Genealogy Jottings

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Last week my husband/tech advisor and I took a vacation to the Black Hills of South Dakota. We stayed in a cabin in Custer State Park. I had not been to that region in a couple of decades.

The area just north of there used to be familiar territory for me because my grandparents lived in Rapid City. My parents were married there, and I was baptized there. My family spent a week or two there most summers.

We would take in all the local sites during those visits—Mt. Rushmore, Storybook Island, Reptile Gardens, Dinosaur Park, Canyon Lake, and Keystone. I took my first and only helicopter ride when I was a young teenager.

On this trip we stayed in the Custer area, not Rapid City. We drove all around the park and saw bison, wild turkeys and donkeys, deer, vultures, and a coyote. One day we hiked around Sylvan Lake. Another day we looked at the stockade on French Creek near where gold was discovered in 1874.

Visiting the Black Hills again brought back many good memories of childhood vacations. My family is all gone from that area now, so I do not get there often. I am glad I had the chance to visit that beautiful area again this year.

This family historian was laid low by Covid-19 this week. No, not the virus. The vaccine.

I received my second dose of the Moderna shot on Monday. Within 12 hours, I had fever, headache, and fatigue.

The next day I slept most of the time and had no appetite.

The following day, I got out of bed but still had little energy. I ate sparingly and began to feel better as the day went on.

By the third day I seemed more like myself. I felt grateful to have experienced only vaccine side effects rather than the full-blown virus.

Covid-19 has taken so much from us over the past year. Perhaps the symptoms I experienced were a minimal price to pay for protection.

Today, I am back at the genealogy desk.

My family faces a sad day today. We must say good-bye too soon to a beloved family member.

My nephew, Ben Carrier, passed away two weeks ago. His memorial service is today.

His family lives many states away from my own. During this time of the coronavirus, I cannot travel there to lend my support to my sister and her family.

Instead, I will attend my first-ever Zoom funeral service this afternoon.

We feel many things today. Regret that we cannot be there in person. Sadness that we have this empty space in our family where a smiling young man used to be. Empathy for my sister who has lost her only son.

Yet this is not the only death we have suffered in this year of death. My husband/tech advisor has lost a step-father and two aunts.

But somehow this seems different.

His loved ones were all in their 90’s and had lived long, productive lives. My nephew was just twenty-eight.

The memorial service this afternoon will be a sad one, indeed.

Finished! In our home office, the new carpet lies on the floor, the new baseboards hug the walls. My husband had a two-week vacation scheduled in May due to the coronavirus, so we took on a home improvement project. But the minor remodeling was not all we did.

Our office was cluttered, really cluttered. Because we had to move all the furniture out anyway to install a new floor, we took the opportunity to clear out some of the things we were storing in there. Some items we moved elsewhere, and others we discarded:

• We cleaned off the worktable. Because what good is a worktable if you cannot use its surface for work?
• We emptied file drawers. I discarded or consolidated files pertaining to former jobs and deceased family members.
• We removed a shelving unit we no longer need. This freed up some floor space, making the office seem roomier.
• We weeded a couple of bookshelves. I do not need two thesauruses or two road atlases at my fingertips.

Today I can begin working in my newly refreshed office. It feels like time and money well spent.

Yesterday we gathered with our children and grandchildren for yet another wonderful Thanksgiving meal. We hosted it at our house.

We were lazy this year and did not make everything from scratch. Instead, we ordered some of our food from local vendors.

We were not alone in this. We found a semi-truck full of pies parked beside our local Village Inn when we arrived there. A queue of people waited to pick up their orders. A similar line greeted us at our butcher shop when we pulled up to claim our pre-roasted turkey, dressing, and gravy.

Thanksgiving meal preparation was not always so easy. Unless we could get an invitation to spend the holiday elsewhere, we used to cook all day. Our traditional meal included turkey (would it thaw in time for the big day?!), stuffing, cranberry sauce, two kinds of potatoes, rolls, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, pickles, and olives. We pulled out our silver, crystal, and best china.

Our mothers before us also dutifully bought and prepared similar Thanksgiving meals, year after year. The women worked in the kitchen all day while the males lounged in front of the television. How I resented that!

For how long have people spent hours making elaborate meals on this day? Did my grandmothers do all this cooking on Thanksgiving Day back in the 30’s and 40’s?

I am pretty sure my dad’s mom did not. The family had little money, and besides, Grandma was no cook. She once told me that after her boys left home, she just ate a can of chicken noodle soup on Thanksgiving.

My mom’s family made more effort to prepare a Thanksgiving meal. Mom reminisced about sitting through Thanksgiving dinners with all the trimmings, meals she disliked. She lived next door to her grandparents from Finland, so those Thanksgiving dinners had a Finnish twist. Mom did not want to eat the mashed rutabagas that appeared on the table every year. If she could get away with it, she would eat only the bread and pickles.

Still, when she had a household of her own, she regularly prepared a traditional dinner. When I grew up, I found myself doing the same. I never liked Thanksgiving much because it required so much work.

