52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 7: Letters & Diaries

It's time for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  It's Week 7, and this week's prompt is to blog about any letters and diaries in the family, or the lack thereof.

My ancestors haven't been journalers or diarists of much note.  One exception is my maternal great-great granduncle Major Wellman Packard of Illinois.  He went along on an expedition to the gold rush in California in 1849, and wrote about it.  He was there as an observer rather than a participant.  His observations are interesting and insightful.  Describing the "fever" generated by the news of the discovery, which took some time to reach the Midwest, Wellman Packard hit upon a key characteristic of the spread of news by word-of-mouth, received orally or in print in excitable newspaper accounts:  "Now it is the nature of such news that the further it travels the bigger it gets, and the more wonderful.  So that it is not strange that when the news reached us in the then border states, the size of the sand-like particles really found in that far-off, insignificant mill-race, had increased to very respectable nuggets."  (1)  In that fever, unfortunately, too many threw caution to the winds and set out eagerly but unprepared.  ". . . very many started without the necessary preparation, and suffered the penalty of their want of foresight in much suffering and unnecessary hardship and privation." (2)

The largest collection of letters I have came from my granduncle Perry Reed and his wife Mary LeSourd.  The letters span from 1906 to 1920, delineating their courtship, marriage, and family.  Perry and Mary Reed adopted my mother, daughter of Perry's brother Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed, in 1920.  Frank Reed had been killed in a railroad accident 20 October 1917, when my mother was not quite a year old. 

My paternal grandparents both died many years before I was born, and my maternal grandmother died when I was only four years old.  Perry Reed also died years before I was born.  Mary LeSourd Reed was the only grandparent of any sort I ever knew. 

 Mary was 18 when she and Perry got married 31 October 1907.  She apparently dropped out of high school to become Perry's wife, for in his letter to her dated 10 June 1907, he says:  "Dearest, I don't want you to go to school next year.  I know how you hate it and I tell you I wouldn't have gone a minute if I had hated it as much as you do.  I know how your sister feels about it -- but she can produce no argument on my account.  You told me her main argument was that I would want you to have the full benefit of a H. S. education.  But, dearest, it makes no difference to me.  If I ever expected to enter professional life, it might be a necessity but I never expect to do that.  I do not know whether we can convince your sister and bring her around to our way of thinking or not. . . ."

Apparently, Mary decided to drop out and marry Perry, for two paragraphs later in this letter, he writes:  "That idea of having to wait two years worried me greatly -- and I have told you so; and I don't believe I have ever heard any better news than when you told me it would not be necessary to wait that long.  You say the matter rested with me.  Why not make it shorter yet -- say six or seven months? . . . "  It turned out to be just four more months of waiting, as they were married 31 October of that year.  (3) 

These letters maintain throughout the years the florid and highly romanticized expressions of love, affection, and yearning typical of the Victorian era.  Their effusive statements of affection grow to include their children, Robert and Elizabeth, and later, Martha after her adoption. 

(1)  Major Wellman Packard, Early Emigration to California, 1849-1850.  (Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, Limited Edition Reprint, 1971.), page 1.  [Copy of No. 229 of a limited run of 500, sent to me by a cousin.]

 (2).  Ibid.

 (3) Letter from Perry Reed to Mary LeSourd, 10 June 1907.  Papers of M. K. and K. L. Rhodes. ["next year" in the underlined sentence probably referred to the next school year, which would have begin in late August or early September.]

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 6: Surprise!

It is Week 6 of Amy Johnson Crow's wonderful blogging prompt series, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and this week's prompt is to discuss something that has been a genealogical surprise in some way.

I'm on WikiTree, and having some confusion about a lot of it, but I hope help will set me on the right path.  Or paths.  Anyway, WikiTree handed me a little bit of a surprise with a suggestion.

My dear friend Amanda has east Tennessee roots.  Her father's people are from around Carter County, at the very eastern tip of Tennessee.  So is my mother's mother's family.  Amanda is something like the third cousin once or twice removed from A. P. Carter, the famous catcher of traditional songs of the area, and singer with the Carter Family, which included his sister-in-law Maybelle [Addington] Carter.  She was married to A. P.'s brother Ezra Carter.

WikiTree tells me that, through my mother's family, and a few others, I am distantly related to Maybelle Carter.  I have gotten close to making the connections, though some as yet are a tad tenuous.  I'm looking for more documents.  But I would just be over the moon if I turn out to be related to my friend Amanda.

And what is really odd, to me, is that one of those connected families, the Vanderpools, came to Tennessee from the rather patrician niche of old New Amsterdam, remaining one of the upper-crust families of New York.  So how did one branch of that family get to be east Tennessee hillbillies?  That's what Amanda calls herself, and she's proud of it.  Anyway, in another surprise that I haven't checked out yet, I have found some evidence that the Vanderpools were related, in New Amsterdam/New York, to the Delanos, and we know who they were related to.

If it does turn out that I am related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I will be beyond over the moon.  He is one of the presidents I admire most, and Eleanor Roosevelt is one of my role models!

One surprise I found last year on my way to looking at other documents, newspaper articles, and other items in my husband's family is that he is related to one of the finest Governors Florida ever had, Lawton Chiles, who, for his way of getting out and meeting the people of Florida, was known as "Walkin' Lawton."  Newspaper articles about his uncle's wedding in the 1920s got me on to birth certificates, marriage records, censuses, and World War I and World War II draft registrations to prove that relationship  That was a terrific surprise.

