Mr. I Want It Now

In the class I'm taking at the University of North Florida called Interpreting Hispanic Literature, we read an essay by the critical/satirical Spanish essayist Mariano José de Larra (1809-1837), titled "Vuelva Usted Mañana" (Come Back Tomorrow), which was written in 1835.  The point of the essay is to skewer what Larra saw as Spanish indolence and bureaucratic obstructionism.  In this narrative-dramatic essay, Larra's alter ego, whom he refers to as Figaro, has a guest, a Frenchman whom he calls in French Monsieur Sans-délai (Mister Without Delay) or in Spanish Señor Lo-quiero-en-seguida (Mister I Want It Now).  The Frenchman has come to Spain to file some sort of claim having to do with his familial affiliations before the courts.  In one early paragraph. the action proceeds, in my translation, in a way that sounds eerily familiar nearly two hundred years later:

 ". . . Tomorrow morning, we'll go looking for a genealogist to handle my family matters, that afternoon, he will consult his books, search for my ancestors, and by tomorrow night I will know who I am."  Never mind Larra's opinion of Spanish indolence, there's no way any genealogist worth paying was going to find the Frenchman's family that quickly in 1835, unless he was the King's first cousin!  My young classmates wondered why I was chuckling as we went over the essay.  "Soy genealogista," I told them.  I am a genealogist.

It seems like some things never change.  Some people new to genealogical investigation become Mr. (or Mrs. or Miss or Ms., take your pick of the feminine appelations) I Want It Now.  They come into it with the idea that it won't take very long at all and they -- or someone they engage to do the investigating -- will have all the answers, and very quickly.  Alll they have to do is consult their books, right?

Bzzzt!  Wrong answer, but thank you for playing.   Those of us who have been in it any length of time have been disabused of that notion.  I certainly was, when I discovered that -- horrors! -- there are errors in books about genealogical lineages.  And when I ran into my first brick wall that took some years to break through. 

But sometimes I wonder if some genealogical websites and magazines and software programs aren't exaggerating just a little -- maybe this much >< -- when they promise if not the moon, at least more stars than really can be delivered.  Not that this is as serious a problem now as it was several years ago, as I recollect.  I do think that the main websites and the big magazines and the software programs have, for instance, become more aware of the importance of proper sourcing, to the extent that there are articles and seminars on source citation, and most of the more popular and well-known software packages use Elizabeth Shown Mills's citation models.  This is a good thing.

And I am aware that advertisement will always be with us (sometimes I add the word "alas" to that phrase), and that we have come to expect a certain level of hyperbole in it.  Fortunately, there is an antidote to that hyperbole, and that antidote is the presence of genealogical societies at the national, state, and local levels, which provide solid guidance through newsletters, journals, monthly meetings, seminars, and other programs to set the new family historian's feet on the right path.    When I think of the programs and speakers and other features of my own genealogy society, I become Mrs. I Want It Now!

So . . . have you hugged your genealogy society today?

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ahnentafel Roulette!

Randy Seaver, of Genea-Musings has created his latest Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. Our instructions:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) How old is your father now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ahnentafel. Who is that person?

3) Tell us three facts about that person with the "roulette number."

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.

5) If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then spin the wheel again - pick your mother, or yourself, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!


If my father were alive, he would be 98 (born 29 April 1911). 98 divided by 4 is 24.75, so we'll round off to 25. Number 25 in my Ahnentafel is my great-great grandmother Clarissa Haney Wright, born 19 July 1844 in Xenia, Green County, Ohio.

Three facts about Clarissa:

1. She married my great-great grandfather Charles Reed 16 September 1860 in Jay County, Indiana.

2. She lived with her widowed father and siblings just a few houses down from the family of Vinson Nidey, which had a lodger -- Charles Reed, who would soon be her husband.

3. She bore Charles Reed 14 children, 13 of whom lived into adulthood.

I don't really know that much about her, but I sure want to know more!
.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Treasured in Memory

When I was a young girl, I went over to my grandma Mary LeSourd Reed's house one day. We were in her bedroom, where she had opened her cedar chest, a plain-looking chest with a tapestry runner on top. In the chest were a number of items, including an old christening gown, bits of tatted lace, and the photograph which appears here.

The baby in the photograph was Wilmer LeSueur Reed, her oldest child, who died in infancy. She told me that he could not keep his food down. When I obtained his death certificate from the city of Chicago, where he died 13 October 1909 at just under one year old, I discovered his cause of death to have been ruled an acute gastritis.