This year was different. Preparing just a couple of dishes and leaving most of the cooking to others allowed me plenty of time to enjoy the day. Normally, I like to follow traditional ways of celebrating holidays, but I liked our take-out Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Perhaps we have a new tradition.

The Christmas season approaches, and it provides me with an opportunity to get in touch with the holiday traditions of my ancestors. We have three fun events coming up in December:

1. Pikkujoulu. The Finns hold this “little party” in anticipation of Christmas. Holiday foods, including glögi or mulled wine, make their seasonal debut here. The Finlandia Foundation of Colorado will hold this event at the Sons of Norway lodge in Lakewood, CO on the traditional first Saturday of December. The evening will include socializing, shopping for Christmas gifts at the Sons of Norway boutique, and a potluck supper. Joulupukki, the Finnish Santa, will appear to distribute gifts to the children. In a tradition I recall from my own childhood, Joulupukki does not enter homes through the chimney after everyone is asleep. Instead, he politely rings the doorbell while everyone is still awake and then asks if there are any well-behaved children in the home before distributing his gifts. Unfortunately, I will miss Pikkujoulu this year because it conflicts with my husband/tech advisor’s office party.
2. Bach Christmas Oratorio. The great German Lutheran composer’s works include the multi-part Weihnachts-Oratorium, BWV 248. He created it in 1734 for performance in church during the Christmas season. My Bethany Lutheran Church choir performed Part I (the birth of Jesus) last year, and this year on December 9 we will do Part II (the annunciation to the shepherds). We have been practicing for weeks and will sing it in German.
3. Lutefisk dinner. Our Sons of Norway lodge will host this annual Norwegian dinner in mid-December. The menu includes lutefisk, Scandinavian meatballs, pickled beets, lefse, and riskrem. Lutefisk, of course, is the much-reviled codfish soaked in lye. Lefse resembles a tortilla, but it is made from mashed potatoes and served with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Riskrem, or rice cream topped with raspberry or strawberry sauce, is a Christmas dessert. If the lefse and riskrem do not provide enough sweets for the guests, we also will serve baskets of assorted homemade cookies. I am on the hook to provide four dozen of these. Although this is a Norwegian event, I plan to sneak in some made from a Finnish recipe for Hannatädinkakut (aunt Hannah’s cookies) made from potato starch. Let the Christmas baking begin!

Facebook has appeared in the news quite a bit lately. The social media giant has suffered bad press for allowing scraping of users’ data for nefarious purposes. According to reports, some people have decided to abandon Facebook in response to these allegations.

No need for me to do that. I have never joined it. My reasons for avoiding Facebook included the very issues that now plague the company. This morning’s Wall Street Journal summarized them nicely:

1. Lost privacy,
2. Political manipulation, and
3. Social media addiction.

While all around me, our relatives, friends, and neighbors spend hours on Facebook swapping photos and stories of the minutia of their days, I have remained blissfully free of what I view as a monumental waste of time. Now, with the new revelations about Facebook and how the company handles personal data entrusted to it, I need not worry if they have compromised my personal information. They do not have it.

Will Facebook disappear because of this controversy? I do not think so. It offers some valuable features that many people want. For example, genealogists really like it.

This week the speaker at my local Highlands Ranch Genealogical Society, Dave Barton, delivered a program titled Using Social Media for Genealogy Research. He spent a great deal of his time discussing the value of Facebook for this. He pointed out that genealogists can find many Facebook groups that cater to them:

1. General genealogy groups,
2. Location specific groups,
3. Surname specific groups,
4. Genetic genealogy groups,
5. Organization/society groups.

These groups tempt me. Dave pointed out that they stepped into the void when the genealogy message boards ended. These groups offer a forum for connecting with distant cousins and learning more about specialized topics. Dave also mentioned that some societies and organizations use Facebook pages in lieu of maintaining websites.

Should I join to take advantage of these groups? I keep thinking about it. If I knew I could keep an account focused solely on genealogy, I might do it.

I did try that once before, setting up a business page for this blog. I found it useless. Facebook users could visit my page, but I could not use the account to visit other pages. I quickly abandoned it and have not attempted to log in for several years. The Genealogy Jottings Facebook page is likely defunct.

I would have to create a personal account to get on Facebook and begin visiting groups that interest me. Perhaps I will, after the Facebook hoopla dies down and we see what protections the company provides to its users. A bright light shines on Facebook’s bad acts, and their leader must appear before Congress to answer for them. Something will change, and then I will make my decision.

Earlier this month I needed to search through some old family photographs. I must confess that my photos lack organization. In fact, they are a mess. To find the ones I needed, I had to search through albums (mine and my mom’s) as well as piles and sacks of pictures I have collected over the years but have never taken time to store properly.

One rubber-banded group of snapshots caught my attention. I had forgotten that when we purchased our house, we received a stack of work-in-progress pictures taken when the home was built in 1992. I had tucked the pictures in a cupboard after we bought the place in 2011.

Now the question arises: Should I keep these?

They might prove useful for their X-ray views of the innards of my house. That is probably why the original owners passed them along.

