A to Z Blogging Challenge - Whatever! D is for "Do-Day"

 My aunt . . . 

Well, let's go back a bit.  I always knew Elizabeth Reed (1909-1967) as my aunt, my mother's sister.  However, my mother was an intra-family adoption.  So the parents she grew up with were, genealogically speaking, her uncle and aunt, and Elizabeth Reed was actually my first cousin once removed.  

I have, however, always remembered her as my aunt, as that is the function she fulfilled, and fulfilled well and truly, for me.

She was the Director of Health Information for the state of Florida from the late 1940s to the middle of the 1960s.  As she worked in such an important position, she had only Saturdays to get all her errands done.  She would often invite me to tag along.  I think part of it was to give my mom a break from corralling me from some mischief or other, and part to keep me in line.  But my aunt "Sissy" and I also had big fun on those Saturdays, which became known as "Do Day."

We would tell jokes, sing songs, and just generally be silly.  She taught me a song from her younger days as a nurse, working with midwives in rural areas of the Florida Panhandle.  We recited poetry.  And we talked.

Usually, first on the Saturday stops for errands was the American National Bank, in the San Marco shopping center on the south side of Jacksonville, located where the western terminus of Atlantic Boulevard merges into San Marco Boulevard.  Crossing from one side of the shopping area to the other could be an interesting activity.  In the bank, one of the employees, a black woman everyone knew as "Cee," would tend a cart with a supply of cold lemonade and small cups. She would dole out lemonade to the customers, and it was most welcome during Florida's hot summer.

Next on the list might be The Silk Shop, a fabric store run by the family of an elementary-school classmate of mine.  When you walked into the shop, you were hit right in the face by the smell of the sizing in the fabrics.  It could also sting your eyes a bit.  It took a few minutes to get to the point where you could breathe and open your eyes.  "Sissy" would buy fabric and patterns for dresses and other garments that she would have made by her dressmaker.  From time to time, she also bought fabric for items to be made for me.  I sometimes got to pick out the patterns.

Another "Do Day" stop might be the Southside Branch Library, part of the Jacksonville Public Library System that I would later end up working for.  "Sissy" had seen to it that I had a library card, and I would check out books. 

For back-to-school clothing for me, around the end of August or the beginning of September, we'd go downtown to Cohen Brothers or Furchgott's, Sears or J.C. Penney.  Or in November, we might visit one of those stores if I had grown into a need for a new winter coat.  And we might grab lunch at Morrison's Cafeteria, a Jacksonville institution for decades.

Things are different now, and we do a lot -- probably the majority -- of our shopping online.  It's convenient, it's efficient, it saves gasoline.  But it deprives us of the feeling of community as we used to shop at venues owned by people we knew.   It deprives us of the human interaction that we all need.  Sure, online shopping has its uses, but we might all benefit from getting out into the world on our own "Do Day."

 A to Z blogging challenge. 

A to Z Blogging Challenge -- Whatever! C is for Celebrations

I don't remember much about celebrations when I was a very young child.  Those memories start after my father died in 1954, when I was 7, and my mother brought me and my brother and sister to Florida from California.  

Even small celebrations were significant.  Sunday dinner was a ritual observed to celebrate family and friends and the liberty of weekends to do what we pleased and liked.  These dinners occurred at 1 pm or so on Sunday afternoon.  The dinner might be at my grandma and aunt's house, or at our house.  They were formal occasions only in that our nicest china and silverware were used.  We dressed casually, though my aunt and I were probably the most "dolled-up," as we had been at church that morning.  The dining room table groaned with the bounty of the feast -- turkey, ham, or chicken, or sometimes lamb, and lots of side dishes.  Or Mom might make a favorite dish of mine, which she called "Rice'n'Curry."  This dish would especially be served after Thanksgiving Day, using leftover turkey.  The meat was heated in a curry-infused gravy that I loved, and served over rice.  Condiments were piled on top.  It was a dish that grew on your plate.  It was fun to decorate the dish with the condiments, and colorful, too, with tomatoes, boiled egg whites and yolks, bell peppers, bacon, and more.  We often had guests at these feasts, whether local friends or visiting out-of-towners.

