IS THAT A POEM I SEE IN YOUR POCKET?

Lisa has challenged her fellow geneabloggers
to post a poem in observance of National
Poet in Your Pocket Day.

I took a course in English Romantic Poetry in
college and this one by William Wordsworth was
my favorite. I used to be able to recite it
or most of it.

The world is too much with us; late and soon
by William Wordsworth:


The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

-1806

BIRTHDAY? WHAT BIRTHDAY??

Yesterday was my sister's Cheryl's birthday and also my Aunt
Emily's. I've already wished Cheryl her Happy Birthday, but I'm
doing it again here so I can post this picture. Obviously, it's from
only a few years ago!

AVERAGE

In trying to write a post for the next Carnival of Genealogy
blog, my problem isn't how many family traits I've inherited
but how many I didn't. This is a tough one to write and it will
probably not be a long one!


Physically I get my height from my Mom's side of the family.
My Uncle Ed and his sons as well as my brother and myself
are all over 6ft tall (I'm the shortest at 6'1") and I think my
blue eyes are from that side as well. The weight could be
from either side. Although Mom and Uncle Ed were thin,
my Grand Uncle Frank (who taught me how to make
tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches) was a good sized
man and on my Dad's side I could get it from the Barker
family.


I think I've already established the fact that I have no
artistic or musical talent, and I sure can't dance as well as
either of my parents did. Nor do I have my Dad's ability with
tools. I once got a blood blister from a vise handle in shop
class in school!


Athletically, I enjoyed playing baseball and football when I
was a kid but I was about average, which does seem to be
the family tradition.


I do like to write, but judging from the dearth of material left
by those thatcame before me, I don't come from a long line of
writers and diarists.

The one habit that I do share with my parents is reading. My
mom had me bring home books for her when I went to the
library, usually historical novels by Taylor Caldwell, Frank
G. Slaughter and others, and she liked to read mystery and
romance novels as well. Dad was a Louis L'Amour western
fan and would borrow my sf and fantasy paperbacks out of
my bookcase. If I couldn't find one I knew to check the
headboard of my folk's bed to see if Dad was reading it.

And I do share an interest in genealogy with my Aunt
Dorothy and cousin Diana out in Ohio!


Of course, since I still know very little about my Grandfather
White's family I don't know if there's any traits I might have
or haven't inherited from that side.


I suppose the main trait I have in common with my ancestors
is being an average everyday human being who gets up
every morning and goes about the business of living his or
her life!

PING AND I VISIT THE FAMILY HISTORY CENTER

So today was my first trip to a Family History Center.


Last night I did some research on the Family Search website
and found some microfilm records and cd rom file numbers
which I wrote down in a small notebook. I then printed up
some of my pedigree chart in a five generation /page landscape
format to go along with the older six generation/page version.
I only printed out fifteen pages of each because the full report
is over three hundred pages.


When I went to add them to the three-ringed binder I use for
my family group sheets I found there wasn’t enough space, so
I slid them into the pocket inside the front cover of the
notebook. Note to self: buy a few more binders. Or at least
start using the one of the very large ones.


Next, I checked my flashdrive, backed up any new files from
my desktop to it and deleted some older ones that were
replaced by updated versions.


Finally, I Googlemapped the Family History Center address
at 379 Gardner St. in Hingham from my home here in
Abington. When I saw the suggested route and the map, I
shook my head. I’d expected the FHC to be in the older part
of Hingham closer to the coast but instead found it was much
closer. The map suggested a route that would take me north
on Route 18 and then by a series of turns to Derby St in
Hingham where the far end of Gardner St joins it, a trip of
7.9 miles and about(it said) sixteen minutes. Except that
anyone who lives in this area knows how congested Route 18
is at certain times of day and also knows how many traffic
lights that route entails. I looked at the map and figured out
a much quicker, shorter route using the back roads I know
which would take me to Gardner St on its southern end
where it joins Pond St


Of course, that all depended on whether Ping would behave.
Ping is the name I’ve finally given to my 1992 Ford Taurus
that I just spent $1800 dollars repairing and comes from its
new annoying habit.


You know how your car chimes if the door is open or you
leave the keys in the ignition or your seatbelt is unbuckled?
Recently, the car has given that sound when I first start it up
and then continues non-stop until I reach my destination
and turn the car off. Talk about a ringing in my ears! It also
stalled out once on the way to work after I got it back which
was more what I was worried about for this trip.


This morning I got up later than I planned because my post
nasal drip acted up and it took awhile to fall asleep. Eventually
I gathered all my things(flashdrive, notebook, binder, three
pens) together and got in the car. It was (and still is) a
beautiful day outside and it is definitely a day to drive with
your car window down. Ping behaved herself and there was
no bell so I was relieved that as I drove I wouldn’t have kids
run out to the curbside thinking my car was the approaching
ice cream vendor. I turned on the radio and three commercials
and two Neil Diamond songs later(“Cherry, Cherry” and
“Sweet Caroline”) I pulled into the driveway of the FHC. It’s
in the rear of a LDS church in a quiet residential area that I
had driven by in the past over the years without paying
attention to the sign!



I found the entrance, went inside, and a very nice woman
volunteer was there along with another woman viewing
records at one of the microfilm machines. There were about
six of these spaced around the walls of the room and at least
two computers, one of which was being used by the volunteer.
I explained I was new and asked if I could see what films
and fiches they had there, as Miriam had suggested in
her comment to my earlier post. We checked some of the
film numbers I’d written down but didn’t have any luck,
and apparently the Plymouth records were in use already,
so I took a reel for the vital records of Livermore, Me. instead.
John Cutter West’s wife Arvilla Ames had been born there;
perhaps they filed marriage intentions there as well as in
nearby Sumner where they married in 1827?


The volunteer showed me how to load the microfilm on the
machine and I spent the next hour or so looking at the
images but didn’t find a mention of the marriage. By the time
I was done it was 12:30 and the room was closing at 1pm,
so there was little point in loading up a new film. I rewound
the microfilm, turned off the machine and returned the film
to its drawer in the cabinet. I thanked the volunteer for her
help and told her I’d be back next week at an earlier time
and then left. On the way home I picked up a burger, and
one Elvis Presley and one Doors song later(“Suspicious Minds”
, “Light My Fire”) I was home.


So, while I hadn’t learned anything new about John Cutter
West(and I hadn’t expected to right away anyway!) I did
acquaint myself with how to get to the FHC, what resources
and equipment they had available and with their changed
hours.(The Family Search site said it closed at 2pm but they
now close an hour earlier at 1pm.) When I go back next week
I’ll explore a bit further and perhaps order a roll of microfilm
from the Family History Library. All in all, a good few hours
out of the apartment and I look forward to more visits to
the FHC.


And that concludes Bill and Ping’s Excellent Adventure!

ROCKS IN OUR HEADS

Janice’s recent post at Cow Hampshire about the Viking Rock
at Hampton, New Hampshire put me in mind of several other
sites surrounded by mystery here in New England: Mystery
Hill in Salem, N.H., (the “American Stonehenge”); Newport
Tower in Newport, R.I., and Dighton Rock here in
Massachusetts.


The Dighton Rock controversy’s history resembles that of the
Viking Rock. Speculation on the origin and meaning of the
characters carved into the rock include Ancient Phoenicians,
Vikings, Portuguese explorers and Native Americans and was
a popular topic in Europe during the 1800’s. Scholars made
their fame and fortunes advancing one theory after another.