Through my grandma and my mother, I came into possession of the cedar chest and its contents. The christening gown is still in it, as are the pieces of tatted lace. I've added my own items to it. The photograph is on one of my bookcases.

The cedar chest to me was a treasure chest of family history. The christening gown in the chest is the one in the picture, and it also appears in a photograph of Wilmer's younger sister Elizabeth, who was born 10 December 1909, about two months after Wilmer died. She lived into adulthood, and served as a public health nurse and Director of Health Information for the State of Florida in the 1950s and 1960s.

Wilmer lives on a little bit in me, as his middle name was given me as my middle name. It is always sad when a baby dies, but Wilmer always lived in his mother's memory, and he lives still in my middle name and in the photo on my bookshelf.

That's a family treasure.
.

Remembering Historic Days

Thomas McEntee suggested in his Geneabloggers e-mail today that we blog about how we remember 9/11. I'm going to go a little farther afield and talk about significant historical days in three generations.

For my parents, the watershed day was 7 December 1941. My father, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (1934), had been medically retired about 1939 due to a service-connected disability. He was a naval aviator with the rank of Lieutenant when he was retired. He was called back to active duty in October of 1941. There had to have been knowledge that something was afoot, if the Navy was calling the medically retired back to active duty. My father was ordered to report to Naval Air Station Miami, Florida. He took up his duties as a Naval aviator once again, and that was his status when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place.

Not long after that, something like two months, he was found, because of the disability for which he had been retired, to be not fit to fly, and was grounded. That has to have broken his heart, for my mother said that he loved flying, and in fact, he had been a member of his school's Aero Club in high school, in Pasadena, California. But he also loved the Navy, and would do his duty, wherever the Navy sent him. He was made a flight instructor. He became the lead flight instructor at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. Still, even as a grounded pilot, he was ranked by his commanding officers within the top 5% of Naval aviators on his fitness reports.

One of his Naval Academy classmates, a man for whom my brother had been given his nickname of Ned, died at Pearl Harbor. My father eventually was sent to the Empire Flying School in England, outside of London in a district called Hullavington, to learn the tactics the British had developed in fighting the Germans in the air, and to bring those lessons back to his students at NAS Jacksonville. That was in 1944. After the war was over, my father retired, this time at the rank of Commander.

For my generation, the watershed day was 22 November 1963. I was in the tenth grade at duPont High School in Jacksonville, FL. Enrolled in the college-prep track, I had elected to take shorthand because I thought it would help me in note-taking in college classes. I was in shorthand class that day, when the news came. We had a substitute teacher that day, as our regular teacher, a delightful woman named Mrs. Love, was ill. One of the girls had gone to the office on an errand, and came back, ashen-faced and subdued. Then the loud-speaker system was turned on school-wide, and we heard the news that the president had been shot. At that point, the substitute teacher showed me that she was -- to put a nice face on it -- shallow and self-absorbed. She didn't worry about the president or about the country, but about her stock portfolio. I was negatively impressed.

School was let out, and I drove home (having just got my license the previous spring). Later on, I got in the car, which I had parked in front of the fourplex apartment building where my mother and I lived, getting ready to drive to the hospital where my mother worked, to pick her up. At that point, an elderly woman came walking quickly down the driveway between buildings, hailing me. She asked for a ride, with a thick foreign accent, which I judged to be Eastern European. "Where you go?" she asked. I said I was going to pick my mom up from work. She said she needed to go to a place near the hospital, and I gave her a ride. I turned on the radio to hear further developments, and we shared our shock and grief at what had happened. We were both worried and frightened. I think on that day, we all wanted to reach out to others.

I spent the weekend watching the developments on TV, and there, at the age of 16, I witnessed a murder as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. It was a dark and frightening weekend.

For my daughters, the watershed day was 11 September 2001. My younger daughter worked for a large national bank, in the adjustments department. I was at home, doing some daily chores, and had the television off, because I have a very low opinion of daytime television. My daughter called me and told me to turn on the TV. I turned it on and saw one of the Twin Towers burning, and not long after that, the other airplane came and plowed into the other tower. I was horrified. It was without doubt the worst thing I had seen on television since that awful weekend in November of 1963.

Here again was a day in which we all wanted to reach out to each other, to cut across the artificial divisions which have become too important to too many people, and which really do not matter at all. It is a divided world in many ways, these days, over things which, in the great cosmic scheme of things, aren't that important. And we have allowed these superficial divisions to take on labels which are used to frighten, control, and divide us further, when we should be concentrating on the things which unite us, and the things which are important for today and the future.