book or several. Others, as in family members, can go to the site and order their own copy. I’m just wondering if any of you have first-hand experience. When I looked through the site, there were lots of memoirs and family histories. And the prices are not exorbitant. I like that I can get a hardback book for less than $50, perhaps significantly less.

I’d love to hear from you if you know Blurb. Otherwise, I’ll keep you posted on my experience.

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OK, so we’ve got the Carnival of Genealogy and now we have a Genealogy Parade. Bill West has challenged us to enter a band or a float. Since it’s a virtual project and I really don’t have to stuff kleenexes through chicken wire (trust me, I’ve worked on my share of actual floats!), I’m entering a float.

When I was growing up, I was part of the school band that marched every year in the annual celebration parade in August. This was at the top of the Texas panhandle, and it was HOT!! The only uniforms our band had were wool, but we were at least exempted from wearing the heavy jacket–we could wear a white shirt. The main street is part of state highway 83, and it is long. It was always a big deal. Imagine my chagrin when after college, I heard the husband of another hometown girl describe the parade as the “tractor parade.”

However, he was probably right. I only knew my little part of the parade, and we were having a great time. But being an agricultural area, there were lots of tractors–the implement dealerships used the occasion to showcase their new products and lots of the floats were also pulled by tractors.

So all that to say, my float has to have a tractor, and it also has to have wheat. The area where I grew up now raises other crops–maize, or milo, and soybeans. But in the 50s and 60s, most of the crops were wheat. And I also descend from the Germans from Russia who brought turkey red wheat to the Great Plains. So there’s gotta be wheat.

The music has to be old-fashioned country-western. One of my uncles played in a western-swing band–maybe we’ll use his recording as part of the music But Patsy Cline and Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb and Ray Price and Skeeter Davis are the people who are singing when I think of my family history. I also have relatives who are accomplished musicians in other genres, an organist who also installs and re-builds organs, for example, but I think the country-western respresents the most people.

That about covers it.

My only non-rural, non-Southern family originated in New York City. But even the descendants of that family ended up in Arkansas–he was a physician, but he also was a founding member of the Agricultural Society in Warren County, Iowa. So we have wheat and country music and a tractor. Not all that exciting but very representative. I suppose I could try to put in some fire and hail to liven things up–we did lose a wheat field and a truck one year to a fire and it was always touch and go as to whether we would be “hailed out.”

I’ll have to work on the weather issue. It might liven things up a bit.

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I’m late this week doing Miriam’s “assignment.” I think I spent too much time worrying about the prompt from last week–about diversity. From reading her blog, it looks like I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t particularly comfortable writing about my family’s views on social diversity and civil rights. It’s not a pretty picture and I like to think I’ve moved past those opinions.

So I am writing about games because we played lots of them.

*Did you have a regular game night or family night?

No. Our family of 5 didn’t play games all that much, but when we got together with other family members, we always played cards (with grandparents) or dominoes or Monopoly (with cousins).

*What games (board, card, dice, or acting out) did your family enjoy? Was there a favorite you played time after time?

I wish I had a dime for every game of Pitch, Gin, and Spades I’ve played. We had such fun–my husband had never played cards and when he got acquainted with my grandparents, he learned to play. My grandmother thought he was unnaturally lucky and would throw salt at him or back around his chair to make him think she could break his luck. The rest of us were usually collapsed on the table with laughter and my husband was just amazed that my grandmother could be that crazy.

We also played Yahtzee a lot, Aggravation (marbles), Sorry, and also dominoes. I remember learning to play Clue and playing it obsessively one South Dakota summer with my friend Lois. We’ve also played our share of Trivial Pursuit. This past Thanksgiving, we played a game called Apples to Apples which was great fun–I gave it to a couple of people for Christmas.

*Did your family have a family or game room? What was it like? What kind of game equipment did it have (foosball, pool table, etc.)?

No game room. We just set up the card tables in the living room or den–my brother has made an Aggravation board, and he’s also made this cool 8 sided, felt covered topper for a card table for cards or dominoes.

*Do you have any funny stories or a particular memory (good or bad) that stands out of game-playing time?

See the story about my grandmother and my husband above.

*Were there any games you disliked? Why?

