Their Memories Live On

They are all gone now.
My mother, Dorothy, died the day after Thanksgiving. This is my first Mother’s Day without her. In her memory I am re-posting what I wrote back in 2007:

We send our love and gratitude on Mother's Day to Dorothy and Betty. We send the same to Catherine, Marion, Minnie and Rose. We reach farther back to thank Leah, Fannie, Esther, Bessie, Mary, Mary, Elizabeth and Augusta. We send our gratitude back before photographs, back to when their names are only remembered on yellowing pages in record books, back to before there were any written records at all. We thank all our mothers and their mothers, all the way back to stardust.

To Remember & Honor

This New York Times article reports on the efforts of the Negro Leagues Grave Marker Project. Over the last six years, the group has provided nineteen headstones for Negro League players with unmarked graves.

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When my father died in 1988, he was buried in the same plot with his parents and two brothers, one of whom had died in infancy. Seeing the headstone was painful for me because it was inscribed simply with our family surname and my grandfather’s full name. It frustrated and even angered me that there were no other names and no dates at all, to acknowledge and remember who was buried there.

From a genealogical perspective, the lack of information on the stone was also hard to accept. Many times Chuck and I have gone to a cemetery and been able to add more information to the family tree and even detail to family stories. But it was through my genealogical research, my imagination and my poetry that I was finally able to make peace with my Dad’s headstone and his father’s decision, made nearly a century before.


In Rhode Island, 1910

He was a young man
younger than I am now
Married to a woman
who was not warm and funny
which in courtship
somehow suited him
and suited her
He knew her past
and she his
But back then
self help
was an odd grammatical construction
for what one did to live a life
not what one was told to do
to live it well

So when their first child
a son –
the special pride and blessing
of any man
to have his first born be a son –
when that child died
a babe in arms
a piece of him died too
A piece of her as well
But as the man
he had the job
of going to the bank
and riding to the churchyard
and picking out a plot
and then a stone

He was not a man of means
though he had hope
He chose a smooth flat marker
the color of lead
the weight of his heart
one to lie firmly in the ground
It was all he could afford
but it was sensible as well

And what to put upon the stone?
He stood there
looking at the slab of granite
polished high
with flowers swirling in the corners
in the center
the Sacred Heart strangled with thorns
thorns he felt in his heart
Saw the stone was bigger
than his son had been
thought about how the plot
was fit for four
and of his grieving bride at home
wondered if the next child -
for surely there would be another –
would survive
and said, no dates
just “SMITH - John L. Smith Family” *
and wondering too
how swiftly would the plot be filled
he headed home
to a house thick with mourners
and muffled tears


- LMR/Pink Granite

*Name edited

Next News

I mentioned yesterday that we were looking forward to good news this afternoon. Well, the phone call came from Carrie letting us know that she’s expecting a baby girl! As I said to Carrie, we would have been just as happy to hear it was a baby boy. Mostly we just want Carrie, the baby and Al to all be healthy and happy. But it is awfully cool to know the gender ahead of time. Carrie’s also excited to be able to get the pronoun right - no more “he/she/it/the baby”.

Wisely, Carrie and Al are not throwing the baby’s name out for discussion. It’s too easy to hear a name and say to the expectant parents: “Oh, I knew a Engelbert and he was horrid!” But I attach a name to everyone and everything. So I was trying to think of what to call the baby between now and when she is born. Because both Al and Carrie are of Italian descent, I wanted to choose a girl’s name which was affectionate and sweet, but still be certain there was no way they would consider the name. I found “Bambalina”! It’s a variation or even further diminutive of Bambina which, of course, means little girl in Italian.

So now she has a transitional name from her Auntie Lee and her Uncle Chuck. Which is probably a pretty good introduction to a couple of odd ducks who love her to pieces already!

The U.S. Census

We received our 2010 Census form.
We filled out our 2010 Census form.
Tomorrow we will mail back our 2010 Census form.
The information collected won’t be made public until 2082.
Easy peasy and quick as a wink it was.

But as a family genealogist who has pored over earlier census records, I have to ask: Where are all the fascinating and often useful genealogical questions?

Here are a few examples of U.S. Census questions from 1790 to 2000:

Value of home if owned or monthly rental if rented?
Does this family have a radio set?
Does this family live on a farm?
Attended school or college anytime since September 1st?
Whether able to read?
Able to write?
Place of birth of each person and the parents of each person?
Single, married, widowed or divorced?
Number of years of present marriage?
Mother of how many children? Number born? Number living?
Blind, deaf, dumb, idiotic, insane, maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise disabled?
Pauper or convict?
Profession, occupation or trade?
Number of months person has been unemployed during census year?
Weeks worked last year?
Wage and salary income last year?
Value of personal estate?
Year of immigration to the U.S.?
Naturalized or alien?
If naturalized, year of naturalization?
Male citizen of U.S. of 21 years of age and upwards where rights to vote is denied on other grounds than rebellion or other crime?