It would be easy to write it off as a 19th century hoax until
one learns the fact that no less an historical personage than
Cotton Mather made a drawing of the carvings in 1712 and
had described them in a book 22 years earlier in 1690. With
the exception of a few scribblings left by curiosity seekers
over the years, the markings remain just as Mather copied
them. You can see a picture of them taken in 1853 here on
Wikipedia.

Better still, you can read all about it here on the Archives
webpage of American Heritage Magazine. I’ve bookmarked
that site, let me tell you!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUNT DOROTHY!

Yikes! I make it a habit to check my Family Tree Legends
birthday and anniversaries list to see which relative’s
birthdays are coming each month. This is a good way to keep
track of the ancestors, but since I deliberately left living
relatives off that program, it’s not a very good method of
remembering the birthdays of my present day relatives.

And so, I managed to make a blog entry noting Asa Freeman
Ellingwood’s 180th birthday but missed congratulating my
Aunt Dorothy on her birthday which she shares with Asa.(Of
course, she’s considerably younger than Asa!) Without her
earlier research and help I’d never have gotten into genealogy
and obviously I wouldn’t be writing this blog, so I owe her a
great deal of thanks for inspiring me and for the hours of
enjoyment I’ve had climbing up our family tree.

Happy Birthday, Aunt Dot, and many more to come!

WHEN THE WORLD CHANGED

Friday, April 4th, was the 180th birthday of my great great
grandfather Asa Freeman(or Freeland) Ellingwood. He’s one
of the ancestors whose census images I’ve been downloading
recently and I was struck by a thought as I was looking them
over.


I think I discovered the point when the world changed during
Asa’s lifetime. Or at least I narrowed it down to one decade,
sometime between 1850 and 1860.


On the 1850 census for the town of Milan, Coos County, New
Hampshire he’s listed as “Asa Ellenwood”, 21 years old, with
his 17 year old bride of less than a year, Florilla (Dunham).
His occupation is listed as “wheelwright”. Now being a
wheelwright was, as were most occupations in that earlier
age, not just a job but a craft. It required skill in carpentry
and knowledge of timber as a wheelwright had to pick the
wood used for the rim, spokes, and hub of the wheel and
then fashion and assemble the parts into the finished
product. A more full description of the process can be found
at the Wheelwright’s Craft page of the Witheridge Historical
Archive website.


Asa’s cousin Hiram G. Ellenwood was a hotel keeper in Milan
and it may have seemed like a possible steady source of
business for the young married couple. There would be
stagecoaches, carriages, and freight wagons that might have
need of repairs to wheels or perhaps a complete replacement
from a skilled craftsman. The future must have seemed
clear cut and secure for Asa.


Ten years later on the 1860 Census that future had changed.
Asa and Florilla were now living in the town of Paris in Oxford
County, Maine with the first five of what would eventually be
their eleven children.And Asa’s occupation had changed. He
was no longer a wheelwright.

He was now a mechanic, one of six listed on the two pages
of the census that contain Asa’s family. A bit further up the
first page is a hint as to how the world had changed. A farmer
named William Moony had seven men staying on his farm,
and the occupation for all of them is given as “Railroader”.
The railroads had begun to expand their rail lines in Northern
New England during the 1840’s and by 1850 the Grand Truck
Railroad had a station in Paris.


With the arrival and expansion of the railroads, there was less
need for wheelwrights. While horse drawn wagons, carriages,
and coaches would continue to be used for another fifty years,
the commercial uses would lessen as people traveled more by
train and businesses shipped their supplies and merchandise
over the faster rail line.


There were less jobs for a wheelwright. A time honored craft
was no longer in as great demand, and a man with a young
family to support had to earn a living.


So Asa became a mechanic, perhaps for the railroad or maybe
at one of the mills or factories in Paris.

Asa’s world would shortly change again with the outbreak of
the Civil War. He enlisted in June 1861 but was discharged in
December with a disability. By the 1870 census he was a
farmer back in Milan, New Hampshire.

Of course, our world nowadays seems to change everyday,
with jobs and professions dying out even as new ones are
being createdfrom the latest scientific and technological
advances; it’s become the norm to us. I can think of a dozen
or more ways my own life has changed over the years
because of them.

I wonder if Asa and my other ancestors who lived through
the Industrial Revolution ever looked back and marveled at
how their lives had changed so quickly?


Probably not. They most likely were too busy trying to
survive to have time to be philosophical about it!


It is one of those little coincidences that about the time I
was mulling over what I wanted to say in this post I received
a commenton a previous entry from another descendant of
Asa Freeman Ellingwood!

THE CARNIVAL OF GENEALOGY HAS HIT THE ROAD!

Jasia backed up a car trailer and loaded up the Carnival of
Genealogy 45th edition with 43 blog arcticles on family from
36 authors (some folks had multiple posts). It’s a mix of
veteran CoG’ers and some new faces and I’m looking forward
to reading it all.

The submissions for the 46th edition are due by April 15th
and the topic is “What traits run in your family? Which of
them did you inherit?”. So put your thinking caps on and
submit your own answers here.

Meanwhile, I’ll be taxing my brain for my own family’s
traits, other than a tendency to have persnickety cars.

ADVICE WANTED ON VISITING THE FAMILY HISTORY CENTER

Alright, now that the car is repaired I can wander a bit away
from my computer keyboard in search of records. One of the
places I plan to visit in the next few weeks in the Family
History Center in the nearby town of Hingham.

Since I’ve never been to a FHC before, I thought I’d ask
some of the more experienced genealogists and geneabloggers
out there for any tips or words of advice that might be helpful.
For example, am I allowed to download anything to my
flashdrive?

My next available window of opportunity for a visit is
next Thursday, so I’d like to be well prepared before I go!

AN UPDATE

My cousin Diana, one of Aunt Dorothy’s daughters, reads this
blog and will occasionally send along a comment on what I’ve
written which are always fun for me because I learn something
new.

In my post about family cars I mentioned how my Dad said
he’d learned to driveon the back roads up in Maine but I
wasn’t sure if it was with a Model A or Model T Ford.
Diana sent me this:

"Bill,
Was just reading your most recent blog....and thought you
might find this tidbit interesting. When I was about 10 (so
we're talking 45 years ago!) My parents went to Maine and
towed Pop's old Model A Roadster all the way to Ohio. A
guy that lived in Freeport had bought it to restore and paid
my parents' gas expenses to go up to New England and
bring it back here ....thus rescuing it from rusting away in
the field where it had been located for years! This is
probably the same Model A that Uncle Bud learned to drive
in!

A few years ago, the man from Freeport got desperate for
money and sold the body off the car to someone else....the
other guy had a coupe and wanted a Roadster so he bought
only the body. Then, the man from Freeport died. Well, to
make a long story short, my husband and I ended up with
the chassis and engine to Pop's car and Gary is currently
building a Speedster out of it. He took pictures of early
speedsters and picked all the points that he liked best and
is building this car completely from scratch! It won't be
Pop's Roadster but at least we'll have Pop's "car" running
again, hopefully later this year!
Diana"

When I emailed Diana back to ask if I could post her
comments here, she included another great bit of
information in her reply:

"By the way..........when Gary restored our Model A Town
Sedan, Mom bought us a Flying Quail radiator cap
(traditional dressy cap) in honor of Pop. So I've always
called the Quail, Floyd!!!