To this day, I don’t like to play Monopoly because of bad memories. The great aunt and uncle we lived near by had one daughter and 8 grandkids. Those grandkids knew how to rumble, and when they came to visit, I inevitably got roped into playing Monopoly with the boys (there were only 2 girls in the bunch) and my brothers. I was sure they were cheating–which, translated, probably meant I was losing. Later, my husband and sons played Monopoly–I wouldn’t play–and the same level of emotion often “erupted” from that game. So I avoid it. Let’s face it–I work for non-profits.

*Were there any games that were not allowed to be played? Why?

The only thing I can remember is that my grandmother went through phases of thinking it wasn’t “ok” to play cards. It sort of depended on what preacher she’d heard recently. As she got older, and also as we begged her, she would play with gusto.

My husband had never played cards nor had he played any game with dice. He said his mother would make a spinner for any game that required the throw of dice to move ahead. He soon mastered both cards and dice. Don’t tell his mom.

*Did your parents have a regular night when they would play games or cards with friends or extended family?

No, though I do have a very early memory of going to some people’s house who were high-school friends of my parents. They played cards, but I only remember that happening once.

*Did you ever have game nights with groups, clubs, or neighbors on a regular basis?

No.

*Was game playing associated with certain annual events, like holidays, birthdays, or vacation times?

Our game playing tends to be centered around the holidays when we were all together. The past few years, it is Thanksgiving.

*What kinds of snacks and beverages were enjoyed during game playing?

The times we played with grandparents, we often had popcorn. (See my story about popping corn with my grandfather and friend here.) My granddad was also particularly fond of ice cream, to “cool your belly.” My sisters-in-law usually have some yummy snacks–almonds, M&Ms, and those butter-soaked crackers with chocolate chips melted on top and sprinkled with nuts.

*Were there prizes awarded to game winners or even to losers? What kinds? Did everyone chip in towards purchasing the prizes?

No prizes. Just bragging rights.

*Did your family or you ever do jigsaw puzzles? What’s the largest–in terms of number of puzzle pieces–jigsaw puzzle you’ve completed?

We don’t do this so much any more but we used to. I remember having one one year that was too big to fit on the card-table. One of the doctor’s office I go to often has a jig-saw puzzle out on a table–I often find myself working on it and thinking about the times we used to do them as a family.

*What did you do with completed puzzles? Did you display them or simply put them away?

They went back in the box and probably then to the thrift shop.

*What about puzzles such as crosswords, cryptograms, or others found in puzzle books? Are you a Sudoku fiend?

My mom and I used to race to see who could get to the crossword puzzle in the newspaper first. And it was a standing joke in our family that Dad knew the most esoteric things. When I asked my own husband some question about a long-ago political party, and he knew the answer was “Locofoco,” I knew the torch had been passed.

One of my brothers likes crosswords and the other likes cryptograms. One of my sons does Sudoku–I’ve avoided them as I’m afraid of getting another obsession.

*Did you ever go to an arcade and play pinball machines or other arcade-style games? Or did you ever shoot pool?

There were pinball machines at the bowling alley in the little town where I grew up, and the bowling alley was one of the approved places to go. I liked playing pinball. I don’t remember playing pool until I went to college, and then it was at the home of the dean of the fairly conservative college I attended. fun!

*Do you remember seeing your first video game, either in an arcade or on a television (Pong, Atari or early Nintendo games)?

I remember playing Pong on an early Apple personal computer. We had one in the department where I taught–it was out for anyone to play so we could “get over” any anxiety we had about computers. What a good idea.

*What kinds of video games did you like to play, if any? Do you play any now (gaming station or handheld)?

I quit playing video games a long time ago–I used to play Mario Brothers–on my computer. Those games have long out-stripped my abilities. This past Christmas holiday, I was laying in bed, listening to my now adult sons out in the living room playing Wii–they were having a good time and I was having a good time listening to them.

*What was your first computer game? Do you ever play computer games now, either on your computer or online?

I think my first computer game was probably Pong. I do occasionally play Bejeweled, Text-Twist, Freecell, Solitaire, and Zuma–mostly games my son installed on my computer and got me hooked on. I don’t play online. Too chicken.

*What about the present? Does your family or do you personally play games or do puzzles? Do you participate in game nights with others, such as poker or Bunco?