O.K. admittedly, we definitely run up against the problem of political correctness. But Geezalu, the “Place of birth of each person and the parents of each person?” has made all the difference in many a family tree search. How about “Does this family have a radio set?” - that one’s cool. And I can think of a couple of relatives people I’d report as “idiotic or insane” - although perhaps in 1870 they meant something a little bit different!

It’s A Little Complicated

Today was Chuck’s Mom’s yahrzeit, the anniversary of the day she passed. Mom died back in 1999 on March 4th. By the Hebrew calendar (a lunar calendar), that year March 4th fell on 16 Adar, 5759. If we were Orthodox Jews, we would acknowledge Mom’s yahrzeit each year on 16 Adar. This year, 5770, that would have been this past Tuesday, March 2nd. While all of this is of interest, the family tradition for a couple of generations, has been to keep all dates by the Gregorian calendar.

But, when Chuck spoke with his sister about their Mom’s yahrzeit, an interesting discussion ensued. Unlike the Gregorian calendar where the date and day changes at midnight, the Hebrew calendar changes the date and day at sunset. Carol pointed out that Mom passed after sunset by the Gregorian calendar on March 4, 1999. That means that Mom passed on 17 Adar, 5759, which would have been yesterday, March 3rd.

I mean absolutely no disrespect.
But can I have an Oy?
Oy!

This isn’t our family’s first experience with the challenge of sorting out dates between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars. Chuck’s Grandma Minnie was born in 1888 near Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire. Minnie was born on Purim, 14 Adar, 5648. But on the Gregorian calendar, Purim falls on different dates each year. When Minnie was a young child attending school in Chelsea, Massachusetts, she said her birthday was whatever Gregorian date Purim fell on in any given year. That didn’t fit with the record keeping of a late 19th century public school. So Minnie was instructed to pick a date and stick with it. Minnie chose March 10th. Minnie’s last birthday was her 101st in 1988. We may have celebrated it on March 10th, but we all knew it was really Purim. That year Purim fell on March 21st; 14 Adar II, 5749...

For Chuck’s Mom, Betty and for his Grandma Minnie as well:
Zichrona Liveracha - Her memory is a blessing



: : There are now several Hebrew/Gregorian calendars available on the internet. HebCal is particularly easy to use.

: : For a fascinating look at keeping Shabbos in Antarctica (really!) you can read this article from the Jewish Daily Forward. I mention it because candlelighting is tied to sunset. In Antarctica, they have mostly 24 hours of light or 24 hours of darkness!

Going Home

We just learned that some family members will be traveling to Ireland this spring! My first thought was of course excitement for them. Swift on its heels came: “Clifden, Connemara, County Galway!” We know that many of the branches of our family tree stretch back to Ireland - for eight surnames we know their place of birth was Ireland. But for only one person, Winifred, my Great Great Grandmother, do we know that she was born in the town of Clifden. We also know that her mother, Margaret, my Great Great Great Grandmother, was born in the larger environs of Connemara. But so far, for all my other Irish ancestors, all we know is they were born in “Ireland”.

It is also true that when Kate, a member of the next generation, travels to Ireland in a couple of months, she will be the first member of our immediate family ever to return. For five generations, not since Margaret and Winifred came over, none of us have gone home to Ireland. Because we know what patch of earth one of our loved ones, Winifred, sprang from, not just the vastness of “Ireland”, Clifden is the place with a name to which we resonate. Likewise, on my father’s side, we know that my Great Grandparents were born in Glasgow, Scotland. So it is to Glasgow, more than all of Scotland, to which we relate.

It may seem odd to call it “going home”. But I grew up as “Irish American’; as “Irish Catholic”. Even the Scottish branches of the family most likely trace their roots back across the Irish Sea and into Ireland. So knowing how deep and broad our connection is to Ireland, wherever Kate visits, she will be going home for all of us. Especially for Margaret, Winifred, James, Delia, Catharine, Patrick, Bridget and Thomas who were all born in Ireland; who made that great leap of faith to journey to America and who are all buried here.