Diana"

So that Model A from Maine lives on in Ohio!

CARS:CAN'T LIVE WITH THEM, CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT THEM!

It’s ironic that the topic for the next Carnival of Genealogy
should be about the cars in our families’ histories. I’ve just
had my present car, a 1992 Ford Taurus, repaired and boy,
did it put a dent in my wallet. It’s not that I’m attached to
the thing or that I’m an aficionado of the old Ford Taurus
cars, mind you. It’s more a case of not finding a dependable
used car with an affordable price that I could buy to replace
it, so the money went into repairing the Taurus instead.


My family has always had a love/hate relationship with cars.
My Dad was the only one of us who understood the mechanics
of how a car runs and what needed to be done to keep them
running. He learned to drive while still in his teens in an old
Model A or Model T on the dirt roads up home in Maine.
Over the years we went through a succession of used cars
because of family finances such as when Mom and Dad
bought the house in Abington. The one car that they bought
brand new was a 1956 red and black colored Oldsmobile `98
which lasted us until just before my brother was born.


The first memory I have of one of our cars was watching Dad
drive a late 1940’s model Pontiac in the wake of a motorboat
down the flooded Beach Street in Malden. It was after one of
the hurricanes of the mid 1950’s and Dad was working at
Atlas Engineering in Roxbury but made it home anyway.
The Pontiac was one of those big old time cars with a high
engine block and by following along behind the boat he made
it right into the driveway. One of the neighbor kids pointed at
it and called it “Mr. West’s submarine!”


When we moved out of the city to the “suburbs” (as Dad
called them) and there was no public transportation handy it
became necessary to become a two (and eventually four) car
family and with house payments and then a new baby, buying
a new car was not affordable. Dad liked GM cars so most of
the cars would be Oldsmobiles, Buicks, or Chevys, and some
of those cars were characters in themselves. There were the
two mid 1950’s Chevy Bel-Airs. One of them was green and
white and supposedly had been owned by a nurse but had a
tiger decal and a skull with eyes that lit up in the rear window.
The other was the one I called the “Butterscotch Bomber”
because its color was sort of a butterscotch pudding yellowish
orange. That was the car Dad was driving the day my kid
brother was born. Dad threw Mom’s bag into the car but
nearly drove off without her as she stood yelling at him from
the back door.


I’m not sure which of the two was the car Dad was driving
when he and I drove up to Maine to see his father. I do recall
the drive home where the brakes weren’t working very well
as we came down through the Notch and Dad used the road’s
shoulder to help keep the speed down.


Then there was the Buick some years later that we were in
during a vacation trip. We were on the way to a White House
tour when the right front wheel well started smoking and
we spent a few hours in a garage while wheel bearings were
replaced. We missed the tour.


When I finally got my driving license I followed the family
tradition. My first car was a used Olds `98, and when I
replaced that it was with a Pontiac Bonneville with twin
mufflers. I’ve never forgotten that second car, because it
seemed liked those mufflers took turns falling off. I think
those are illegal now. If they had been back then it would
have been much easier on my bank account!


Then there was my Chevy pickup truck. This was back in the
mid to late 1970’s and when I needed a new car Dad went
along with me to check out the choices. I’ve always suspected
his pointing out the truck had ulterior motives since soon
after I bought it I was hauling seaweed and chicken manure
in it for the garden compost pile!


I was driving that truck during the Blizzard of `78 when a
normal10 minute drive became an adventure. Our dogs Sam
and Gigi (Don’t ask. West Family pets are an epic in and of
themselves.) liked to ride in it although in Sam’s case it was
sometimes a case of running along behind it. But my most
vivid memory of that truck was how the left side panel of the
truck bed rusted away and when I took left hand turns it
would sway out. Or the truck gate fell off.


And once, the tire fell out. Luckily it was on the long access
road from Route 37 down to the warehouse where I was
working at the time. It flew out and rolled back down the
whole length of that road in a straight line. One of my
coworkers was leaving work with his wife and family at the
time when the tire came rolling by his car. He told me his
three year old applauded and wanted the tire to do it
again!


For all the clunkers and all the adventures we’ve had with
cars, we’ve been extremely fortunate as a family that any
accidents we’ve had were not serious ones.


But I’ve oftimes thought that maybe our ancestors had it
better with their horses than we do today with our cars.
After all, for all their advances in technology, cars today can’t
produce a new model for their owners every few years or so
like a horse could!

PAHK ING THE CAH IN THE YAHD

Thomas McEntee over at Destination: Austin Family took
this accent test so I gave it a shot.

Hmm. No surprise here:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The West
The Inland North
The South
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

For some reason the red bars won't show but
on the results page the red bar for the Boston
accent is about 2/3 of the way across over the
black line.


I might comment more on this later but it's wicked late
and I'm gonna pahk my cahcass in bed before it's don..er..
dawn.

BEDTIME GENEALOGY 23

I’ve blogged before about cemetery vandalism and expressed
how angry such idiocy makes me. Lori Thornton over at
Smoky Mountain Family Historian recently discovered that
cretins had vandalized a cemetery where some of her
ancestors are buried and is justifiably upset.

I hope somebody catches whoever was responsible for it!

Then a little while ago I ran across this article on the website
of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus newspaper in Vermont
concerning a different sort of danger to a small family
cemetery. It has some interesting facts about cemetery laws
in the Northeastern states.

This case bears watching in light of the importance that such
graveyards have to those of us interested in genealogy.

GUMDROP!

A common term for a married woman in the 17th century
was “goodwife” which oftentimes was shortened to “goody”.

One of my ancestors, William Marston was married to a
Sarah Goody.

Which meant she would have been the daughter of…yes…

“Goody” Goody.

A FLUTAPHONE LULLABYE

45. Family Reunion Picnic Bug Repellent- Use
flutaphones as citronella candle holders. Stick the sharp
end in the ground and balance the candles on the wide
mouth end.

46. Family Reunion Game Part Replacement- If for
some reason the goalstick thingy from the croquet set
should be missing, the flutaphone can be used as a
substitute! Again, sharp end into the ground!


47. Family Reunion Etiquette Instruction Device-
When two or more of your younger relatives reach for
the last piece of cornbread for themselves, rap their
wrists gently and firmly while commenting on the lack of
manners in their generation. Then, reverse the flutaphone
for the next step…

48. Family Reunion Food Fetcher- Use the flutaphone
to pull the plate with the last piece of cornbread closer to
you. If someone else tries to take the last piece, spear it
with the mouthpiece.(NOTE-Be sure you have cleaned
off the mouthpiece end if you have used it as a citronella
candle holder or as part of the croquet game.))

and FINALLY….

49. Family Reunion Picnic Fanfare Instrument-to
announce the end of the picnic, and to let everyone know
that you have at last finished the list of 49 Genealogical
Uses for a Flutaphone!!

SOME THOUGHTS ON UNCLE CLARENCE'S MEMORIES

I meant to post these comments yesterday but sleep won out.

The blacksmith P.C. Ripley that Clarence mentions was Percy
C. Ripley who apparently is a local legend. He ran away to sea
as a boy for three years and then on his return spent four
years living with the Indians and learning how to trap and
live in the woods. He settled in the Magalloway area where
he worked as a guide and blacksmith and had quite an
illustrious career befuddling the local game wardens who
sought to catch him hunting and fishing out of season.