Or I could hang on to them for historical reasons. My home is 25 years old this year. This anniversary would offer a good opportunity for documenting the building of my house, the changes to it over the years, and the people who have lived here. Perhaps I should create a house history using the pictures I found.

Entire websites dedicated to searching and recording a house history exist these days. People like to know the story of their homes. The search process takes time when one lives in an old house.

For my not-so-old house, the work would not take long. Starting with the photos I inherited, I could create a history of the property so far and then document any changes we make in the future. When we leave here someday, we would have a good history of the place to give the new owners.

This small project could mark a start on cleaning up my photo mess. Tackling all prints I have seems overwhelming. Pulling out one group and organizing it properly seems much more doable. A house history sounds like a good winter project.

Did you join millions of your fellow Americans to watch the solar eclipse this week? I did.

Months ago we learned that our Casper, Wyoming hometown would sit in the path of totality for this event. What better excuse to have a family reunion?

We invited everyone we could think of to attend a viewing party at the home place, and many people accepted the invitation. We offered free places to stay with relatives while motel rooms were going for $2500 per night. Family members came in from Colorado, New Mexico, and New York for our eclipse party.

They say the population of Wyoming nearly doubled that day as people flooded in. For a time, Wyoming (normally the least-populated state) had more people than other small states such as Alaska, the Dakotas, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The little Natrona County airport handled private planes loaded with eclipse watchers landing every two minutes. We heard rumors that a Saudi prince came in to watch the eclipse from the tarmac.

We prepared for our viewing by collecting eclipse glasses and discarding any that were not properly certified. My granddaughter and I also made a projector box out of an old shoebox, a skill I had learned as a Cub Scout den leader when Colorado experienced a partial eclipse in the 90’s.

The fun began about 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning. People grabbed their special eclipse glasses and scanned the sun, trying out the glasses and waiting for the show to begin. It was not long before we could see a corner of the sun disappear.

When it was time for a snack, we served Moon Cake. My mother-in-law has served this at family gatherings for many years, so there was no question that we would eat it on this day. My sister-in-law baked three of them to make sure we had enough. You can find a recipe for it on allrecipes.com. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/19895/moon-cake/

As the eclipse progressed, we gathered everyone to take group photos, some with glasses, some without. We wanted to remember this day.

When the precious minutes of totality drew near, everyone quieted down as we all gazed at the sky. The air grew noticeably cooler. Finally, twilight descended, and the sun disappeared. Only a brilliant corona remained, and we experienced what appeared as a 365-degree sunset. We could see Venus in the sky above. Exuberant town residents celebrated by setting off fireworks.

I will never forget that moment. We all felt a little sad when the sun slowly began to reappear, and the unworldly vision ended.

My son and his family stayed for a picnic lunch and then prepared to head back home to Denver. Little did they know of the massive traffic tie-up they faced. Thousands left Casper and the surrounding area at the same time. Most needed to travel south on one of two thoroughfares—Interstate 25 or Wyoming Highway 487, a two-lane road. The usual 4-5 hour drive took my son 11 hours to get home. Traffic was backed up for hundreds of miles. Both Wyoming and Colorado urged people not to stop at the border to take selfies.

Luckily, I had the luxury of staying in Wyoming for one more day. My husband/tech advisor and I did some housecleaning at the old home place before we left. On the road home to the Denver area the next day, we encountered heavier traffic than usual but nothing like what had gone down those roads the day before.

We came home with great memories of a great American eclipse and family reunion.

Yesterday we lost a beloved canine member of our family, my son’s dog Samson. He had been part of our clan for ten years.

Can it have been that long since I received the telephone call about Samson from the animal shelter in San Antonio, Texas? I learned that my son, a newly-minted second lieutenant in the Army, wanted to adopt a rescue dog, a malnourished Great Pyrenees named Samson. Problem was that the Lieutenant had no permanent home address yet because he was on a short assignment at the time. The shelter wanted someone to agree to take Samson in the event the Lieutenant could not care for him. Would I do that? What?

“May I speak to the Lieutenant, please?” I asked.

Of course, he talked me into committing to giving Samson a home if he could not. He told me young Samson had suffered abuse and was severely underweight. With a thick, white fur coat, he suffered mightily in the Texas heat. My son promised to nurse him back to health and take him to his permanent base at Fort Drum later in the year. Fort Drum, where the Army does winter training. A much better location for a dog like Samson.

The Lieutenant was as good as his word, and I never had to take Samson in to my home. With proper care, he regained his health.

The big dog thrived in cold upstate New York, and he romped happily in the huge backyard my son provided for him. Over the next years, Samson oversaw the growth of a family—first a wife, and then three children. He adapted to new surroundings when the family moved to Colorado. All the while, he offered wonderful companionship to his family and served as a faithful watchdog.

Then his hips began to fail. Samson could no longer make mud wallows in the yard or frisk about in the snow. The day came when he could not walk outside to relieve himself on his own. We knew the time was coming to say good-bye to our fluffy friend.

Now he has joined all the other gone-but-not-forgotten doggy members of our family—Timmy, Daisy, Eric, Sam, Thor, Skye, Sunny, Mac, and Bailey. We miss them all.