Bill Sparkman

Back in 2000, in late winter and early spring, I was employed by the United States Census Bureau. I worked for a couple of months going door to door in rural parts of central Massachusetts for the Constitutionally directed enumeration of the population, which must take place at least once every ten years. As a family genealogist, I was interested to experience the work of an enumerator. I had blessed many an enumerator over the years for their A+ penmanship; as well as cursed many an enumerator for hen scratching and sloppy transcription of my ancestors names! But as it turned out, the most interesting aspect of the job was heading up and down dirt roads - including traversing a rickety bridge in one direction which was declared impassable by the time I tried to return - and seeing all the ways people lived their lives. The sociologist in me rose to the surface as day after day, the overriding impression I got from most people was a deep desire to be rooted somewhere. Whether it was a mobile home which rightly would be classified as a trailer, a modest wood-framed structure or an elaborate estate, people wanted their patch of earth to leave wild and unkempt or manicured to within an inch of its life. They wanted home - whatever house and home meant to them.

As I went house to farm to trailer, there were many empty homes, but just as many without people, but with dogs left outside guarding their master’s castle. I became quite adept at sizing up the canines and learned that extending my canvas barn jacket covered elbow, out the door of my little two door hatchback, gave any dogs that charged the car a chance to sniff me and catch the lingering scent of my English Springer Spaniel. I was never bitten and never driven off by any dog, but I was nose-butted in the back of the legs all the way back to my car by one determined mutt who had reached their limit with the stranger.

I found mostly cooperative, friendly people in my work. More than a few times I encountered elderly folks who were obviously lonely. After I asked my brief questions, they often were reluctant to have me leave. I was another human being, a friendly face and a change of pace. A few folks worried about me. They would cluck that the weather was getting too harsh for me to be out in, or I should be careful all alone on the back roads. Some folks were cranky or rushed or a little fearful of a stranger - even a 41 year old woman with a identification badge around her neck. I was always surprised when the downright rude people felt so comfortable to be insolent right to my face. And I was never surprised when the arrival of my willing ears led to the unbidden tumbling out of personal stories.

During the census training we were warned about what to do if we encountered violent opposition to our work. We were told it would be unlikely. That there were areas of our nation where there could be and had been problems. But it still came as a shock when one of my fellow enumerators reported having been run off a property at gunpoint. He was unharmed, but it changed the feeling of the remainder of our work. Coincidentally, shortly after that incident, with less than a week to go in our work, an editorial ran in a local paper disparaging the activities of the Census Bureau and claiming government intrusion into the lives of the citizenry. After that editorial ran, I encountered enormous resistance to the enumeration process. A remarkable number of people were cold and taciturn. I returned home at the end of long days weary, not from the detail oriented work, but from the social hostility.

Today I learned that a 51 year old man named Bill Sparkman was found hanged from a tree in Kentucky, with the word “FED” scrawled on his chest. Bill Sparkman was a part time field worker for the United States Census Bureau. Door to door Census interviews have been suspended in Clay County while the investigation into Mr. Sparkman’s murder continues. Bill Sparkman is survived by his mother and his son. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke described Mr. Sparkman as “a shining example of the hardworking men and women employed by the Census Bureau.”

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Lost and Found

I watched a movie recently called “I Know Where I’m Going!” (1945). It was quite wonderful; charming, quirky, non-linear and both of and ahead of its time. The film was set in a remote island area to the west of Glasgow, Scotland. Throughout the movie, a number of characters spoke Scottish Gaelic. As I listened, I couldn’t help but wonder if the ancestors on my father’s side had spoken Scottish Gaelic when they lived in and around Glasgow. My paternal great grandparents, James and Mary, were born in the middle of the 19th century in Scotland. Their two eldest children were born there as well. The youngest four, including my grandfather Alexander, were born in Rhode Island in the late 1800s.

Great grandparents James and Mary passed before I was born. Several of their children, my great aunts and uncles, were alive for many years after my birth. But I never met any of them. From what I can piece together, there was a falling out; a rift developed between my grandfather Alexander and the rest of his family. My mother thinks it had something to do with Alexander’s family disapproving of his choice of bride, my grandmother Catherine. However the rift began, it was never, ever healed.

Sometimes, a later generation can reach across the gulf and find a way to let the disagreements of their parents lie in the past. That happened in Chuck’s family. Siblings at his father’s generation lived with a rift for many years. Then Chuck wrote a letter to his cousins from whom he had been estranged and a door opened. Sadly, this never happened between my family and my paternal grandparent’s family. Which is how I came to wonder the other day about how many things I missed out on. What could my great aunts and uncles John, James, Mary, Lizzie and Madeline Rose have taught me? Would they have loved me? Would my toddler smile have melted their hearts as it did my grandfather Alexander’s? Would they have shared recipes, traditions, family stories and history with me? And would any of the Scottish Gaelic they may have spoken been passed on to me?