The mention of the Brown Paper company brings memories to
me of our own visits “up home”. We’d pass through
Berlin, N.H.where the paper mill was on the Androscoggin
River and there was the faint smell of rotten eggs in the air,
caused by whatever process was used to make paper.


Reading Clarence’s stories of his time at the Azicohos Dam
made me go back and read my Aunt Dorothy’s memories of
her childhood there. The quarry “up back of the barracks”
must be the one Dot mentions as being home to a bear.
The log sluice that Clarence thought was the “slickest piece
of work I ever saw” may the one at whose end my Dad
liked to fly fish.


And Clarence’s final comment about rarely using his boats to
visit the “head of the lake” only ten times in fifty one years
brought to mind Dot telling how she napped in the boat
“Kiko” while her father was still building it, and of its state
when she saw it years later as an adult.

I’m fortunate to have their accounts of their lives in Maine.
How I wish some of my other ancestors had left behind some
of their own accounts as well!

44TH CARNIVAL OF GENEALOGY IS OUT

The 44th Carnival of Genealogy is up at Jasia’s Creative Gene
and in celebration of National Women’s Month the theme was
the remarkable women in our ancestry or women we have
known who have had an effect on our lives. There are 32
writers with a great selection of 34 articles and that means
plenty of good reading. Go over and follow the links
to meet some remarkable ladies.

And the topic for the next CoG is on the Great American
Love Affair:

" The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy
will be: Cars as stars! Next to purchasing a house, a "new
set of wheels" was the next most significant purchase for
many families. What car played a starring roll in your
family history and what roll did it play? Did your family
build cars or tinker with them? Did they take "Sunday
drives"? What was your first car? Was there a hangout
that you frequented in your car? How far back can you
document your family's automotive genealogy? Tell us
your car stories... front seat or back! ;-) Vroom, Vroom!
The deadline for submissions is April 1st."

How about it? Do you have a car story? Submit it here.

And once again, a fantastic job by Jasia in assembling the CoG!

GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS Pt3

This is the last part of my Granduncle Clarence West’s
memories as taken from “The History of Wilsons Mills-and-
the- Magalloway -Settlements” . The subjects range from
“squirrel whiskey” to grist mills and the cost of food. I ’ll
have some comments on all of this in a following post:


“P.C. Ripley worked at the dam when they were building it.
He was the top blacksmith. He could make most anything.
He made wrenches and tools of all kinds for the crews.
Ripley used to say that Brown Company kept all the
ingredients to make `squirrel ’whiskey. You just mix up a
batch, then bury it in the ground to season it. When you dig
it up it’s pretty stout, but good. Just one drink of it will make
a squirrel go up a tree tail first!

That grist stone they took out of the river this spring was
the top stone. If you look at it you can see the holes in it.
There’s a thing goes through the hole in the middle to pick it
up by. Too bad they couldn’t find the other stone. It used to
take days to sharpen those stones. It was all done by hand
and they all had to be the same. They had a nice grist mill at
Errol Dam. They had two stones, one special for buckwheat
and one for flour. The top stone sets still and the bottom one
goes around. You had to be awful careful to keep the grain
running all the time.

If you heard the click of the stones hitting together you
knew you were going to get something hard on your teeth.
The grain went down the cellar to a hopper, onto a
conveyor, through a machine they called the `smut’ mill,
then back upstairs and into a rig they called a bolt. This
was a cylinder screen about 10 feet long and about three
feet around. It had different sized screens and it kept turning
over and over and the grain fell into a row of boxes under it.
When it was done you pulled out a drawer and filled your
bag.


“There’s sure some difference in the price of flour and meat
and everything nowadays. I can remember when Joe and
Martha Brooks had a little store over in Upton. Joe would
kill a cow and go and peddle it around for three cents a
pound. Milk was five cents a quart; butter was high,
twenty-five cents a pound. Eggs were one cent apiece.
When I was going to school, anytime I needed pencils or
paper or anything for school, I’d go out to the barn and get
a few eggs to trade for what I needed.


You know, I was thinking about it the other day, I’ve had
boats all the time I’ve been here, and that’s going on
fifty-one years, and I’ve only been to the head of the lake
ten times.”


Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.) pp.96-97

A ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARADE OF POSTS

I hope everyone had a Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and that you
aren’t celebrating the day after with a green tinge to your face
due to making one too many toasts to Ireland and her blessed
saints.

And a good way to keep your Irish spirits up is a reading of
the St. Patrick’s Day Parade of Posts edition of the
Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture over at the Small-Leaved
Shamrock. Lisa’s done a great job as usual and there’s a lot of
good writing to enjoy, so go on over and check it out.

While your at it, you might consider submitting an article to the
next CIH&C. :

The 5th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture
will honor the beauty of the Irish language with a focus on
Irish Gaelic names and words.

Has the charm of the name of a place in Ireland always
called to you to visit someday?

As a child did you secretly wish you had the Irish name of
a great-grandparent instead of the name you were born with?

Do you have a story to tell about someone with an Irish surname?

Is there an Irish proverb that you have always loved to let
slide off of your tongue in its original language?

Join us for the 5th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage
& Culture. The only prerequisite is that your post must tie
in with our focus on the Irish Gaelic language.
Posts for this edition of the carnival are due April 27.
Submit your entries here. The carnival will be posted at
A light that shines again on St. Ciarán's Day, April 30.
(Well, one of the St. Ciarán's days - there are actually 14
in the calendar of Irish saints. Now there's one popular
Irish Gaelic name!)

So dust up your Gaelic and send in a post to the Carnival!

GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS Pt2

Here’s part two of my Granduncle Clarence’s memories
of the construction of the Azicohos Dam as it appeared in
“The History of Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-
Settlements” including a wandering cow and Clarence taking
a shortcut across the top of the dam:


“Roberge cut the flowage. They used to bring the water
up to the works to keep the frost out of the north side of
the dam. When the water is low you can still see where
the steam pipes cooked the cement. Roberge finished the
flowage by cutting off the trees right at the top of the ice.
Brown Company’s tow-boats had quite a time at first.
Sometimes they’d make a mistake and end up in the woods,
or wind the tow-line up in the propeller, or knock a blade
off the propeller in the dri-ki(driftwood). Stan Wentzell was
the one who finally corralled the dri-ki by booming it in the
coves. Stan was a good man. When he told you something
you could believe it.


There used to be a quarry up in back of the barracks.
When Clarence Gray logged in there a few years ago he
cut trees out of it. That concrete pit up back was the water
pit. Water lines ran down to the houses, storehouses, cook
camps, etc. On one of the cottages the front porch was way
up high. When I had a cow, every time she didn’t come
when I called, I always knew where to find her. Under
that porch!


They used to have a telephone line run up from the top of
the dam to the foot of the sluice. You remember Pat
Crowley. It was his job to stay on the top of the dam and
stop the wood if anything went wrong. It took six feet of
water to sluice and the wood went nine-tenths of a mile in
three minutes. That sluice was the slickest piece of work I
ever saw. It sure took some figuring. George Freeman
designed it. He went to school with Paul Bean. He came
from Gorham, Me. After he left here he went to Chicago
to work on a hotel that was tipping over. Then he helped
build a railroad through the Rocky Mountains. After that
he went out to San Francisco and worked on the Golden
Gate bridge.