We tend to play games only at holidays when we’re all together. My oldest son and I occasionally do crosswords–

*Here are some other game ideas to write about: lawn games (horseshoes, croquet, badminton); kid games (marbles, jacks); betting, casino games, and bingo; party games (pinata, pin the tail on the donkey), etc.

I loved playing jacks as a kid. I can still smell the heat coming off the building and sidewalk where we sat in second grade playing game after game of jacks at recess. I was pretty good–I think I had fairly good hand-eye coordination. I can remember playing horseshoes occasionally in South Dakota–I could never get the hang of it. I did master shuffleboard–the best minister at our little church when I was a teen put a shuffleboard game and a ping-pong table in the church basement. I wonder how I kept from letting loose with the swear words then?

*What do you know about your parents’, grandparents’, or perhaps even great-grandparents’ game playing? Do you remember them saying anything about games they played when they were young?

My maternal grandparents played cards. And they also talked about playing baseball and basketball at their country school. My grandmother was supposedly pretty good–or maybe it was just my granddad’s romantic memories. He always talked about how good she was. Somehow I don’t think my paternal grandparents would have played games–but I just don’t know.

*Do you have any photos of either your present or your childhood families playing games? What about ancestral photos?

I have lots of pics of us playing cards and various other games. Here’s one from last Thanksgiving–Aggravation on the homemade board. Sadly, no ancestral photos.

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This version of the Carnival of Genealogy asks which 4 ancestors I would invite for dinner, whether we would meet in my time or theirs, and what I would tell them. I can’t hope for my version to be as clever as The Genealogue’s conversation over pizza rolls, but I’ve chosen 4 of my ancestors that I have some questions for. We’ll meet in “my” time and it probably won’t be all that enjoyable an event for them as I plan to quiz them hard!

Jonathan Osborne (c 1771 NC-1826 NC) 3rd great-grandfather
Jonathan’s father Christopher is my brickwall–the family brickwall for over 50 years. I just want to know where he came from and why he didn’t leave deeper tracks. My theory is that if I talk to Jonathan rather than his father Christopher I can find out more about the succeeding generation as well as the preceding one–conservation of resources, don’t y’know? Christopher

I want to know if Jonathan’s brother Christopher had children in his first marriage. I want to know why this Christopher’s mother-in-law, Mary Stutts Furr, disinherited her daughter, Catherine, his wife–did it have anything to do with Christopher’s first marriage or that in 1818 he moved to Alabama with other families to start Valley Creek Presbyterian Church in Dallas County, Alabama?

I want to know if Jonathan and Christopher had another sibling born after their father’s death in 1789–their father says something in his will about his belief that his wife might be pregnant. I also want to know who all his sisters married–there are names like Brown and Smith and Polk among Jonathan’s brothers-in-law and I want to know first names, marriage dates, and where this tribe ended up. Not too much to ask, do you think?

Delilah Jackson Landrum (1780 SC-1870 TX)4th great-grandmother
I’ve written about Delilah before. I first wanted to know here when I read my great Aunt Marge’s memoirs. She was writing about going to a youth camp where there were racial tensions. She was very much for accepting everyone, regardless of color or creed. She was discussing this with her father and he tells her, “You are very much like my Grandmother Delilah.” I found that statement fascinating because as far as I knew, her father, born and reared in Texas, did not have contact with his Grandmother Delilah who lived in Tennessee. On the other hand, she did spend her later years in East Texas with her youngest daughter, so perhaps he did know her. I love her self-possession when she refused to join the frenzy at the revival as I wrote about here. I have lots of questions about her Jackson family back in South Carolina, and I particularly want to know about the “Dutch fan” that her father left her in his 1817 Union County, South Carolina, will.

William Green Ball (1806 NYC-1881 IA) 4th great-grandfather

Dr. Ball is chosen as another bridge between generations. I definitely want to know more about his father–even though he was a young boy when his father died, he must know about his origins, and those of his mother. His parents were married in Baltimore, I think, in 1797, and then his father was a shipwright in New York City. After the death of his father, his mother and family moved to Clark County, Indiana and then some went on to Delaware County, Ohio. His sisters married well–one married twice, first to the district attorney and state congressman, and then to another attorney who was a national congressman. What was the basis of these sorts of alliances? And I also want to know what kind of medical training Dr. Ball went through–I believe he did that while he was living in Indiana, but who was his mentor and how did he come to that profession?