I love the private languages of families. It can be the expressions they use which set them apart from their neighbors, just as it ties them strongly to generations past. Or it can be the languages of their home countries and larger communities such as Canadian French, Cajun French, Gaelic and so on - and of course Yiddish. Yiddish is the German language which originated with Ashkenazi Jews centuries ago. It remains the mother tongue (mame loshn) in fact or emotion for Jews around the world today. When I first became close to Chuck, Yiddish fascinated me. It was part of the secret handshake of his family. His parents, aunts and uncles sat up and took notice when the Irish Catholic girl pronounced and used a Yiddish phrase correctly. It was a hand outstretched in friendship from me and it was welcomed. The first time I was able to make a joke, a play on words, simultaneously in both English and Yiddish I felt as if I should be moving the tassel on my mortarboard!

So as I watched “I Know Where I’m Going!” and listened to the Scottish Gaelic rise up in the back of the actors' throats, roll around on their tongues and spill out in rapid, easy, comfortable conversation, I felt a sharp pang. It was somewhere between recognition and loss. It made me long for what I might have learned from my Scottish uncles and aunts. And made me even more grateful for the way Chuck and his family welcomed me in and began teaching me their mame loshn, which has, in many ways, become mine as well.

1.5 Million Euros

If I had 1.5 million Euros, then I would have $2,120,698.82 - give or take a penny or two. If I had that sort of BBMMTG (big bucks, more money than God) then I could purchase this sweet little seaside cottage. Now if I had unlimited resources - beyond BBMMTG, more like the deep pockets of a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett - then I could purchase this cottage, which comes complete with its own ruin.

Why am I looking at cottages in Ireland, when I’ve never even been to Ireland? Well, one branch of my family left Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland more than a century ago. But several generations later, something still calls to me from that achingly beautiful corner of the world. And sometimes, a day with lots of frustrations causes me to daydream about running away. I guess in this case it would be running home. Back to an ancestral home which was hardscrabble and impoverished enough back then to drive my forebears to come over here. But on a day like today, from a drastically more comfortable vantage point, Connemara looks romantic and peaceful and tantalizingly free.

The Ties That Bind

My maternal great great great grandmother Margaret was born in the Connemara region of western Ireland around 1830. She and her daughter Winifred (named after Margaret’s mother) emigrated to the United States and settled in Rhode Island. Winifred eventually had a daughter whom she named Mary Winifred. Mary Winifred gave birth to my Gramps, whom she named John Mervyn. Gramps married Marion, my Gagee, and they had my Mom, Dorothy.

Winifred to Margaret to Winifred to Mary Winifred to John Mervyn to Dorothy to me - that’s all it takes to think about seven generations over 160 years or so. When you pare it down to seven people, the decades fall away; the miles shrink; the ocean no longer matters; we are simply family. Winifred, my fourth great grandmother, couldn’t imagine me or my life today, but everything she did was in some way for me. Letting go of her widowed daughter Margaret and her granddaughter and namesake Winifred, as they sailed off to America, never to return, had to have been wrenching. But that journey, that leap of faith, was made in search of a better life. That journey was for me and all the other too-distant-to-imagine generations to come.

It was many years ago that we learned one branch of my family tree had sprung from the soil of Connemara. Soon after, Chuck gave me a single decade rosary made from the green Connemara marble. Over the years, I’ve said many a rosary with the green beads clicking through my fingers. I don’t say the rosary the way I once did, but that small rosary is always with me. I carry it in my purse. It connects me to a tradition, to a religion, to a comforting reflex many generations of men and most especially women in my family have turned to in times of stress and thanksgiving. Most importantly, it connects me to my family. Not just Winifred, Margaret and little Winifred who I know were born in Connemara, but to all my kith and kin, their names unknown to me, who came before Winifred. And it even ties me to my distant relatives, unknown to me, who stayed behind in Ireland and made their lives there, down through the same generations.

We are all family, all bound together; all owing debts of gratitude to the generations that came before us; all owing gifts of knowledge and love to the generations traveling with us and coming after us.

The Way He Liked It

I was talking with my Mom today and she mentioned cabbage. That, of course, reminded me to ask her about Rumbledethumps, Colcannon and Bubble and Squeak. She had never heard of any of the aforementioned dishes and thought her youngest daughter had gone off the deep end! I quickly explained about Rumbledethumps. That triggered a memory for her. When my Mom was a girl (back in the 1920s and 30s), her mother Marion, my Gagee, would make a “New England Boiled Dinner”, which is corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots and onions all cooked together in one pot on top of the stove. Marion’s father-in-law, an angel of a fellow named Jody, would ask her to make it “the way he liked it”. Gagee would reach into the icebox for the bacon drippings and put a little in a frying pan. Then she would scoop out some of the cabbage from the big pot and fry it in the bacon grease. Next she would lift out a potato and add that to the frying pan and mash it in with the cabbage. Gagee would serve it to Jody and he would add just a splash of apple cider vinegar to it.

