The Land of Counterpane

The Land of Counterpane

That’s the name of one of my favorite Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses.

    

When I was sick and lay a-bed, I had two pillows at my head, And all my toys beside me lay, To keep me happy all the day. And sometimes for an hour or so I watched my leaden soldiers go, With different uniforms and drills, Among the bed-clothes, through the hills; And sometimes sent my ships in fleets All up and down among the sheets; Or brought my trees and houses out, And planted cities all about. I was the giant great and still That sits upon the pillow-hill, And sees before him, dale and plain, The pleasant land of counterpane. http://www.lnstar.com/mall/literature/rls/LandofCounterpane.htm

It is also a place I would go every time I laid upon my mother’s quilt on her and Dad’s bed when I was a very small child.

The Double Wedding Ring Quilt.

I so loved to dream of my future life – of whom and what I would become - as I laid back on their bed.

I refused naps and so Mom settled for me having quiet time on her bed –

IF – if I promised not to jump up and down on it.

Their bed was one of those beds a kid just HAS to jump up and down on!

And of course I was the kid that would wait until Mom was out hanging clothes up on the line to make my move.

First, I would sneak and check out the kitchen window on the east side of the house and make sure she was really out there hanging clothes up.

Then, I would run as fast as my tiny little feet and legs could go back to her bedroom on the west side of the house and take a vaulting box- like leap over the foot board and swing my body up onto the mattress atop that beautiful Double Wedding Ring Quilt!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/islandphotobug/6942589175/

Drunk with just the preliminary thoughts of my sin of JUMPING ON MOM AND DAD’S BED, I would get my arms started in a wind milling motion first – thinking that would give me more upward thrust in my quest to touch the ceiling.

Then I would give a few leg thrusts downward into the mattress – because

EVERYONE knows that’s how cats get ready to jump… and I was a cat.

(At four or five years old you can be whomever or whatever you desire…)

Next, I would execute the initial leap.

It had to be good, for like a rocket, if your trajectory was wrong you could go spiraling out of control and in Mom and Dad’s small room that meant blasting your head off the wall, or worse, crashing into the corner of the upright chest of drawers – I had done that plenty of times!

If I started the jump sequence just right I could get in several huge bounding leaps from top to bottom and back again before losing control and aborting the repeated launching of my body- rocket by landing on my back in the middle of the bed.

If I heard the slam of the screen door on the other side of the house that meant I had mere seconds to stop the sequence and straighten the Double Wedding Ring Quilt before Mom came in from hanging laundry on the line.

I became an expert at recovery mode.

After the crash landing on my back I would start singing to myself as if I had been doing that the entire time she was working out at the line (silence was a dead giveaway in the Johnson household that there were some serious misdeeds going on somewhere!)

I would immediately sit Indian Style in the middle of the bed and reach in front of me and straighten the corners at the foot of the bed.

Then I would stretch out and reach behind me and straighten the corners at the head of the bed.

All the while singing to keep up the charade of my practicing nursery rhymes or songs from the radio and sitting in quiet time like I was told.

The times that I actually did sit quietly in quiet time I would play upon the quilt lost in a world of my own making.

The Double Wedding Ring Pattern always looked like a road or pathway to me.

Kind of like the Yellow Brick Road, but with the faded, beautiful colors and styles of the 1930’s clothes that it was pieced from.

Over the years I walked my fingers down the rounded pathways to foreign lands, over mountain ranges I hoped to climb, through the caverns and valleys I planned to delve into with my pick and shovel to find fossils and treasures, and the bridges I would traverse across the mighty rivers of the world - but always my journeys ended with walking my fingers from my make believe land onto Garrison Creek Road, down our drive way across Garrison Creek that bounded our farm like a royal mote, up our driveway, and into our farm yard back home where it was safe and warm.

I spent many an hour studying that Double Wedding Ring Quilt.

Entrenched in my memory are the colors, the designs, the stitches that were so unique to that particular quilt.

I knew that someday I wanted to know how to do that.

I knew I never wanted to forget those images.

They were loving, warm images from my early childhood.

The ones that make life seem like a paradise made just for you.

When our old farm house burned and all the family heirlooms were gone with it, I thought I would only have those images to remember that quilt by.

Yesterday, at the John Miller Community Center in Roberts Park, I rounded a quilt display and was instantly brought back to jumping on Mom and Dad’s bed, to walking my fingers on the path to make believe journeys, to dreaming of making my future quilts for my someday family, to curling under the quilt with my mom and reading before bedtime as she waited for Dad to come home from the second shift at D&M.

It was like seeing an old childhood friend after 40 years.

It was not Mom’s quilt.

That one had burned in a fire around 1998.

This quilt was quilted and finished in 2008 from a top that was bought at a yard sale in Liberty Indiana.

The Quilt Show information tag said it was 1930’s fabrics.

I could NEVER forget those fabrics.

I could NEVER forget those designs.

I could NEVER forget those colors.

They were my land of counterpane.

They were once again right before my eyes in a quilt.