What can Dr. Ball tell me about his wife’s family? Why did they move from Tennessee to Indiana? Who was the minister, John M. Dickey, who appeared on so many of their records? How did his being an abolitionist fit in with their own beliefs?

It was Dr. Ball and his wife who reared their granddaughter Martha Jane after her father was killed enroute to “the West” and then her mother died shortly thereafter. How did they learn of their sons’ deaths? What were the circumstances under which those two sons were moving? Did Dr.and Mrs. Ball plan to join them in the west?

And, finally, what was the impetus for this man to move from New York City to Indiana to Missouri to Iowa to Kansas to Arkansas and then back to Iowa?

Sarah Ann Davis Anderton (1841 AL-1915 OK) Great-great grandmother
I don’t know very much about my Anderton and Davis lines from Alabama. There were about a zillion Anderton families in Marshall County and most of them were named John or James. I believe I have the right line back to a James Anderton, b. Virginia about 1760. This is not work I’ve done myself, but I believe it’s probably correct.

I don’t even have all of Sarah Ann and her husband James’ children all documented. Some of the older daughters stayed in Alabama when they came to Oklahoma after the Civil War. I always have questions about what makes a family move that far to an area that must be unfamiliar to them, not to mention what would possess them to move to the Oklahoma panhandle, aka “No Man’s Land.” Their granddaughter, my grandmother, told me that they did logging back in Alabama–they floated the logs down the river. That kind of work was certainly not a big draw here in Oklahoma. I suppose it was the opening of the land that drew them. They were still in Alabama on the 1900 census, but by 1910, they had “proved up” on their land in Beaver County, Oklahoma. I have their homestead files and they worked hard.

I found this picture of them in a county history, she’s on the left and he’s on the right. One reason she is dear to me is that she doesn’t appear to be “dainty.” And doesn’t he look like the stereotypical Civil War vet?

Sarah Ann is buried out in Blue Mound Cemetery in Beaver County, Oklahoma.

My grandmother told me she really wanted to go back to Alabama but she died before that could happen. Her husband James got his Civil War pension here in Oklahoma– he’d served in the artillery back in Alabama. He was approved and apparently went back to Alabama. Years ago, I sent for his death certificate only to be told that it could not be located. Then a few years ago, I was at Samford Institute in Birmingham, Alabama with some friends. The husband of that group was going out to do some research and I told him if her ran across a tombstone for James Anderton, to be sure to let me know. Amazingly enough, he did. He’s been my genealogical hero ever since. James evidently died in March 1918 and he’s buried in Cochran Cemetery.

Anyway, I have lots of questions for Sarah. Her mother’s maiden name was Campbell–another name I haven’t pursued due to the overwhelming amount of info and my lack of familiarity with records in that part of the country. Her father left all of his 1868 estate, 1450 acres, to his youngest son, Joseph Montgomery Davis, with the proviso that he care for the oldest son, William B. Davis. What were the circumstances that required this sort of care? The will did not stand and the estate was eventually equally divided among the widow and 8 children, including Sarah.

So those are the folks I want to interview, two from the maternal and two from the paternal. I want them to know how much I’ve enjoyed learning more about them and how much I honor their lives and their sacrifices. It’s not surprising that I’ve already written about some of these folks–their lives and times are the targets of some of my greatest curiosity.

I don’t know yet what we’ll have to eat, but I’ll definitely cook. I’ll bet those grandmothers could use the rest.

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I recently found the obituary for my mom’s one surviving cousin from her father’s side of the family. There were only six of them to begin with, and with my uncle’s death last year, there’s now only one.

This cousin died 5 1/2 years ago. I feel a little guilty for not knowing sooner–I called her and let her know when my mom died, but I heard nothing about her death. I should have traveled the 75 miles to visit her or at least called her up. I sort of went into hiding for a couple of years after my mom died–actually, my mother and both of her parents, my grandparents, all died within 6 months of each other the end of 1998. It took me a while to do anything more than what was absolutely necessary and I didn’t really even know I was operating in a fog. So I didn’t keep in touch.