Now if that isn’t the kissin’ cousin of Colcannon and Rumbledethumps I don’t know what is! Jody was of Irish, not Scottish descent. And he was, in fact, my Gramps’ stepfather. The Scottish branch I wrote about recently is my paternal grandfather’s side. Be that as it may, it cements that strong feeling I had about Rumbledethumps being a connection to something deep and old in my family’s culinary heritage. I need to keep browsing Maw Broon’s Cookbook to see what other chords get struck!

Sometimes We Lose Things

Sometimes we lose things, especially as a family.

Many of my ancestors came to America from Ireland in the middle of the 19th Century. In the years leading up to and following The Great Famine, family on various branches left their Irish homeland to seek better for themselves and especially better for their children. Another branch of my family left Scotland in the late 19th Century and found their way to America. But it is possible that many of their roots can be drawn back to Ireland, perhaps in one or more of the waves of immigration that happened between the two areas. One more branch apparently left Denmark, also at the end of the 19th Century and settled in Massachusetts and then in Rhode Island. Still another branch probably originated in France and first emigrated to Canada and later to the United States.

A surprising number of my ancestors all found their way directly to Rhode Island. They may have come from rural or urban areas back home, but most lived and worked in the cities. Many of the men and some of the women found work in the factories of Rhode Island. Their lives were difficult. Their education was minimal. It took multiple generations before a high school diploma was the norm. Another generation beyond that before college educations were possible and eventually routine.

So it’s not surprising that things got lost along the way. Religion stayed intact because the Roman Catholic Church was thriving here in the United States. But other traditions fell by the wayside. Language, while predominantly English, lost its native accent as brogues and burrs were replaced with New England regional accents. But within contemporary accents and expressions, one can still hear echoes of the influence of myriad Irish and Scottish voices who settled here.

Sadly, within my family, oral histories also became truncated. By the time I sat down with my father and my maternal grandparents in the 1970s, they could sketch out the stories of relatives they had known personally, but ancestors beyond a certain point of recognition, were already hazy. I have to assume that the daily responsibilities and challenges of keeping body and soul together, left little time for stories from back home. But it is just as likely that back home may have been fraught with pain. We also had our fair share of estrangements, including a multi-generational one of vague origin from my Scottish born relatives. What Dad, Mom, Gagee and Gramps knew was the countries their families had come from. But even there, errors would eventually be found. Gagee used to tell me I had German ancestors. That was because her stepfather, the only Dad she had ever really known, had been of German descent. The family story of my paternal grandfather Alexander was a memorable one, which unfortunately proved apocryphal. We had always been told that Grandpa had been conceived in Scotland and born in the United States. Turns out, his parents and older siblings emigrated from Scotland to America two years before he was born.

Besides language, accents and oral history, other traditions such as cooking changed. Sometimes this was due to a lack of availability of ingredients from home. But it seems likely that more often than not, poverty dictated what could go in the soup pot and in the lunch pail. I also imagine that there was the typical desire to assimilate with the larger, dominant culture. Within my family, there was a strong theme of putting our best foot forward to the world. Members of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations often referred to folks both within and outside of our family as ”Lace Curtain Irish”. It meant folks who didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but hung lace curtains in their windows to give the appearance of prosperity to the neighbors. They may have used the term dismissively, but I felt there was a whole lot of the pot calling the kettle black in their usage!

By the time my parents were raising up a family, their children, my sisters and I, were minimum third generation Americans. First and foremost, we were a thoroughly mid-20th Century, just barely middle class, all American family. Tied for second, we were decidedly, absolutely, Roman Catholic. Thirdly, we were of Scottish, Irish, Danish and French descent. The family recipe box had recipes clipped from American magazines, newspapers and off the backs of packaged products from grocery store shelves. Meals ran the gamut from corned beef and cabbage to meatballs and spaghetti to hot dogs and hamburgers to all kinds of seafood. We weren’t just part of the melting pot, we were eating out of it!

