With a nod to our ancestors...

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:52:55 GMT

I say our ancestors, because I've always loved old stuff, and some of this did not come from my ancestors.

I don't have a microwave. I don't have a dishwasher, or a clothes dryer.

It's just me and the small "petting zoo" (that's what my son calls it) of companion animals here at the cottage, and I don't mind doing things the old-fashioned way.

My kitchen has stuff in it that my immediate ancestors would have used (and in many cases, someone's did) 50, 75, and 100 years ago.

( For DW readers, more photos behind the cut... )

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Things that make you say, hmmmm...

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:01:07 GMT

Something in Jenny Lanctot's March 22 Ancestor Spotlight post caught my eye.

Aside from the fact that the post was interesting and well-written. Jenny sets the bar pretty high in that regard.

No, it was what she said before she ever started telling the story of Charles Crowe.

For now, I will try to spotlight at least one ancestor per month, (hopefully) alternating branches of my family. I think they get a little touchy when I spend too much time on the "other" side, which is why I think I have such a hard time finding information. (My emphasis added.)

No one really talks - or blogs - about that.

You know, those "moments" when something unexplainable happens while you are plowing - or plodding - along on your research...

Like the time I was trying to figure out where the family of my maternal great-great grandmother, Catherine C Mueller was in between 5 Sep 1832, when they stepped off the boat in New York, and sixteen years later, when Catherine married Jacob Williams in Franklin Co., KY.

I was using Ancestry to search historic records for each member of the family listed on the passenger list for the ship Elisabeth, which had sailed from Bremen, Germany.

And I looked up from the keyboard and saw that all the search fields were written in another language. I knew it had to be German, even though I don't speak, read or write German.

But Catherine did.

Instinctively, I knew I was entering the correct data in those fields. ~ tab, type, tab ~

As I stared at the computer monitor, I got that prickly, tingly feeling in the crown of my head that I nearly always get when something otherworldly occurs.

And I knew the moment was about to end if I looked away.

It did as soon as I did. Back to English.

I could only recall three fields. I scribbled them down on my handy-dandy scratch pad, and went to Google Translate.

Geburtsdatum - date of birth
Geburtsort - place of birth
Todesdatum - date of death

I've kept that piece of scrap paper in my hard copy Mueller family research file. For years.

I've never been able to re-create the anomaly.

Then, there are the dreams.

Especially the dreams that occur just before or after unexplainable events.

I have a Black and Decker programmable coffee-maker. Over the years, I've had several of them. What can I say? It's my brand, and I like having my coffee ready when I rise in the morning.

I stayed up way too late one night shakin' the family tree, looking for some Wingfields. When I realized how late it was, I got my butt in gear and shut down the cottage for the night.

Including setting up the coffee-maker.

I had a dream. Three of my ancestors showed up to confront me.

Including the woman on the left in this photo, looking much as she does in the photo.

She was my paternal great-great grandmother, Mary C Dunn Callaway Williams.

I don't know who the other two were, but Grandmother Mary wasn't pleased.

She told me not to forget her (she's one of my toughest brick walls). She also said I was spending too much time on "those people." I protested meekly. She was having none of it, and repeated herself.

When I awoke the next morning, the coffee-maker had not. I got the prickly, tingly scalp feeling, but told myself it was late when I went to bed and I probably had forgotten to program the appliance.

That night, I made sure I hit the program button, and wrote it on a post-it note that I stuck to the kitchen counter in front of the pot.

No coffee the next morning either.

Since that time, I've plugged that pot - and two other identical ones - into outlets in three locations in my kitchen.

When I don't get my morning coffee automatically, I know I need to pay some attention to the Callaways...the pot works fine after that.

Sometime, I'll tell ya about my haunted printer.

I have a witness to its hijinks.

The journey is good.

The ancestors will guide us if we let them.

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Am having just way too much fun...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:54:20 GMT

Tracking the ancestors of some of the family in-laws...

Have just discovered, unbeknownst to him, that my brother-in-law named his blue and gold macaw after his 5th great-grandfather...

Not just a whole lot of Ichabods running around these days...

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Shakin' the Family Tree

With a nod to our ancestors...

Things that make you say, hmmmm...

Am having just way too much fun...