What's next?

Now I am REALLY mad! Public Documents Disappearing

I do not usually put politics in my blogs because it really isn't a good thing to offend potential readers, but tonight I MUST make an exception.  What is going on in our government right now offends me deeply.  Public documents are disappearing.  This should offend anyone researching their family history, anyone who has a federal pension, Social Security, or Medicare.  It should offend our veterans who require medical care for wounds and injuries they sustained doing their duty. 

I found a post on BlueSky about the questionnaires for all the censuses, right up to the 2020 census, being available online.  Oh, goodie, this is great, thought my naive mind.  So I started downloading or copying and pasting the lovely fount of information available there.

How wonderful this is, I thought.  I did not save copies of the past years' censuses, so here was my chance to reconstruct them with these questionnaire forms from 1960 to 2020.

And one-by-one, they started disappearing right before my eyes.  At first, I got a message saying that something had gone wrong and they were working to fix it.  Yeah, right.  Then it was a straight-out 404 error.

Already having trashed the online files of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), now Elon Musk's storm troopers are at the Census Bureau, trashing those files, too.  Pretty soon, accessing past census information for family history research will be NO MORE.  

These are PUBLIC documents.  They belong to US, We the People.  They do not belong to the current (mal)administration, that arrogant power-mad South African, or anyone else in the government.  They belong to US.

The OMB trashing really worries me, because my husband is retired federal civil service.  This looks, to me, like the first move in taking away our pensions.  With a daughter suffering from cancer, and the medical bills associated with all that, we can ill afford to lose any of our income.

And neither can millions of other Americans, squeaking by paycheck-to-paycheck, many working two or even three jobs just to make ends get at least within a foot or two of each other.

And those rich, arrogant, power-mad, greedy pieces of trash in the nation's capital cackle with the obscene exercise of their power.  

There is a quotation from a computer game, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, that I think applies here:

"Beware of him who would control your access to information, for, in his heart, he sees himself your master."

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Five Fun or Different Facts

This week, Randy Seaver, on his blog Genea-musings, has given us this task:

1)  We all find "fun" or "different" information about ourselves, our relatives and ancestors in our genealogy and family history pursuits.  What are five "fun" or "different" facts in your life or your ancestors lives?

2) Tell us about your five fun or different facts in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  

1)  My aunt, Elizabeth Reed (1909-1967), was a public health nurse and Director of Health Information for the State of Florida from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.  In this capacity, she traveled the state giving instruction and lectures concerning various public health topics.  She leavened these talks with her monologues, amusing and absorbing vignettes satirizing or dramatizing a variety of sorts of people.  There was one in which she portrayed a hospital volunteer chatting with a patient, giving an earful about the food, the doctors, and the administration.  At the beginning of her talk, she would obtain a volunteer (or sometimes, a conscript) to play the part of the patient, tell them, "Now, you just sit there and look intelligent," and turn to talk to another individual on the dais, leaving the "patient" somewhat embarrassed and the audience laughing.  Then she would begin the monologue.  In another, she played the part of an old grandmother consoling her tearful teenage granddaughter, weeping over a boy.  She was a fine actress.

2)  My maternal grandpa was a great punster, and the rest of the family had to keep up.  My father's family had a good sense of humor, too, but my father was baffled by the punmanship and humor of his prospective in-laws.  He, trying to make a good first impression, asked my grandma what he should call her:  Mother Reed, Mrs. Reed, Mary?  She wasn't particular, and the question mildly vexed her.  "Call me anything!" she blurted out.  "Call me 'Charlie.'"  This morphed into "Chollie," and that is how we always knew her.

 

3)  My husband went through Coast Guard Officer Candidate School, gaining his commission in January of 1971.  The uniform he and his classmates wore while in this training was a bit odd.   He and some other officer candidates were on liberty, and went to a movie.  Sitting next to my husband was a young Navy enlisted man.  He kept giving my husband and odd look.  As the house lights came on after the movie ended, the young sailor looked again at my husband, and in his bafflement about this odd uniform, he asked my husband, "Sir, what are you?"

4)  My father was a great storyteller.  One of his stories involved a Navy carrier task force at sea.  One of the destroyers saw another ship go off course and come across its path.  The bridge crew summoned the captain, who had retired to his quarters for the night.  The captain came onto the bridge in his pjs and robe.  Immediately assessing the situation, he instructed, "Everybody remain calm!  Don't panic!  Be calm, like me."  Then he gave his orders:  "Two toots on the rudder; right full whistle." 

5)  One Christmas during the economic downturn of the 1970s, we were broke.  We'd been able to get our two children a few small gifts.  We could not afford a Christmas tree, and resolved to do without.  Christmas Eve came, and my husband could not stand it.  We had to have something.  We had a raintree sapling in our yard.  The very large raintree in the back yard had spawned it, along with myriad seedlings that we just kept under control by mowing.  My husband brought the sapling indoors in a pot, and set it in front of the windows in the living room.  Then he went out and cut a dozen or so ligustrum branches.  He brought those, and with tape and twine, secured them to the trunk of the raintree sapling. Laughing ourselves silly, we decorated the scrawny "Christmas tree."  It made our uncomfortable economic situation bearable that year.