So it was with great delight that I learned about “Maw Broon’s Cookbook”. The discovery was serendipitous in a way possible only in this technologically advanced, early 21st century time. A few weeks ago, I was reading Sue’s blog. She and her son Jake were traveling on an extended vacation from their home in South Africa to a number of countries. One part of their journey brought them to visit family in Glasgow, Scotland. While the entire trip was fascinating, greater Glasgow is where my paternal great-grandparents lived before coming to America. One of the photos Sue uploaded to her blog showed her and Jake standing in front of a Borders Bookstore in Glasgow. In the bookstore’s window was the “life size” image of a cartoon character called Maw Broon. I did some Googling and learned that “The Broons” (The Browns if spoken without the Scottish accent) were created by Dudley D. Watkins in 1936, during the depths of The Great Depression. The Broons were a Scottish family living in a fictional town, inspired by Glasgow and Dundee.

The typical internet search led me link by link to Maw Broon’s Cookbook (United Kingdom link). The description alone intrigued me. Holding the artfully aged and cleverly created book in my hands left me smitten. The conceit of Maw Broon’s collection of recipes is that it was a gift from her soon-to-be mother-in-law on her wedding day. The book has been digitally ”tattered” and “stained” and contains recipes and tips held in place by yellowing “tape”. The period script penmanship is sometimes difficult to decipher, especially as the recipes are also written in dialect, but that just adds to the charm.

Maw Broon’s Cookbook doesn’t heal my family’s estrangements. Nor does it tease out any more truth from my beautifully gnarled family tree. Reading Maw Broon’s recipe for Fish Pie reminds me of the recipe I created for Finnan Haddie Pie. But not even Maw Broon’s Cookbook can transform my own family’s recipe box filled with tips and recipes from Better Homes and Gardens and the Providence Journal Bulletin. But reading recipes for Porridge, Beef Tea, Stoved Tatties and Black Bun makes me feel connected to members of my family named Mary, Elizabeth and Madelyn. Holding this cookbook, reading the recipes and notes aloud in my best Scottish burr, enables me to cleave a bit tighter to part of my family and its heritage. It has helped me to find, something we lost.

The Whole Family

The days are running together. I find I have to keep asking Chuck what day it is. We are enjoying our mostly twice daily visits with Chuck’s Dad. On one of the two single visit days, we drove down with Chuck’s sister to the Tahoma National Cemetery where their Mom is buried. Because Dad is a veteran of World War II, Mom and Dad were entitled to be buried there if they wished. I mean no disrespect when I say that, just as we have on previous trips, we wanted to visit the entire family while here in Washington. It was a cold, gray day that brought sleet, rain, hail, and snow. Even on a raw, stormy day, Tahoma is a beautiful, peaceful and well-maintained cemetery. The above is a photo from a few years ago (taken with our old camera) on a sunny day when Mount Rainier was not fully shrouded in clouds.

Just a few days ago, the following was included in an e-mail we received from Ancestry.com:

This is a Cemetery…
Lives are commemorated,
Deaths are recorded,
Families are reunited,
Memories are made tangible and
Love is undisguised.

This is a Cemetery...

Communities accord respect,
Families bestow reverence,
Historians seek information and
Our Heritage is thereby enriched.



Testimonies of devotion, pride and warmth are carved in stone to pay warm tribute to accomplishments and to the life, not the death, of a loved one.
The cemetery is homeland for memorials that are a sustaining source of comfort to the living.
A cemetery is a history of a people, a perpetual record of yesterday and a sanctuary of peace and quiet today. 


A cemetery exists because every life is worth loving and remembering – always.

--- From the Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery brochure
Middle Village, New York
author unknown

"Beloved Wife and Mother"
"Beloved Husband and Father"
"Forever in Our Hearts"
"Dancing Together In Heaven"
"Everyone Knew Him As Bud"
"He Finally Got His Wings"

Those are just a few of the inscriptions etched on the headstones of Mom’s neighbors.

A cemetery exists
because every life is worth loving and remembering – always.

Beware & Be Aware of Sound Bites

Today, Senator Barack Obama gave a tremendously important, excellent speech entitled “A More Perfect Union”. The 38 minute speech, addressing race in America, should be listened to in its entirety, the transcript read in full. Unfortunately, most media outlets are simply extracting snippets from the speech and that’s all many United States citizens will hear and see. Here are a variety of links where you can see and or listen to Senator Obama delivering his speech in Philadelphia or read the transcript.

Audio recording of the speech from National Public Radio. Click on the “Listen” link at the top of the page.
Transcript of the speech from National Public Radio.
Transcript of the speech from The Root(dot)com.
Video of the speech from MSNBC.
Video of the speech from CNN, located on the "Obama ’08" website.
Transcript of the speech located on the "Obama ’08" website.

Despite my warning in the title of this post, I want to share one brief excerpt of Senator Obama’s speech:

"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one."
- Senator Barack Obama, March 18, 2008

Saol Fada Chugat!