At any rate, I regret not knowing about Lavada’s death. But her obituary is the model of what an obituary should be. It lists her maiden name, her nick-name, and the maiden name of her mother. It lists the full names of her husband, her parents, and her children–it lists the in-laws full names and the names of her grandchildren. It also lists the towns where they each live–I’ve been thinking about giving them a call. We only know each other from the times we’d be visiting Aunt Edna’s–their grandmother–at the same time they were there visiting. We didn’t really overlap all that much. I probably know more about them from my mom keeping me current than I do from first-hand experience.

Her obituary states where she graduated from high school–she must have been living with her aunt, my great-aunt Lorene of bladder-training fame, in Kansas, at the time. Her wedding was there as well–and the obituary listed their wedding date–all information I didn’t know. What an obituary can reveal.

I found the obituary on the USGenWeb Archives page. I had to hunt–there is no apparent link between the Payne County webpage and the Payne County archives. It’s the archives that has the obituaries, as well as the cemetery listings and lots of other good information. I first found an SSDI record which gave me the date of death–the only way I could find her obituary since I wasn’t certain I was spelling her surname correctly–it’s sort of tricky. But find it I did.

I’m sorry I didn’t talk to her before she died. In the past few years, I’ve learned how much I depended on my mother for “family news.” I’ve come to know that I have to put forth the effort myself if I want to maintain those ties. The hunt for this obituary also reinforced what I know about searching the internet–you can’t just put in a name and expect what you want to know to pop up. You must know the resources and how to use them.

I’ve always appreciated the USGenWeb project–I was a county coordinator for a time for the Texas county where I grew up–before they had good internet service themselves. There’s a great deal of variety among what is offered on the various county websites, but that’s part of the chase–you just never know what you’ll find. But you cannot depend on Google to search each page and “find” what you’re looking for. You have to know where to look.

So I learned some things about my cousins, I learned a bit about what goes into a good obituary, and I reinforced what I know about searching that wild animal known as the Internet. This search prove a worthwhile, though bittersweet, experience.

Update:  I went to the newspaper on microfilm to look at the original, and there was a photo!  Again, it often pays to go to the source.

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This is another prompt of a sort that is making the rounds of genealogical blogs. It has to do with placing our families 100 years ago. See Lisa’s 100 Years in America that started it all. See the end of the comments of her post for additional blog posts.

Here’s a photo of part of my family that must have been taken about 1908.

Someone in my family identified the people in this photo–making allowances for corrections based on gender and age, I believe the people in this photo are, from the left, Eula Price Cromwell, Lillian Cromwell, Lida Lee Anderton (child, and my grandmother), Grace Cromwell Anderton (my great-grandmother), Daniel Webster Cromwell (my gggrandfather), Gordon B. “Jack” Cromwell, Martha Jane Ball Cromwell (my gggrandmother).

My grandmother was born in January of 1906 and this photo of her looks like she’s about 2 1/2. Uncle “Jack,” the other child in the photo, was supposedly born in March 1898–he certainly doesn’t look age 10, though I did find him listed as attending Poarch School in 1908. Grannie might be a bit older, but I thought this was an interesting picture of a century ago. I believe it was taken outside their home in the Poarch Community, Beckham County, Oklahoma. Statehood was in November 1907, so this is also just after Oklahoma became a state. The Daniel Cromwell family is enumerated in 1910 as living in the Poarch Community, Beckham County, Oklahoma. I know they were in this area by 1904 because they have a son, Burton, buried in the Poarch Cemetery in that county who died in April of that year.

It looks like Great-great Grandfather Daniel is holding a crutch. I know he had what was probably rheumatoid arthritis. I also found this blurb in the newspaper from the time that confirms his ailments:

from the Carter Express, (23 December 1910) “Mr. Cromwell is reported to be suffering very much yet. Being a cripple already with rheumatism we fear that this accident will go hard with him.”

They didn’t mince words in those days, did they?

And if you have relatives in Beckham County, let me recommend their USGenWeb page–it has lots of excellent transcriptions of early newspapers and county history. It provided lots of data for filling in between “just the facts” of dates, places and times.

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In keeping with my plan to respond to other bloggers’ challenges or questions, here’s my response to Miriam Midkiff‘s prompts over at AnceStories2. The theme is winter.

