A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - O is for Optician

 I wore glasses from the age of four to the age of sixteen, as my eyesight went from far-sightedness to "normal."  I resumed wearing them a few years later, as my eyesight began to trend toward near-sightedness.  My eye doctor was local, in Jacksonville, Florida, where I grew up, but the professional who made my eyeglasses was in Cleveland, Ohio.

He was my granduncle, Lawrence Leslie Reed (1896-1971), my mother's uncle.  He was an optician.  He was born into the large family of Francis Harvey Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee on 2 May 1896 in Logansport, Indiana.  No matter the degree, we all just called him Uncle Lawrence.  I never met him, but for years, I wore glasses he made for me.  My aunt Elizabeth Reed would order glasses for me every time I was given a new prescription by my eye doctor.  And when the new pair arrived, I would go around the corner to the next street, where Aunt Elizabeth, whom we all called "Sissy," as she was my mother's adoptive sister, lived with her mother, my grandma Mary Reed, and pick up my new glasses.  My grandma's nickname was "Chollie."  Yes, there's a story there.

I never had a choice of frames, and for some reason -- I guess because I was a young girl -- Uncle Lawrence favored sending me glasses with pink frames.  I never could stand pink.  I was a tomboy, a climber of trees, player of baseball, and rider of my bicycle all over the south side of Jacksonville.  My favorite color has always been blue.  But sometimes, when in my adult years I did pick my own frames, after Uncle Lawrence passed on, I would pick pink.  Maybe it was in tribute to the far-away granduncle who made my glasses and selected my frames so long ago.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 16 - Step

Step lively, there!

Oh, sometimes lively is not what I am feeling, but I do perk right up when I'm working on genealogy.  It might be mine, it might be my husband's, it might be that of our son-in-law, who has added the lively step of Germany and the Netherlands to our genealogical mix, which has been rather boringly British with just a dash of Swiss.

I say, the more the merrier!

One Step I took a few years ago was to sign up with the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project, in which they took my DNA back much farther than anyone else has done -- about 700,000 years!  They determined that I am 2.1% Neanderthal and 1.1% Denisovan, the latter being another offshoot strain found in the Denisova Caves in Siberia.  A waggish friend said that this revelation means I am "3.2% extinct."  Sometimes I feel like it.

Genealogy will broaden our perspective, as long as we do it correctly, and don't try to either do it lazy by just collecting names whether they belong to us or not, or by using genealogy to press an agenda.  That's been done in the past, from Spanish subjects in the 1400s to 1600s trying to hide disapproved ethnicities from the authorities and the Inquisition, or by some citizens of St. Augustine, Florida, during the 400th anniversary celebration in 1964 to "clean up" their backgrounds.  Other citizens, marginalized by the first lot, knew what these folks were up to, and knew how bogus these scrubbed genealogies were because they were descended from the same people, and could snicker behind politely-held fans.

I've signed up late, because I just found out that Amy Johnson Crow, originator of this series of blogging prompts, is still at it after, what, 10 years?  Nice!  

So Step into my parlor (said the spider to the fly), and let me see if I can entertain you with posts concerning whoever I can dredge up that I have not already blogged to Infinity and Beyond.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - M is for Military

 From the very first English emigrations to the New World, my family has had individuals in it who did military service of one form or another.

As with most men in early colonial times, Samuel Packard, my eighth great-grandfather, served in the militia of his town of residence.  He came to the New World first at Hingham, Massachusetts, shown in some records as New Hingham, named for a town in England.  From there, he moved to Weymouth, and eventually settled in Bridgewater, the part that is now known as Brockton.  A town in New England at that time was centered around the church; and it was the church.  Church membership was required for a man to be considered a "freeman," to be able to vote and hold office.  Now and then, there would be a squabble in a church over something-or-other, and a group would break off and set up another church in another part of town, creating thereby a new town.  Bridgewater eventually split into East Bridgewater, West Bridgewater, and North Bridgewater.  It was in the latter town that Samuel Packard lived, and which later became Brockton.

Samuel's fourth-great-grandson Richards Packard served in the American Revolution.  His name was Richards; he signed several documents, including at least one in his Revolutionary War Pension file, as Richards.  He was probably so named after his mother's maiden name; her name was Mercy Richards.  I have written a booklet on Richards, his ancestors, and his descendants.  In it, I describe his military service:

"Richards Packard’s original enlistment was at Western, Massachusetts, for a term of six months. Western is in Middlesex County, north and west of Bridgewater. Richards mustered in at Springfield, Hampshire County (that part which is now Hampden County), in Captain Wade’s company, Colonel Jackson’s regiment. The company went to West Point, New York; Richards was at Kings Ferry and, as Richards says in his sworn statement, at Haverstraw “when Andre was hung,” referring to the execution of Major John Andre, the British spy who was hanged 2 October 1780 at Tappan, New York. Richards Packard was discharged in the fall of 1780. 