Which, if I’ve done my homework correctly, translates to: “Long life to you!”

On this St. Patrick’s Day, when I tote up my sixteen great-great grandparents, it works out to about twelve Irish, one French, one Danish and two question marks. But perhaps as many as four of the Irish were, for at least one generation, Irish-Scots. But those Irish-Scots self identified as Scottish! So if I come down a generation, to my great grandparents, then the scales are still tipped decidedly toward the Irish, but with at least one quarter Scottish.

Which begs the question: who cares? Well I do. Surely, not so I can slap on a silly “Kiss Me I’m Irish” button on the 17th of March every year. I care because of those sixteen ancestors and the thirty-two before them and the sixty-four before them and so on, back before there are records, back before there are any names left to be remembered.

I have cared ever since I was a kid and began asking my parents and grandparents lots of questions. For some reason, I have always been conscious of the very different circumstances every generation lived under. Perhaps it came from spending so much time with my grandparents. Perhaps it was their stories which piqued my interest. Perhaps it was the times they answered any of my innumerable questions with a simple: “I don’t know.”

No matter how it came to be, this genealogical research and record keeping is important to me. I owe everything to them. The least I can do is pore over the records and write their names, their birth and death dates and any bit of information I can find. Folks who worked so hard and took such enormous risks deserve at least to have their names spoken once again, their lives and life’s work acknowledged.

So on this St. Patrick’s Day, here’s to: Miles, Catherine, Hugh, Eliza, Hugh, Winifred, Margaret, William, Bridget, Thomas, Catherine, John, Mary, George, Sarah, Owen, James, Delia, Patrick, Catharine, John, Catherine, Joseph, Winifred, George, Augusta, Augusta Florence, Edward, Mary, Frederick, Elizabeth, James, Mary, James, Alexander, Catherine, John Mervyn, Marion, Dorothy and George - - -

Go raibh maith agaibh!
Thank you all!

Journey of Man

Our Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS) had a program from 2003 called “Journey of Man” listed tonight from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m.. Here’s how they described it: Geneticist Spencer Wells follows a DNA trail around the world and back some 50,000 years to tell "the story of your family and how they conquered the earth." It sounded like it could be very interesting or deadly dull. Since there was nothing else competing for our attention (thanks in no small measure to the Writer’s Strike), we gave it a whirl. IT WAS AMAZING!!!

I think you know that I’m not a big fan of “caps-lock communication” (too much like screaming), but in this instance I must repeat: IT WAS AMAZING!!!

“Journey of Man” will be rebroadcast here in the U.S. over this weekend and into next week. Here are some useful links:

PBS.org where you can check your local listings.

A thoughtful National Geographic article which discusses the documentary and the attendant conflicts with other scientific theories. Plus you can view a photo gallery there.

One source for the DVD.

One source for the book.

“Journey of Man” was fascinating, thought provoking, inspiring and very moving.

My summary: We are all connected. We are all related. We are all family.

Sunset On Birch

This photo isn’t quite as crisp as I would like it to be, but I love the glow of the setting sun on the white bark of the birch tree. I was snapping a series of successive sunset photos, through an open second floor window, when this tree caught my eye. The sun was just about to dip below a western hill, on a frigidly cold February afternoon. The cold air was spilling in on me, while the aroma of corned beef, simmering on a back burner, was wafting up the stairs. I snapped the last of the photos as twilight began to fall and headed downstairs to finish preparing the simple, one-pot meal any one of my ancestors would have cooked, going back many generations. But as I plated the corned beef, cabbage, carrots and potatoes, I knew no others who had gone before me, would have had the luxury of time and technology, allowing them to take photographs at their leisure on a winter’s afternoon.

Thank you for the recipe consultation Gail!

Catherine

Grandpa & Grandma;
Alexander & Catherine
circa WW II

My Dad’s mother, Catherine, was not a warm, affectionate woman. Grandma came off as cool, distant and suffered from the sharp contrast with my maternal grandmother, Gagee, who was gentle, loving and quick to laugh. But Grandma came by her personality through harsh experience. Grandma passed away just before my ninth birthday. I wish I could have known then, what I know now.

Catherine was born in Rhode Island in 1887. Her mother Elizabeth was about 20 and her father James just 24, when Catherine was conceived out of wedlock. Her parents married a few months before Catherine’s birth. A son John and another daughter Elizabeth soon followed.

In 1890, when Catherine was just three years old, her father died at the age of 27. Her mother Elizabeth was a widow at age 23, with three small children to provide for. The following year, in 1891, both of Catherine’s younger siblings died within two months of each other. Ever so briefly, they had been a family of five. Now it was just Catherine and her mother Elizabeth. But in less than a year, Elizabeth died as well.