Bean and Harris came up one day to see about doing
something to the sluice gates. We drove around to the other
side of the dam and then Bean discovered he need the
blueprints that had been left over at the house. He was
going to send his driver over after them but I told him I
could do it quicker. There was about an inch of water
running over the splashboards but I went across and got
the papers. When I got back, Bean stood there with his
hands in his pockets watching me. He said `I didn’t like to
see you do that, Clarence!’ It wasn’t long after that they
put in the bridge above the splashboards.”

Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.)
pp.95-96

GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS Pt1

My granduncle Clarence P(hilip) West was the caretaker of
the Azicoos Dam in Wilsons Mills, Oxford, Maine for
fifty years. He was born in Cambridge, New Hampshire on
17 March, 1895 to Philip J. West and Clara (Ellingwood)West
and died on 5 June 1983. The SSDI gives his place of
residence as Errol, Coos Co., New Hampshire at the time
of his death.


Clarence married Mabel Jane Ilsley on 25 Jun 1919 and
together they had three children: their son Lee and their
daughters Leita and Ruth.



When Wilsons Mills celebrated its sesquicentennial in 1975
they decided to mark the occasion by publishing a book:
“The History of Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-
Settlements”. It includes an interview with Clarence about
his memories of his time at the Azicoos Dam and it makes an
interesting companion to the memories my Aunt Dorothy
sent me about her and my Dad’s time there as children,
which I posted here.

Tomorrow is the 113th anniversary of Clarence’s birth, so in
honor of him, here’s part one of the interview from the book:

“Clarence P. West, at eighty still caretaker at Aziscoos
Dam, is an interesting man to talk with. He was here
recently to look at some old pictures that had been brought
into the book committee on the building of the Azizcoos
Dam and we got him talking of the old days. He came here
as caretaker in 1924 and has been here ever since. We first
asked him how he happened to come here. These are some
of his comments.

“When we were first married I went to Pontook to work on
a survey with Walter Sawyer. Mabel and I lived in a tent
that summer. Sawyer would have had a nice dam there if
they had let him. He had one planned that was near four
thousand feet across with penstocks clear to Twitchell’s
for power. From that job I went to Lisbon to work in a
sawmill for West Bros. Later I went to see Mr. Bean about
a job and he told me to send in my application. There were
about a hundred other applications but when they got
narrowed down to five I was still one of them. After
Vashaw died, Lewis Chadwick was transferred to Errol and
I came up here. That was in 1924.


When the new Dam was built the gate house on the old dam
was removed and set up for a blacksmith shop. It still stands
there to-day just in back of the parking area. You know, the
timbers in that old shop were hewed by hand.


One of the big towers to hold the cable was up back of the
house, the other one was almost over to where the road to
Rangeley is now. There was a double track from the end of
the dam to the quarry up back on the hill. The cars worked
from a cable, when one went down, the other came back
up. There was a track with a whole string of cars that they
loaded with a steam shovel. The tops of the cars turned
around to dump. That shovel was on wheels and they had
to keep planks under the wheels all the time. It was set up
in a pit to load dirt for fill on the south side of the cam. The
cars were hauled along the tracks by a big black horse. And
when the whistle blew at quitting time that horse stopped
right in his tracks and there he stood till someone unhitched
him and headed him for the stables.


When they were building the dam it was nothing to meet
a string of horses a half mile long from Colebrook to
Azicoos.”

(to be continued)

Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.) pp.94-95

A LETTER FOUND, A WOMAN RECALLED

When I found the copy of the Abhis (the literary magazine
of Abington High School ) with the infamous Margaret Chase
Smith poem, a folded piece of thin stationary paper fell out. I
picked it up, unfolded it, and saw that it was a thank you
letter from one of my favorite high school teachers, Mrs.
Trask:

“June 26, 1966

Dear Will:
Thank you for your visit, this beautiful stationary, and
the card, all of which I deeply appreciate. Because I have
missed you “kids” since you graduated, I was especially
pleased, as well as surprised, to see you.

It pleases me that you seem to look forward to BrH2O. I
do hope you will enjoy it there, and find it a challenging
and pleasant experience

Affectionately,
Alice Trask.”


("BrH2O" was the popular nickname for Bridgewater State
College.)

I was a sophomore when I transferred into Abington High
School from Cathedral High School in Boston. Mrs. Trask
was my English teacher that year as well as being head of
the English Department.

For some reason, she never quite got my first name right.
There had been a Wesley Whiting in her class the year
before and for a time she kept calling me “Wesley“. That
eventually became “Will” and my classmates changed that
into “Willy”. (To this day if someone walks up and calls me
“Willy” I know it has to be one of the kids from my high
school days. I’ve never been called that by anyone else
since except by one of them. When the clerk at the Town
Hall called me “Willy” two weeks ago, we had a nice chat
about the good old days.)

Despite the name thing, Mrs. Trask was one of my favorite
teachers. One of the units she taught was on poetry and
someplace around here I still have the assignment I turned
in to her with my first attempts at writing poems. She made
some encouraging comments and some suggestions and for
awhile I considered majoring in English and becoming a writer.
I can recall several of us visiting her after we graduated but
I’d forgotten about the stationary, and I’m not sure if it was
given because she may have retired that year.


As an aside, I believe her husband was the JP who presided
over the marriage of my sister and brother in law!

I had several other women teachers who I recall with a smile
when I think of them: Sister St. Paulinus who was the first
person I can recall making the “Go West, young man!” joke.
Miss Murphy, the second grade teacher who was my only
teacher crush and who was the person who introduced me to
the flutaphone. Dr. Noel, my Ancient History Professor in
college.

And yes, there are some that even across the space of 50
or 60 years whose names can bring back a bad memory or
two.

But the thing these women all have in common is that they
were my teachers. The things they taught, the words of
encouragement they said, these things made an impression
on me and my classmates and helped shape us into the people
we are today. And those women like my sister who are
teachers today carry on that mission, sometimes in conditions
that are less than ideal.

What teachers left a lasting impression on you?

((written for the 44th Carnival of Genealogy))

TRIAD OF REGRETS

Recently some of the genealogy bloggers such as Randy and
ftM have been listing three regrets they might have from
their genealogy research. Here are mine and I think you’ll
notice that mine match most of the others:

1. I wish I’d started researching my family earlier. If I had,
I’d have perhaps had the foresight and chance to talk
with older relatives about their memories of the family.

2. I’d wish I’d been a bit more organized when I did start.
I’m still trying to get citations and sources right for the
information I already had while dealing with the large
amount of new information I’ve gotten recently.

3. I wish I’d thought to take more interest in American
History when I was in college. A better knowledge of
the events of the time would be a help in understanding
my ancestors’ lives.

Hmm. A genealogist’s triad of regrets?

Three regrets of a genealogist: lack of foresight,
lack of organization, and lack of knowledge.

MY MOTHER'S MOTHER'S MOTHER'S MOTHER TONGUE

We’re coming up on St. Patrick’s Day and in observance of
that our store booked a local Irish band, Rud Eile to perform
tonight. First of all let me say they’re excellent and you
should go buy their self-titled album. If you live near Boston
you can get a copy at Borders Books in Braintree. I expect to
be hearing a lot more about the group in the future.