"He enlisted again in February, 1782, at Leverett, Massachusetts and again was at West Point, this time under Captain Smith in Colonel Rufus Putnam’s regiment. During this time, he suffered from smallpox, but apparently recovered. The troops went to Verplank’s Point in the spring of 1783, and were there until fall, when they retired to winter quarters at Newburgh, New York. He was discharged in February of 1783."

I have two direct ancestors who served the Union in the Civil War.  My paternal great-great grandfather, Mathew Hale Packard (not a typo; there was only one "t" in Mathew's name) served in two different regiments of New York Cavalry, the 15th New York Cavalry, and the 2nd Regiment, New York Provisional Cavalry.  My maternal great-great grandfather, Charles Reed, served in the 140th Indiana Infantry.  Both survived, but were disabled by disease.  

My father, Arden Packard, enlisted in the Navy and was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1930, having passed a competitive exam offered to enlisted personnel.  He graduated from the academy in 1934.  He took flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in 1937, and that is where he met my mother and they got married in July of 1937.  He received exemplary fitness reports, placing him in the top 5% of Naval aviators -- "Top Gun" territory.  But he was grounded due to medical problems, and became a flight instructor.  In that capacity, he was sent by the Navy Department to the Empire Central Flying School, outside of London, England, to learn the tactics the British were using against the Germans.  He brought that knowledge home and taught these tactics to his students, who would be shipping out with the Atlantic Fleet to English waters to fight the Germans.

Inspired by our father's service, my brother enlisted in the U.S. Marines after high school, and I enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve when I saw how much my husband was enjoying his Coast Guard service.  Our family very much has a military tradition.

 

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - L is for Lawyer

My great-great granduncle Major Wellman Packard (1820-1903) was not a military officer.  Major was his given name, not a rank. He has been known down the generations in the family as Wellman Packard.  He was a lawyer in Illinois, and was friends with another Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.  In the collections of the Library of Congress is a letter that Wellman wrote to his friend Abe on 22 February 1860.  Lincoln had previously written to Wellman asking him to take care of a matter that Lincoln had somehow overlooked:  he was supposed to have paid the Bloomington, Illinois, property taxes of one William Florville, a Haitian immigrant.  In his letter to Lincoln, Wellman reports that he has done as Lincoln asked and paid the taxes.  Wellman had collected ten dollars from another man who owed it to Lincoln, and used it to pay Florville's taxes of $10.10.  On the balance of ten cents, Wellman dismissed any debt on Lincoln's part, saying, "Bal 10 cts which will be just enough to drink my health with, which please do if it suits you -- but in any event you need not "remit" at the present high rates of exchange!  

Wellman goes on to ask Lincoln about a certain case.  Then a bit of the politics of the day comes in to Wellman's next remark: "My brother-in-law N. S. Sunderland has just returned from Ohio, and he assures me the tide of politics is settling decidedly in favor of 'Old Abe' for President."(1)

 Twenty-five years after Welllman died in 1903, a small book that he had written was printed in a very small edition of only 30.  It was reprinted in 1971, also in a limited edition, but larger, of 500 copies.  I was provided a copy by a cousin.  In this small book, Wellman wrote of a trip he took to California with a party of "forty-niners," people lured by the discovery at Sutter's Mill of gold.  Wellman went on the trip to observe, not to go panning for gold.  One of his observations: "It was indeed providential that the news came to us late in the autumn months of 1848, and the journey overland could not be attempted until the following spring.  Even then very many started without the necessary preparation, and suffered the penalty of their want of foresight in much suffering and unnecessary hardship and privation."

One of the more thrilling events was the day the wagon train in which he was traveling found a tremendous herd of bison bearing down directly on it.  The herd was as has been described of herds that once roamed the plains in the thousands, and it took several brave men on horseback, with their lungs and with firearms fired into the air to turn the herd and save the wagon train.(2)

Major Wellman Packard, a man of law and letters, returned to Bloomington and died there 28 February 1903.

(1) Abraham Lincoln Papers, Series 1.  General Correspondence.  1933-1916: Major W. Packard to Abraham Lincoln, Wednesday, February 22, 1860 (Florville's Taxes), https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.0241700/?st=pdf (accessed 17 April 2024).

(2) Packard, Major Wellman. Early Emigration to California, 1849-1850.  (Reprint: Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 1971).