* What has been your attitude toward winter? Is it “the weather outside is frightful” or “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow”?

Comparatively, I like winter more than summer because I don’t like to be hot. I don’t dread it and I’m not particularly afraid to drive in wintry weather. Maybe that comes from having grown up in the Texas panhandle where winters could be fierce but not all that long–and there were chores to be done no matter the weather so staying in the house all the time was not an option. (Not that I had to do the chores, but Dad was out there come rain or shine or snow.)

*What are or were your favorite outdoor winter activities? Some ideas to jog your memory include sledding, skiing, skating, snowshoeing, snowball fights, or making snowmen. Where did you go to do these activities? Did you ever have an accident participating in any of the more active sports?

Of course we had to make a snowman when we were kids if we got enough snow to do so. I also remember my brothers and the neighborhood boys making snow forts–we even had them on the playground at school for a few days one winter. We could hardly wait to get out there, install ourselves in our respective forts and let the snowballs fly.

I have never skiied–not too many opportunities in the panhandle, though some of the area families used to travel to Red River or Taos to ski. My winter sports were mainly done in South Dakota at my grandparents’ place. We ice skated on the companion pond to the where we swam in the summer–I loved ice skating even if my ankles weren’t really cooperative. And we nearly always went sledding or tobaggonning. Somewhere in the family archives are some wonderful home movies of us all out on the hills taken about 1953. My dad, who would have been a very young 24 or so, was attempting to go down the hill on a grain scoop. He had the handle out front using is as a steering mechanism. Needless to say, there were lots of accidents on the slopes that day, but it looks like we were having a lot of fun.

*What are or were your favorite indoor winter activities? Did you play board games or cards, listen to the radio or watch TV, do puzzles or needlework, read books and magazines, or write letters, journals, or stories?

I’ve always read, no matter the weather. We didn’t have tv when I was growing up–not that it wasn’t available, but my mother thought it was “not a good influence.” I’m pretty sure it would have been no worse that the attitudes and words that were produced when my brothers and I played a game of Monopoly. But even today, when we get together at Thanksgiving or Christmas, there are card games and/or dominoes going on, and usually a really big jig-saw puzzle set up on a table over to the side.

*What do you remember about winter clothing in your childhood? Do you have any stories to tell about long johns, snow suits or snow pants, a favorite or unfavorite pair of boots? Did you wear a pair of mittens with a string connecting them around your neck?

The main thing this part of the prompt makes me remember is Bill Cosby’s routine on “Idiot Mittens.” I suppose you have to be of a certain age to remember that and smile.

*Did anyone ever make you hats, scarves, mittens or sweaters to wear? Were they knitted or crocheted?

No one in my family knitted or crocheted. I do remember getting this “wonderful” mohair sweater for Christmas about 1967–we’re all standing out in the South Dakota winter sun and snow having our picture made. Everyone’s all bundled up except me–I’m proudly displaying my gold fuzzy sweater and brown stirrup pants. Those were the days!

*What were your favorite winter foods or drinks? Some ideas include soups, stews, casseroles, hot chocolate, tea, or hot buttered rum.

I don’t remember winter food being much different than the rest of the year. After they retired from spending winters in South Dakota and would be at my aunt and uncle’s, my grandmother would make stew that was delicious. The last bite was always a kicker because she inevitably sneaked in a little cayenne pepper, which settled to the bottom. And Grandad would do his popcorn thing, so I guess those are my main memories of winter food.

*How about the cold? Did you ever get frostbite? Did you ever take a dare and stick your tongue on something metal? Was your bedroom cold at night in the winter? How did you stay warm at night…with an electric blanket, a bedwarming pan, or hot potatoes at the foot of your bed under the covers?

I don’t think I ever officially got frostbite, but I think I came close. The year I was in the 6th grade we lived in South Dakota and my brothers and I went to what was essentially a 2 room schoolhouse. Recess was great fun–there was a huge hill by the school and in the spring and fall we often went down that hill inside a tractor tire. In the winter, we used sleds or tobaggons or what were called “flying saucers.”

My bedroom that year was freezing. We lived in apartment above my grandmother’s store and post office. The only heat source was the furnace in the store downstairs. My mother lived in terror of our being in a fire, and, looking back on it, I can understand with that fear. All the bedrooms were in a row on one side of the apartment–I think it might have formerly been a hotel. My room was on the end that had an outside wall. I think I had an electric blanket but I don’t remember for sure. I just remember that I could usually see my breath in that room.