But my trying to make announcements about the event over
the store PA system brought to light my woeful inadequacy
in Gaelic. First off, I took a stab at pronouncing it based on the
spelling and came up with saying it “Rude Isle”. Luckily one
of the band members came by earlier today and I was able to
ask what the correct pronunciation was, and it was “Rud(as in
“rudder”) Ella”. I thanked him, and in the course of the next
few hours managed to get it right most of the time, but as it
got later in the day and my tired brain began to turn to Swiss
cheese I started to mangle it several times into “Rud Aylla”
or “Rud Aylee”.


The band member who’d helped me earlier happened by
during one of those missteps and jokingly said he’d have to
keep walking by to make sure I got it right.


Now, here I am, a Boston Roman Catholic Irish American boy
…ok.. middle aged man…whose mother helped to get the
Abington St. Patrick’s Day parade going, and I can’t speak or
understand Gaelic, for pity’s sake! I’m a big fan of Celtic music
but unless the artists include the English translations of the
song lyrics in the liner notes, I don’t know what they are
singing about.


I have always maintained that English must be the “official”
language of America, one language that has made a polyglot
nation into a united one. But one should be proud of one’s
heritage as well, and it saddens me to think that within two
generations of leaving Ireland my family lost the ability to
speak Gaelic.(I know my mother couldn’t, and I never heard
my grandmother or her surviving brothers and sister
speak it either.)


Of course that’s assuming they knew how to speak it at all
given the efforts of the British to ban its use.


At any rate, not understanding what’s being sung will not
keep me from enjoying the music.

Check out “Rud Eile”!

KICKING MY BUCKETS AROUND

Some geneabloggers have been posting their three genealogical
"Bucket" destinations(named after the Jack Nicholson/Morgan
Freeman movie) so I thought I'd weigh in with mine:

1 Ireland-specifically Roscommon or where ever else my
McFarland family ancestors are from!

2 Edinburgh- where my ancestor John McFarland married Annie
Kelley

3 Scrooby, England-Home of my "Scrooby Do" Pilgrim ancestors.

BTW, I'm writing this on Google Documents as sort of a test run of the
site!

UPDATE:Very cool. I like being able to export the text directly to the
blog. The font size seems to be a bit different though.

49 GENEALOGICAL USES FOR A FLUTAPHONE #43

Unit of Measurement- Use your flutaphone to measure the
depth of the water in your basement caused by the Rain
Storms of `08. Confound future generations of family
historians by writing an entry in your daily journal:

"The neighborhood flooded and there was water 8
flutaphones deep downstairs.”

A WEST BY ANY OTHER NAME

I’ve been downloading census images from Ancestry.com the
past few weeks after signing up for a monthly subscription
which I can now afford and have run across some errors
transcribers had made indexing them. I’ve cited one already
that was probably a result of unfamiliarity with a style of
penmanship, but last night I found one that is IMHO the
result of a sloppy census enumerator.


I’d found every census record for my great great grandfather
Jonathan Phelps West except for the one from 1910. When
I searched Ancestry, I got a listing for a “Johnathan P. Yuet”
with a marker for a possible alternate of “Johnathan P.
West” and when I looked at the image, I could understand
why the transcriber would have problems.


The page is a mess. But I'll stick to that part which concerns
my family.


To begin with, it looks like the ink faded on the line with the
family name so that the “West” is barely visible. The first
member of the family listed is “West, Louisa” which the
beleaguered transcriber translated into “Yuet, Paulina” but
the whole entry is faded and if I didn’t know anything about
Jonathan P.’s family I might not have been able to read that
line correctly myself.


Next comes “_______ Johnathan P.” and things really get
messy. The enumerator realized that he’d put the wife first
as Head of Household and sought to rectify the situation by
using a two-headed arrow to connect from “Husband” next
to Jonathan to the “Head” next to Louisa’s name, and a
smaller “wife” written in the upper corner of the box.


The third name in the household is my granduncle Clarence
who is correctly identified as “grandson”.


So that is why my great great grandfather is indexed as
“Johnathan P. Yuert” on the 1910 Federal Census for Upton,
Oxford County, Maine.


I’ve developed some sympathy for transcribers.

SPRINGTIME FOR FLUTAPHONES

So by shameless reference to how several of my fellow
geneabloggers made use of flutaphones in the Genealogists'
Parade and by thinking of the approach of warmer weather,
I've some more Genealogical Uses of the Flutaphone
to add to the list:




34. Genealogists’ Parade Prop-Musical Accompaniment
-to the song “15 Miles on the Erie canal” on Apple’s float.

35. Genealogists’ Parade Prop-Musical Accompaniment
- to the song “Amazing Grace” on Becky’s kinnexions float.

36. Genealogists’ Parade Prop-Musical Accompaniment
-to the polka dancers on Jasia’s Polish American float.


37. Genealogists’ Parade Prop-Agricultural- A corn stalk
whacker on Randy’s Genea-Musings flat.


38. Moose Defense- As the snow melts and old cemeteries
in more remote northern regions become accessible, use
caution when approaching those sites that might be in areas
where brush and trees are thick. Give several loud notes on
your flutaphone to warn off any mooses (or its that meece?)
in the area of your approach and hopefully you will scare
them away. If on the other hand you see a large moose
approaching with an amorous glint in its eye, use a different
sequence of notes. Quickly. If that fails, run.


39. Goose Defense- Use the flutaphone to ward off flocks of
Canadian geese that might be attracted by your attempts at
warding off the moose.



40. Bear Defense- If as you retreat from the cemetery
back to the safety of your car you should encounter a black
bear, try using the pointed mouthpiece end of your flutaphone
to tickle the bear while saying “kitchy kitch koo.” Then run.
(Warning: Should this be successful, remember to thoroughly
wash the mouthpiece before playing the flutaphone again. You
don’t know what sort of germs may lurk in a bear’s armpit.)


41. Surrender Flag- If there are hunters in the vicinity who
mistake your flutaphone notes for the mating calls of Canadian
geese and they start shooting in your direction, quickly tie
some length of cloth to the end of your flutaphone and wave
the flag vigorously while screaming: “I am a human being!
I am NOT a goose!” (Warning: Do not do this if you are
already being chased by an amorous moose and a non-ticklish
bear. In that instance, the smart thing to do is to just keep
running.)


42. Genealogy Record Retrieval- When you are certain that
the moose, bear, geese and hunters are gone, return to the
cemetery and use the pointed end of the flutaphone to
hygienically pick up whatever is left of the paperwork you
might have dropped and upon which the moose, bear,
geese, and hunters might have left signs of their extreme
displeasure in the encounter.


Only 7 more to go to 49!!

THE 43rd CARNIVAL OF GENEALOGY IS OUT!

Hmm. Jasia has posted the 43rd Carnival of Genealogy within
the last hour or so and it’s a big one! 32 participants this time
and I can’t read it right now because I need to get to bed.

Bummer!

I’ll have to wait until I get home from work Tuesday night to
read all the entries but hopefully most of the rest of you will
have a chance to sample the posts from some great
geneabloggers before then.

LOOKING BACK 45 YEARS....OUCH!

Ah, what can I say in my defense?

I was young, only 15 years old.

It was 1964 and American culture was
still in need of some enlightenment.

And ok, I was dumb.


I do not think this way today about
presidential politics. Really.


But here, as it appeared in the June 1964
ABHIS, the literary magazine of Abington
High School, is my first published poem.