Easter was likewise a significant celebration.  My aunt was also my godmother, and she took those duties seriously, shepherding my Christian education in the Episcopal Church.  After the Easter church service, we'd go to either our home or the home of my grandma and aunt, and the Easter Egg Hunt would be on.  Then, of course, we feasted.  The next week at school, I would find in my lunch my favorite sandwich: egg salad, which my Mom had made from my Easter Egg Hunt finds.

Christmas was, of course, the biggest celebration of the year.  My brother and sister and I would get up, eager to get started.  But we had to wait for Mom to call us out to the living room, giving her time to put last-minute touches on the tree and last-minute gifts or special ones that defied wrapping.  Then we would come out and get into our stockings first, then into the presents under the tree.  One of us would serve as "Santa Claus," handing out the presents one at a time.  We waited while the one who had a present unwrapped it and showed off what it was.  And then -- you might think we were a bunch of lascivious gluttons -- we feasted.

 After I got married, while my husband and I lived in Jacksonville, Christmas got extended, as we would, at home, open our own presents in the morning, an event that became more fun as our daughters arrived and grew.  Then we'd go to my mother's house or my husband's parents' house in the evening, to exchange and open gifts there.  Sometime during the day or evening -- you guessed it:  we feasted.  We might have a dinner at home, or go out to one of the better restaurants.

These days, my husband and I gather with family and friends on Christmas Day either at our younger daughter's house or the home of our older daughter, her husband, and their son.  

And, yes, after opening presents, we feast.

 A to Z blogging challenge.

 

A to Z Blogging Challenge: Whatever! B is for Bloomington

My family, paternal and maternal, keeps coming up with ties to Bloomington, Illinois.  

My sister and her husband used to live in Champaign, which is just a few miles southeast of Bloomington. 

My paternal grandfather Walter Hetherington Packard was born in Normal, which is just a hop, skip, and a jump north of Bloomington, and appears to have been swallowed up by the Bloomington municipality, looking at it on Google Earth.

My  great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard and several of his siblings settled in Bloomington both before and after the Civil War.  Mathew Hale Packard died there. They had all come down from Canada.  Some went first to Massachusetts, others to New York, before all settled in the Illinois city.  Some of these Packard family members were in Bloomington by 1855; others did not arrive until ten years or so later, after the Civil War.

Mathew's brothers whom he joined in Bloomington were Charles R., Major Wellman, William B., Thadeus Bullock, and Francis A. (“Frank”).  Two of his sisters were also in Bloomington: Mary Frances, married to Joseph Munroe, and Emeline, married to Joseph Munroe's brother George.

My mother's side also has ties to Bloomington, in the person of Nathaniel Strong Sunderland, widely known as N. S. Sunderland.  He provides a bridge between my maternal and paternal lines, being related to both.  He is mentioned by his brother-in-law, Major Wellman Packard, in a letter Wellman wrote to a fellow Illinois lawyer, Abraham Lincoln.  N. S. was the uncle of Sarah Ann Sunderland, my maternal great-great grandmother.

N. S. Sunderland had a farm somewhere between Towanda and Bloomington.  Towanda lies just a few miles northeast of Bloomington.  His farm was prosperous.  His livestock was valued at $1,200, which in 2023 dollars, would be $21,837.89.  His farm, exclusive of livestock or crops, was valued at $11,000, or $200,180.65 in 2023 dollars.

Not all of these branches on the Packard and Reed family trees remained in Bloomington.  N. S. Sunderland later moved to Larned, Kansas, where he served several terms as a popular mayor.  Oscar Merry Packard, son of Mathew Hale Packard, moved to southern California, where he prospered in his occupation as a real estate agent.

 They all left their mark on Bloomington.  Major Wellman Packard even had a street named for him.  Bloomington also left its mark on the family, with both branches experiencing many events there.

Thanks, Bloomington.

 A to Z blogging challenge.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 13: Home Sweet Home

Time for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  This week's theme: Home Sweet Home.

