THE SIXTH ANNUAL GREAT GENEALOGY POETRY CHALLENGE POSTS

Welcome to the Sixth Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge!
Here are rules for the Challenge:
 
 1. Find a poem by a local poet, famous or obscure, from the region 
your ancestors lived in. It can be about an historical event, a
legend, a person, or even about some place (like a river)or a local
animal. It can even be a poem you or one of your ancestors have written!
0r if you prefer, post the lyrics of a song or a link to a video of someone
performing the song. 

2. Post the poem or song to your blog (remembering to cite the source
where you found it.).  If you wish to enter an older post, you may as long
as long as it has not appeared here in an earlier Poetry Challenge.
 
3.Tell us how the subject of the poem or song relates to your ancestor's
home or life, or the area of the country where they lived.

There are some really unique submissions this year with some great poetry
and even some songs. I think you'll enjoy these blogposts, so let's get started! 



Ellingwood cousin Pam Carter's submission is the lyrics of a song Pam's grandmother
used to sing to her. It's one I often used to hear myself as a child from my own
grandmother (along with another song, Pony Boy). Pam supplies a link to a
performance of the song and post the lyrics in Billy Boy- Traditional Folk Song at
My Maine Ancestry.

Barker cousin  Vickie Everhart of BeNotForgot has sent three submissions this year:
-In 1850 :: The Census Taker, she uses Darlene Stevens' poem The Census Taker
to help tell the story of her relative T.J.Allen who was a census taker in Texas.

-Vickie's 10x great grandfather was Job Tyler of Andover, Ma., and in 1896 a
family reunion was held there. Someone wrote a poem in praise of Job and
Vickie shares it with us in Ode to Job.

-Lastly, Vickie weaves the poetic epitaph on an ancestor's grave with her family
history and a bit of the history of Georgia in 1834 :: Howl Fir Tree for the Cedar is Fallen


Heather Wilkinson Rojo has shared some wonderful poems by her grandmother Bertha Wilkinson in previous Poetry Challenges. This time the subject is a trip to a place many
of my genealogy friends have taken themselves. The poem is entitled Our Trip to Utah,
posted in The Sixth Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge at Nutfield Genealogy

Over at TransylvanianDutch, John Newmark celebrates his wife's Scottish heritage with
a well known poem by Robert Burns. He also gives links to a poem by Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne, and to a performance of song made from it. His post is Sixth Annual Genealogy Poetry Challenge - Scotland


One of my favorite poets is fellow New Englander Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, so I was very interested (and a wee bit envious) when Diane MacLean Boumenot sent me
the link to her post Buckley Parmenter and The Wayside Inn. Her ancestor worked at
the inn that was the inspiration for Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn" poetry collection. Diane tells us about the history of the establishment and shares some stories about Buckley at her One Rhode Island Family blog.


I'm also envious of Barbara Poole of Life From The Roots, who also has a connection
to a Longfellow poem. While researching an ancestor she discovered he may have been
aboard a sailing vessel that vanished.  The incident is commemorated in Longfellow's
poem The Phantom Ship. Barbara's post is Poem for Bill West's Sixth Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge.

My contribution stems from my search for New England legends and folklore to write about at Halloween. This year I was lucky to find a poem written about distant cousin Jonathan Moulton being haunted by the ghost of a dead wife. Even better, the poem The New Wife And The Old, was written by another of my distant relatives, John Greenleaf Whittier. I wrote two posts about the story and poem in HALLOWEEN TALES: "THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD" PT1  and PT2.


And that concludes this year's Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge. My thanks to all
the participants for their great blogposts!