MRS. SMITH
— OR —
WHATEVER
HAPPENED
TO RICHARD N.?
O’ Margaret Chase Smith, I admire your
gall,

But as president, do you think you can
carry the ball?

Do you think that the Senate will pass all
your bills

As they fight and holler up on Capitol Hill?

I admit, as a senator, they say you’re swell,

But as a president, only time will tell.

And Mrs. Smith, before you go,

There are a few things I’d like to know.

At the Geneva Conference, what about
there?

Would you keep “Nikki” waiting while you
set your hair?

But there’s one big question that troubles
me a lot!

Mrs. Smith, for a running mate, just who
have you got?

William West ‘66

As bad as that is, it's downright liberal next to the other
piece entitled "To Arms!" which warned the men of Abington
High School of the threat of women taking over the world.

I don't think I'll print that on here.

LEAPING LENA! IS THAT YOU. GREAT GRANDMOTHER?

As I mentioned earlier, I have some German ancestry but it
lies on my Mom’s side of the family where brick walls abound.
Her father left when she was a child and her mother, my
grandmother Agnes(Aggie)White later divorced him. Edward
F. White’s parents were Edward J. White and Pauline
Offincher (or Offlincher/Offlinger/Offinger) and Pauline’s
parents were born in Germany according to the information
on the U.S. Census.

I was looking through those census images again today and
decided to try searching Ancestry. Pauline gave her own place
of birth as Cambridge, Ma. so I did a soundex search on some
variations of Offincher in Cambridge and came up with a hit for
a Charles Offingen and family on the 1880 census. He was a 32
year old cabinetmaker from Wurtemburg, Germany; his wife
Johanna was four years older at age 36 and kept house at their
home at 11 Vine Street in Cambridge.

Their children were:
Imelia(Amelia?) F age 12 born in Wurtemburg
Albert M age 10 born in Cambridge
Frederic M age 7 “ “ “
Lena F age 5 “
William M age 4 "
Julia F age2 "


So, since Albert was the first child born in Cambridge, that
would put the arrival of Charles and Johanna probably
around 1860.


I then searched the 1870 Census for Offingen and found
Charles under the name Offinger on it as a cabinetmaker
living in Cambridge, Ma. There is no mention of Johanna or
Imelia. Perhaps they were back in Germany waiting for
Charles to send for them? (The change from Offingen to
Offinger appears on close examination of the 1880 Census
image to be a result of a transcriber misreading the “r” at
the end of the name for an “n”)


Now, could their daughter Lena be my great grandmother
Pauline? The age is certainly correct. And two of Pauline’s
children were named Fredrick and Charles, perhaps after her
brother and father if she was indeed Lena. Nor can I find
any other entries for people or families living in Cambridge
named Offincer or Offinger.


So at the moment I’m cautiously optimistic that Lena Offinger
and Pauline Offincher are one and the same, but only further
research will tell me for sure.

BLOGGING BRUNCH16

Another Sunday morning with a cup of coffee, some toast,
and interesting genealogy blogs to browse. Usually I perform
this routine twice a week on my days off but I had things to
attend to on Thursday this week so I’m catching up today.


Jasia has an article on matrinames, the practice of including
your maternal ancestors last name as part of your own. Her
thoughts were a result of a passage from Bryan Sykes’
Seven Daughters of Eve which discusses the benefit of use
of matrinames would have for genealogical research.


Thomas MacEntee commented on this at Jasia’s blog and
then with some thoughts on family name schematics at his
own Destination: Austin Family. He includes explanations of
Spanish and Irish names and examples of how his own name
would be in two different formats of matrinaming.


(By the way, Word autocorrect changes matrinaming
to marinating. Strange are the ways of Microsoft!)


Using Thomas’ examples with my own name, I’d be William
White West or William West White. If I use the name of the
female ancestor furthest back in my direct line, I’d be William
Ames West after my 3x great grandmother Arvilla Ames,
wife of the Elusive John Cutter West.


Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings and Kimberly Powell at
Kimberly’s Genealogy Blog have posts telling how genealogist
Sharon Sergeant helped prove that a bestselling memoir by a
holocaust survivor was a hoax by a Belgian Catholic. Randy
includes a link to the story that appeared in the Boston Globe
and to Sharon’s own website, and I agree with him that
genealogy research shines brighter because of Sharon’s
efforts.


Finally, Chris Dunham over at The Genealogue has “Innocent
Until Proven German” which tells the story of an FBI visit to
a German immigrant’s farm in upstate New York during the
World War 1 years. Apparently this and other cases are part
of what are known as the “Old German Files” which can be
viewed at Footnote.com . Follow the link in Chris’ article to the
original news article by Sharon Tate Moody in the Tampa
Tribune.


I am going to check out that Footnote.com site. I have a
German great grandmother on my mother’s side of the
family!

AND IT'S A FULL TIME JOB!

It’s been a long day, so not much to report on except for this
which tickled my funnybone:

While I was looking over an Albany, Maine census from 1850
I noticed that the occupation for two citizens was listed as
“Old Age”.

Hey, it’s a dirty job. Somebody has to do it!

A GENEALOGY TRIAD

The topic for the next CoG(this will be the 43rd) is this:

Select one piece of hardware (besides your computer), one
piece of software (besides your internet browser), and one
web site/blog (besides your own) that are indispensable to
you.


Well, I ask you: is that fodder for a genealogy triad or what?


Three tools for tracing my family: good hardware, good
software, and a good website for research.

good hardware: My sister Cheryl and my brother in law
Peter gave me a HP OfficeJet 5610 All in One Printer/
Scanner/Copier/Fax Machine for Christmas two years ago
and it’s made everything so much easier.


I’ve never owned a scanner before this one and I’ve been
able to start preserving the old family photos(although I am
still woefully behind in that.) It also helped me in doing the
transcriptions of Aunt Dot’s handwritten memoirs. I scanned
the pages, then used what I’ve come to call the “Seaver
Method” (a post by Randy over at Genea-Musings showed
me how to do this) which is a split screen: the image on the
top of the screen and MS Word on the bottom. I read the
pages from the image and typed it into Word. I recently have
found a short memoir by my granduncle Clarence about
his experiences at Aziscohos Dam and plan to use the same
process to post them here.

good software: No contest in this one. It’s Personal Ancestry
File 5. My friend Diana was the person who told me there was
this genealogy software program that I could download for
free from the LDS. I did so and entered all the research Aunt
Dot had sent us years before and I’m still using it today as
my primary genealogy database. While I still don’t have all
the ins and outs of how to format some of the reports, for the
most part it’s easy to use and has the extra benefit of the
ability to click a name and run a search on the FamilySearch
Internet site for it. I’m building family trees on some of the
newer online genealogy sites now but the PAF is my old
reliable.

and a good website for research: Given my software answer
it’s an easy guess that my website would be the FamilySearch
site and it is! Again, it’s a free website with loads of information,
although not all of it is accurate so further research is wise. I
found my grandfather Floyd E.(arl) West listed five times on
the Pedigree Resource Files as Floyd J. West, for example. I
think of FamilySearch as providing me with hints and clues
that I need to verify. Even so I often recommend PAF and
FamilySearch to customers at the bookstore whenever our
conversation turns to genealogy. They are an easy and
inexpensive way for someone to try out tracing their family
history.

And that’s my genealogy triad!