Catherine, not quite five years old, was alone in the world. She was a child not yet old enough to be of service to a family, but a child most in need of love, care and constancy. She was taken in by a family related to her on her mother’s side. It was a family with many children and while Catherine’s basic needs were met, she was lost in the hustle and bustle of the large family. Even though Catherine lived with her de facto foster family for more than a decade, in many respects, she was always treated as an outsider.

I don’t know the story of how Catherine met her future husband Alexander. But they married in 1908 when Catherine was 21 and Alexander was 25. Their first child, a son they named Raymond, was born in 1909. Less than a month after his first birthday, Raymond passed away. I wonder if Catherine thought the swift cycles of birth and death from her own childhood were destined to be repeated. But Alexander and Catherine went on to have four more healthy sons, the youngest was my father. All four sons served in World War II. All four came home, married and raised up eleven children between them.

Around 1950, Grandpa and Grandma moved in with my parents and older sisters Karen and Gail into their tiny house in Providence, Rhode Island. Grandpa died at the age of 76 in 1959. Grandma died in 1967 at the age of 79.

Long after she passed, I learned Grandma had made some mistakes, some bad choices in the course of her life, that seemed at best foolish or at worst selfish. Those things added to the sense of distance I felt from her. It wasn’t until I was much older and the details of her early life were teased out of yellowed, tattered records, that I felt my own heart soften. Through these records I came to know and understand my grandmother better than I ever had during her lifetime. Grandma was a survivor. She may not have been a storybook grandmother, but I had already been blessed with one of the best of those in my Gagee. Grandma was tough and had surmounted incredible obstacles to go on to be a wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I like to think I got some of my resiliency and strength from Grandma. Thank you Grandma. Thank you for everything.

All In A Name

Grandpa & Grandma; Alexander & Catherine, circa WW II

My Dad called his parents Ma and Pa. We kids called them Grandma and Grandpa. They were both tough and stern. I wish I could remember Grandpa. He died just a little over a year after I was born. My folks told me I made him smile and that I was the “apple of his eye”. As a result, I always felt very close to him. When it came time for me to choose a Roman Catholic confirmation name, I threw myself into the decision with all the intensity of a typical adolescent. I pored over what I knew of the family names. I made lists, crossing names out, whittling them down. There was Winifred, Mercedes, Marion, Catherine and Augusta. There was also Edward, Mervyn, James, Alexander, Patrick and Owen. In the end, I chose Alexandra, the feminine diminutive of my father’s father, Grandpa. I liked the name Alexandra. It struck me as both strong and feminine. My given name was Lee Ann, but by the age of sixteen and my confirmation, I had long since dropped the Ann and was known by my friends simply as Lee. Lee being both a man’s and a woman’s name also suited me in the early 1970s, what with social upheaval and the women’s liberation movement. I was far from androgynous, but liked the idea that, on paper at least, I could be anyone, male or female.

Three and a half decades later I started a blog called Pink Granite, with the explanation: “Pink may be a girly-girl color, but granite is strong, solid and durable.” Some things never change...

Love, Loss & A Pink Flamingo

There has been a long gap in my writing about genealogy. What happened was that we began working with death records and I found it profoundly sad. It was frustrating to read that a relative had passed from some disease or injury, which today might easily be cured with an operation or medication. My vivid imagination led me to wonder about what might have been, for them, for their loved ones, for us. I was glad to have the information so as to fit more pieces into the giant puzzle. But it was difficult, especially the day we found that an elderly ancestor, despondent and in ill health, had committed suicide.

We moved on from the end of life’s journey to other voyages: namely, passenger lists. Within Ancestry.com’s immigration sources, we found the record of when Leah and her boys sailed to America to join Jacob! The name of the ship was “The Flamingo”. Trust me, I had an almost uncontrollable urge to find one of those kitschy plastic pink flamingo lawn ornaments and plant it proudly in our front yard!

Now, we have found another resource. Ancestry.com has just added U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925. For most of the branches of our family tree, once our folks managed to get safely to the U.S., they stayed put. Whether it was because they couldn’t afford to travel back home (or anywhere else) or because it simply wasn’t safe to return to their countries of birth. But we did find one relative who filled out a passport application in the late 1800s! The JPEG of the scanned record provided a wealth of information including their address, birthplace and birth dates, date they arrived in the U.S., from which port they had originally sailed and a written physical description.

According to Ancestry.com, many of these passport records include photographs. We weren’t that lucky. And I admit, part of me wishes that more of our ancestors had been world travelers. But that would rewrite history and I’ve already learned clocks run only in one direction...