And the real “inconvenience” was that the toilet was downstairs and outside. This was 1963–not really the dark ages, but it certainly was different than what I was used to, having come from the oh, so civilized, Texas panhandle.

The only thing I can remember sticking my tongue on is the orange juice can. In those days, we bought condensed juice in a small frozen can, added 3 cans of water and stirred briskly. But what was there about sticking one’s tongue on that can? It’s almost a rite of passage for people from that era, and I have to admit I did it more than once. So much for “live and learn.”

*What big storms or hard winters do you have memories or stories of?

About 1956 there was a huge blizzard in the panhandle. We have a picture of our little house with a snowdrift up to the eaves.

My most recent memory of a bad storm is the ice storm we’ve just experienced here in Oklahoma City. Our power was out 6 days. Our fine mayor wants to bring an NBA team to the City–I’m wondering how interested they are going to be in coming to a place that has trouble keeping their power on?

*If you live(d) in areas that get little to no snow during the winter, what are or were your winters like? Windy and rainy? Warm or hot? Did you wish for snow, or were you glad you didn’t get any? If it did occasionally snow, did the bad weather shut down your community? Do you remember the first time you saw snow? What did you think of it?

I’ve always lived in a place that gets snow, at least occasionally. Of course, there’s always the hope that the snow will shut down work or school. That happens more here in Oklahoma–I don’t ever remember school being called in South Dakota. I am actually one of those people who can honestly say she walked to school in -20 weather. Granddad would sometimes take Grannie on the tractor to open the store–the mail must go through, y’know. She had to be there, just in case. Plus I think they kind of liked the challenge of it all–Granddad had some sort of heater on his pickup and that was the first vehicle I remember seeing plugged in at the utility pole. They certainly didn’t have a garage, so between the plugged in pickup and the tractor, they could usually get where they needed to go. They lived on gravel roads that Mr. Stuart, the county road caretaker, kept graded with the road-grader he kept at his home.

*Do you remember stories from your parents, grandparents, or other family members or old timers of big storms or hard winters of the past?

I just remember my mom talking about their first winter in South Dakota. Granddad had moved up there thinking he wanted to ranch. My dad and he had spent the summer and fall doing the back-breaking work of putting up fence and then the winter came. Feeding and watering the livestock in those conditions was a bit more than Granddad bargained for, I think. By the time I was a teenager, he was leasing out his pasture land and farming some land he rented from an absentee landlord. There were a couple of horses in the barn that had to be tended to, but that was far easier than having to tend livestock in the pasture.

*Do you have any photos of your ancestors outdoors in the winter, or of their homes or automobiles covered with snow? What about photos of ancestral horses and sleighs?

I talked a little bit about some of the photos earlier. Grannie would send us pictures of the snow in her letters from South Dakota–she was the family photographer. She was the one who shot the movies referenced above. No pictures of ancestral horses and sleighs, though there must have been some of those–I wonder if that’s how the part of the family who lived in Russia in the 1860s-70s got around.

I think there’s something to be said for living in a place that has seasons–sometimes in this part of the country it seems like there are only two–summer and winter, but the change of seasons creates a nice rhythm for life. And I can always use the cold as an excuse to not go out–sort of like I use the heat in the summer time.

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I’ve been struggling a bit with whether to continue this blog or not–I don’t want to get maudlin and repetitive with my family stories. In order to help generate topics, I’ve decided I’ll try participating in some of the questions and issues that other genealogical bloggers address.

My first effort in this vein is to write on the topic for this month’s Carnival of Genealogy–Here’s the explanation at the Creative Gene blog–”Living-relative connections made during your research processes and/or blog. Who found you or how did you find them? Were they helpful or did they send you on a wild goose chase for further information? How much and what kind of information did they share with you? What did you share with them? What kinds of contacts have you had… in person, via phone, online chat, email, snail mail, web casts?”