DO NOT FEED THE CRANKY OLD GENEALOGIST

As Roseanee Roseannadanna used to say, “If it’s not one
thing it’s another.”


A week or so ago I received an email from a genealogical
research website telling me that the writer had enjoyed my
blog and felt it could be of value to other researchers, so
they’d added it to their links list. They asked that in return I
add the html code for a link to their website.


I’ll be honest. I forgot. I was involved with getting the
Genealogists' Parade together and with other writing.


The website sent me a reminder. I saved the email with the
intention of adding the site when I had time but again I forgot.
I was caught up in research and in writing and so haven’t
updated my blog template for several weeks.


Then tonight I opened a third email which once again pointed
out that linking our sites would be mutually beneficial and
again included the html code.


There was also a concluding paragraph in which the writer
sadly advised me that unless they heard back from me soon
they would need to remove my link from their genealogy
directory.


Ok, so I was inconsiderate I guess. But I’ve always followed
a policy here of only listing links to sites I enjoy or have found
useful to my research, nor do I expect those whose sites I
list here to list mine on their blogs simply I've linked to
theirs.

So I went to the website and looked around. Then I thought
about it, and I guess something about that last paragraph in
this latest letter got my Irish up.


So I emailed them back and asked to have my blog removed
from their list.


Hey, I’m old and occasionally cranky.

"THREE IS THE NUMBER THOU SHALT COUNT..."

Perhaps it was Terry Thornton’s recent geneablog poetry
challenge that caused it but the topic of the next CoG put me
in mind of an ancient Irish form of poem or proverb called the
triad. Triads were as the name suggests, a list of three things
that somehow were connected. Historians theorize they were
used by the Irish as teaching tools to pass on knowledge or to
serve as memory keys to specific lessons or discussions on
various topics.

For example:

“The rocks to which lawful behavior is tied: A monastery,
a chieftain, the family.”

There in one line are listed the three anchors of civilization

Here’s another. I can imagine some druid or monk working
with a student trying to learn how to deliver a speech and
then listing how he needs to improve:

“Three hateful things in speech-stiffness, obscurity, a bad
delivery.”

There were triads that instructed how to dress and behave:

“Three excellences of dress-elegance, comfort, lastingness.”

“Three Steadinesses of good womanhood-keeping a steady
tongue, a steady chastity and a steady housewifery.”

Triads had pieces of advice and wisdom for everyone,
including the nobility:

“Three things best for a chief-justice, peace and an army.”

“Three worst things for a chief-sloth, treachery, evil
counsel.”

Many of these triads have been translated into a poetic form.
Alfred Perceval Graves translated several of the ones I’ve
cited thusly:

“Three powers advantaging a Chieftain most
Are Peace and Justice and an armed host.
Three worse of snares upon a Chieftain’s way:
Sloth, treachery and evil counsel they!”


“Three excellencies of our dress are these:
Elegance, durability and ease.”

Triads were not exclusive to the Irish. They were common
among the other Celts of Britain and Wales and I first
discovered them because of my interest in the legends of
King Arthur, since many of the British triads deal with him
and his followers. The authenticity of some of those is in
question since they make mention of “Lancelot of the Lake”
(although in a Welsh version of the name) and Lancelot
was a later edition from the medieval romances.

But I can see how useful triads must have been for teaching.
They were short, pithy, and easy to recall. And they could
easily be adapted for modern life:

“Three things needed to start the day: clean clothes, clean
teeth and a hot shower.”

"Three things to be bought when I go to the grocery: ground
beef and onions and breath mints for after!”

And I have put the CoG topic into a triad, but you’ll have to
wait until I post my response to see it.

How about you, readers? Can you put something in your life into
a triad?

I found the triads I used in this article here at this website:
http://web.ncf.ca/bj333/HomePage.triads.html

Alfred Perceval Graves' verse translations can be found in
Robert Blaisdell's "Irish Verse:An Anthology" at
Google Book.

WHY WAS WESTLEY WHERE?

So you think that when you gain access to more records all
your family mysteries will be solved.

Hah!

Not only am I still hunting the Elusive John C., I’ve now found
a few more little mysteries to make me scratch my head.

We’ll get to the "Case of the Meandering McFarlands" in a
future post, but at the moment I want to talk about the case
of “Why Was Westley Where?"


Westley(Wesley) Coburn is my 3x great grandfather on
my father’s side of the family. Recently while on Ancestry
I found the 1850 Federal Census Record of “Wesley Coburn”
at the town of Mason, Oxford County, Me. It’s dated on 28th
Aug 1850 and the census taker was named either John
Wilson or Neilson. “Wesley” is listed as being 48 years old,
his occupation as “Miller” and the owner of 500 acres. His
family consisted of:

Lucy 41 F
Louisa 22 F
Melvin 19 M (occupation: Farmer)
Leander 17 M
Moses 15 M
Elizabeth 8 F

(Wesley B. Coburn Household, 1850 U.S. Census
Mason, Oxford, Maine;
Page: 238; Roll: M432_262; Image: 461.)


So I’d found Westley, his wife Lucy(Stow) Coburn and his
children, among whom is his daughter Elizabeth who is my
ancestor.


But wait. There’s more!


I also found this from the 1850 Census for the Town of
Albany, Oxford County, Me., recorded by a H(?) Hutchins Jr.
two days earlier on 26th Aug :

Westley Coburn 48 M Wheelwright 600 acres
Lucy 42 F
Louisa 21 F
Melvin 19 M Farmer
Leander 16 M Farmer
Moses 15 M
Elizabeth 8 F

(Westley Coburn Household, 1850 U.S. Census
Albany, Oxford, Maine;
Page: 28; Roll: M432_262; Image: 59.)

So here’s Westley/Wesley in two different places. It’s
obviously the same person because the families match up,
but he has two different occupations, and the acreage owned
differs as well.


What’s going on?


Albany and Mason, Me. were small towns that bordered each
other. Albany had a population of around 600 in 1870
according to Wikipedia and it seems that neither Albany nor
Mason ever really grew. In fact the towns are now
unincorporated and are part of the unorganized territory of
South Oxford, Maine along with two other former towns.
The total population of South Oxford was 515 citizens on the
2000 census.


My best guess is that Westley owned land that stretched
from one town into the other, with a mill in Mason and a
wheelwright shop in Albany. So both census takers counted
him and his family.



I’m not sure if this was legal or not. Perhaps one of the more
experienced geneabloggers reading this might shed some
light on it?

Source:Ancestry.com. 1850 United States Federal Census
[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations
Network, Inc., 2005.

Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census.
Seventh Census of the United States, 1850. Washington, D.C.:
National Archives and Records Administration, 1850.
M432, 1,009 rolls.

BLOGGING BRUNCH15

As is my habit on days off, I’ve been surfing the genealogy
blogs and Google news for something to read while drinking
my morning coffee.


Among the blogs today is Terry Thornton’s post about grits
and hommeny over at his Hill Country of Monroe County,
Mississippi. I’ll have to write sometime about the rather
unique use of corn meal the cooks at a former place of
employment had for it.


Jasia writes about getting the results of her DNA test back
but leaves us with a cliffhanger over what exactly those
results are!


Here’s an interesting story that ties genealogy and a
special license plate together.


And finally my brother Phil has confirmed that indeed that
Dad’s story of Blackfeet has been passed on to the next
generation!