My parents' "home, sweet home" was rented as long as my father, Arden Packard (1911-1954) was alive.  When I got serious about genealogy, more than 30 years ago, I read about how wonderful land and property records can be.  I tried to apply that evaluation to my parents, and came up baffled.  I couldn't  find one property record in their names.  I remember Mom talking about a particular house in Jacksonville, Florida, where I grew up, that she and Dad had rented during World War II.  Rented.  Oh, boy.

 The 1940 census does have them living in a rented house in Coronado, California.  I do remember that one of the houses we occupied in Pensacola in the early 1950s -- about 1951 -- was rented; then we moved into another rented house.  My father did not stay in one place very long, even within the same county.  That could explain why he and Mom never owned a house.  The first purchased house my mother lived in after marrying Dad was the house she bought after he died in 1954, when she took me and my brother and sister -- and my brother's bird -- back to Florida.  

To find where my mother and father were in any particular year before my own recollections begin, I depended on censuses and city directories.  City directories can be marvels, and for me, they helped to solve a mystery.  For years, I had heard my mom and dad and my grandma talk about a certain gentlemen that I never met.  At least, I don't remember ever having met him.  In one city directory for Jacksonville, from about 1953, there is a full page ad for an insurance company my father worked for.  And there, in the list of agents of the company, was this man's name.  

My husband and I rented in the first years of our marriage.  He was in the Coast Guard on active duty, stationed in St. Petersburg, Florida, and we actually tried to buy a house, but the mortgage company made a blatant error.  We told them they were wrong, but they were unable, unwilling, or both, to correct the error.  I hold grudges like my mother did, and that mortgage company and the owner thereof landed on my permanent excrement list.  So we ended up renting.  We ended up living next door to the unfortunate real estate agent we had worked with in trying to buy a house in St. Petersburg.  Mind you, she was as baffled and disgusted at that mortgage company as we were, and had done a terrific but, alas, fruitless job of trying to get the company to admit their error.  She was a wonderful neighbor and friend, and gave us free run of her citrus trees, which were bearing enough fruit to have fed our entire block.  When we returned to Jacksonville, where my husband was born and raised, we rented until we could find a house to buy.

Well, home sweet home is just that, whether owned or rented.  Each location generates memories and stories.

 

A to Z blogging challenge: A is for Absent

Today is the first day of the A to Z blogging challenge.  This fun challenge invites people across the blogosphere, whatever their subject matter, to blog every day for 26 days (or fewer, if you just can't come up with something for the letter X).  

I have a lot of people absent from my life:  my father, my mother, my brother, the aunt who helped raise me, my grandparents (none of whom I knew), the grand-aunt who served as my grandmother by her and her husband's adoption of my mother within the family, my best friend in high school, my in-laws, favorite uncles and aunts, cousins, and more.  Our younger daughter, who is 53 years old, has cancer.  She is in remission for now, but it's probably inevitable that she will predecease me and my husband.  So many losses . . . so many memories.

In the Simon & Garfunkel song "Old Friends," songwriter Paul Simon reminds us:  ". . . Preserve your memories; they're all that's left you."

Photographs are a fine way to preserve our memories.   Like this one of me and our younger daughter giving our dog Diamond a bath back in the 1980s.  Unfortunately, our daughter's head is behind the dog!  Not only does this spark a great memory of our younger daughter and our wonderful dog, but also of the house where we lived at the time, a house we loved, and lost in the economic disaster that befell us in the 1980s.  Another loss . . .

In doing genealogy, we document and lend permanence to memories.  My father died when I had just turned seven years old, and it is through genealogy that I have come to know him better.  Researching his Navy career, and his activities after he got out of the Navy after World War II, has given me a great deal of knowledge about his life.  

Family stories give us access to memories, too -- the memories of other people that are given to us in stories.  In our retelling of them, we claim them as memories.  They're not direct memories of our own experience, but we remember our family by these stories.  They connect us to our ancestors.

Preserve your memories; they're all that's left you.