THE SEVENTH ANNUAL GREAT GENEALOGY POETRY CHALLENGE POSTS

Welcome to the roundup of posts submitted in Seventh Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge !
Here are the rules for submissions to 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.


We have a variety of poetry in this year's Challenge. There is a poem for commercial use, several
celebratory poems written for events, and one to ease a child to sleep. There are poems written by
famous poets and poems written by relatives, poems about a battle, one about a shipwreck and one
written by a homesick young man. And the poems vary in length from the short to the very long.

I hope you enjoy reading them all, and please be sure to leave a comment to let each blogger know
your thoughts on their post. 
. 
 
Back in late 19th and early 20th century America, businesses frequently used poems to
advertise their products. Dorene Paul of Graveyard Rabbit of Sandusky Bay blog found and shares
one such poem in her post Seventh Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge. You might be surprised
at what company used the poem and what the connection was between it and a certain animal.

Heather Wilkinson Rojo of Nutfield Genealogy has shared her grandmother's poems with us in previous Poetry Challenges.I've enjoyed each one of them. This year she contributes another, the beautiful Baby's Lullaby, by Bertha Roberts Wilkinson, and tells a bit about Bertha's life.

For many years Americans used poetry to celebrate special events or family history with poetry. It's a vanished tradition, except perhaps for poet laureates reciting a poem at Presidential Inaugurations.  My Ellingwood cousin Pam Carter found a poem about a relative's courtship written for a dedication. Her post is Deborah Bachiler Poem at Pam's My Maine Ancestry blog. 

Vickie at BeNotForgot has another example of a celebratory poem, this one for the 250th
anniversary of the town of Andover. Ma. Like her, some of my ancestors were among the first
settlers and I have several cousin connections with Vickie. Read the poem in the blog post entitled
1653:: Marriage of Clemens and Osgood.

Barbara Poole knew exactly what she wanted to do for this year's challenge and set about
looking for a poem written by one of her ancestors. She found one by her 2nd great
granduncle Fitch Poole, as well as an article about his life. They are posted on her Life From
The Roots blog in two posts, THE LIBRARIAN'S EPITAPH, a Poem, and I Googled POEM and FITCH POOLE and came up with This.

Schalene Dagutis is related by marriage to Nathaniel Tucker, a poet who lived in the late 18th -early 19th century.  Although he lived for a time in the American colonies, he had been born in Bermuda, which inspired his poem The Bermudan. Like much poetry of that era it's long. See for yourself in the post
52 Ancestors #1: Nathaniel Tucker, Poet at Tangled Roots and Leaves.


I have three poems here on West in New England for my own contribution to the Challenge:

Back in June I had mentioned on Facebook that my Mom's German paternal great  grandparents had come to America on the ship S.S. Deutschland and friend Terri Kallio asked me if was the same ship
that sank in 1875 during a storm. She sent me a link to Wikipedia which led me to finding English poet  Gerald Manley Hopkins' poem about the tragedy,The Wreck of the Deutschland.

Then in September I found two poems about a Colonial American era  battle at Lovewell's
Pond in New Hampshire between the "Snowshoe Soldier" militia and Native Americans.
One poem, The Battle of Lovell's Pond, was the first published work by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow; the second, Song of Lovewell's Fight, was a popular ballad from a century before
Longfellow's poem. Some of my ancestors had served under Lovewell in previous campaigns.