My husband’s father died when my husband was 18 months old. Both his sister and his brother are quite a bit older than him and established their own families early. Their mother never remarried but she and her young son moved from Texas, where all their family was, to Oklahoma where the oldest son was in college. It was the best thing for the boy who was to become my husband–he used to say he’d just be spitting tobacco and stirring up dust if he’d stayed in the little town where he was born. Here he could flourish in a larger church and school and begin what was to become a lifetime of schooling.

Anyway, after we had two sons of our own, we wanted to know more about his family. One of his aunts had done some research, but even as the novice I was then, I recognized that generations and people with the same names were mixed up. We knew his great-grandfather had come from Virginia to Texas just after the Civil War and that this great-grandfather had died in New Mexico–a “go west, young man” story if there ever was one. Somehow, we also knew that great-grandfather’s family had owned a place in Middlesex County,Virginia, named Corbin Hall.

I studied the map and decided to call Middlesex County to see what kind of records existed and if there was an historical or genealogical society that I could contact. Keep in mind that this was about 25 years ago, and while I usually took the safer and more thrifty step of writing a letter (with the always-recommended SASE), this time I decided to call. It looked like to me that the county seat was Urbanna and the best contact information I could find was for a town hall of some sort. I started explaining what I wanted to the woman who answered the phone, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when she told me not only was Corbin Hall still in existence, but that she’d grown up there. Her father had been the farm’s manager and now her brother lived there and served in that capacity.

She wasn’t a relative, but she offered to send me a photocopy of the area phone book with all the listings of my husband’s surname. It’s not a common one–Spindle–and I was shocked to see how many there were living in Essex and Caroline Counties, Viriginia.

My husband and I looked at that list for weeks. I guess I’d lost my nerve on cold calling, or else I was afraid I’d used up all my luck. One evening, it was time to put the boys to bed–a task usually performed by their dad. But this evening, I asked my husband if he would call someone from the list of names we’ d been sent. I told him I would put the boys to bed. We tried to choose from the list and finally, I just told him to pick a name and call. I went upstairs to wrestle the 2 and 5 year old into their beds.

My husband was still talking on the phone when I came back downstairs. Here’s how fortunate we were–he’d called the only Spindle family that had done any research or who really had any interest in their genealogy. Grace, the wife of the man who answered the phone, had traveled the counties and had done meticulous work–she was a retired English teacher. They were both in their late 70s and they still lived on land in a house that had been in the family since the 1700s, and it had a name–Bloomsbury. They were thrilled to hear from us.

I have a drawer full of letters that Grace wrote to me, sharing her research with us. She told me she was too old to learn the computer so those letters are written in her beautiful long-hand–page after page. She was methodical about answering my questions and she sent chart upon chart. My letters and charts went to her “hot” off my dot-matrix printer. She was a generous person and she took great pains to be sure that I got the “right” facts. There were generations of Johns and Mordecais and she helped me untangle them. She’d traced the land and she knew that one of the Johns had married a woman several years his senior, and she also knew the wife’s former husband’s name. She knew that neighbors married neighbors and that sometimes those neighbors were cousins. But she had them all straight and documented. Her research enabled some of us to enter the immigrant ancestor’s firstborn as a patriot in the Sons of the American Revolution.

A few years later, we traveled to Virginia to visit them in person–and we were fortunate enough to be able to return a few times more. My husband was overwhelmed when he set foot on that land–he didn’t expect to have such a strong reaction. We got to go down to Corbin Hall and visited with the family of the young woman from the town hall who helped us so much. We drove over to the Rappahannock River and looked at the place his family must have shipped their crops as well as received goods. William and Grace toured us through the country side introducing us to relatives and taking us to places my husband’s ancestors had owned. We visited Spindle Pond–owned by William’s twin brother, and looked at the mill wheel from the family’s mill.

When first William, and then Grace, died, we were very very sad and so grateful we’d found them. We felt fortunate indeed. Bloomsbury had to be sold out of the family, but what a treasure of memories remains. I don’t really expect to find other living relatives as dear as William and Grace were, and maybe part of what made that relationship so special was that it just seemed destined to be. Grace didn’t suffer fools gladly, but she took us in, shared her years of research, fed us the best blackberry cobbler I’ve ever eaten and let us prowl through her attic, both literally and figuratively. I’ll always be grateful–it’s a large part of the reason I’ve continued to look for family and their stories.

Now to find the pictures to include with this post.

Found ‘em!

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