In The Double Wedding Ring Quilt that Sandy Brown completed and owns today.

I must take my mother to the John Miller Community Center to see that quilt before the show closes.

I have so many questions to ask.

My mother lived in Liberty for a short while when she was a child.

Where did HER quilt come from?

Who quilted it?

How old was it?

And to think that I was tempted to skip the Conner Quilters Quilt Show because I was tired.

Not only would I have missed the Quilt Show, but also the Still Life Art Competition, the Flower Show, the Woodcarvers Demonstration, and the Shawnee Valley Dulcimers Historical Concert.

I would have missed the chance to be a kid again jumping on Mom and Dad’s bed in the Indiana summer time enjoying the simple thrills that life can bring to us.

Goldie Locks Got Her Hair Cut!!!!!

One of the pet names I have called my seven year old daughter since she was tiny is Goldie Locks. 

Well, Goldie Locks gave up her hair last Friday June 14^th.  Since the new Great Clips of Connersville had its grand opening on Friday and one of my closest childhood friends, Stephanie Amis, is the manager I decided that would be the perfect time and place for my daughter, Rebekah Brumfield, to donate her hair to Locks For Love.

THE golden locks!

Little did we know Rebekah would also wind up being their first customer in the store! We all remarked how this was an excellent way to open a new business – with heartfelt good will and lots of love. I am also touched that my good childhood friend, Stephanie, is one of my daughter’s heroes. Rebekah would love to be a hairstylist like Stephanie when she grows up.

Rebekah and her mentor Stephanie Amis, Great Clips Manager

This is not the first time a member of my family has decided to do this. In February of 2012 my twenty-four year old son, William Massanet, donated his hair in St. Louis to Locks for Love. He had been growing his hair out for that purpose for about 18 months. He had said that the last few months were the worst. He felt like a wild animal with hair that long. By the way, he has been growing it out ever since with the possibility of donating it to Locks For Love once again.

William about to get his long curly locks "Cut For Kids" 

William after all the hair came off in February 2012

Rebekah’s hair has been long for about five years. When she remembered the trouble it was to have such long hair during her swimming lessons at the park pool last year she did not want to repeat it all this year. So, she asked if she could get her hair cut like one of her favorite book characters – Judy Moody.

When I looked at her hair I decided it probably was long enough for donation to Locks For Love if she wanted to do that. She enthusiastically agreed. Rebekah has repeatedly said she would like to give her hair to a child that was going through chemotherapy and had lost their own.

Rebekah knows what it feels like to be sick. She was premature at birth, being born a full six weeks early. At the age of two years she started developing respiratory infections and pneumonia repeatedly. After five years of medications, breathing treatments, and surgery she is now a basically healthy little girl with occasional allergies.

Since I have been growing my hair out for an historic hair style for the Bicentennial Celebration my own hair is getting quite long. Stephanie asked me if I was going to donate my hair too. Right now I have chickened out, but I thought that would be great for an After The Bicentennial Celebration Celebration. My children are such an inspiration in their daily lives, and now with their donations, that I am pretty sure I will soon follow their examples. 

We have moved back to Connersville Indiana!

Just this week we have moved our digs back to Connersville Indiana.

So many good things happen here that its hard to stay away.

Any way, more is to come and changes are in store, so please bear with me and keep an eye out for the new things on the horizon here.

It's good to be back!

-Suzanna

Its All in a Song....

It started in earnest yesterday when a friend of mine shared a song lyric in her writing and I instantly knew that not so distant place she was coming from.

Isn't that the way it is with the senses?

We already KNOW before we know, ya know?! HA!

Music has been one of the things that reached me first I think.

It makes sense you know.

We are told babies are subjected to mother's music choices in-eutero, developing a taste or disdain for it then.

I think my mother listened to any kind of hippy music she could in 1968.

She and Dad certainly had a bit of the back to the land lust in their hearts when they moved the entire family of themselves, four kids, and one (ME!) on the way to the farm on Garrison Creek in September 1968.

That is one of those things I have yet to ask Mom -

"What in the heck were you thinking at that time?!"

I laugh because of course I know some of the answers to that question already, but of course, there are always things left unsaid.....

The music of the late 1960's and the early 1970's really touched my young heart.

The other children were older and had chores.

I was THE BABY - I still am at age 44......

THE BABY was too little, too young, too bratty, too pestering, too .....precious? to allow to go gallivanting like the rest all over 65 acres of heaven and dangers.

As such I played with the farm animals and played pretend a lot.

When I was old enough to be trusted with the portable record player - under Mom's watchful eye at the kitchen table- I was allowed to listen to certain albums of my older siblings' collections.

But the things I liked most to listen to were the songs played on the still young FM band of the radio!

This included : Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, The Mamas and The Papas, just all sorts of stuff.

This was a time in music history for exploration.

New freedoms, new technology, new laws - all things were getting an overhaul in our country then.

This was reflected in the lyrics, and the sounds, the instruments, the singers and song writers.

Most of the songs I remember today go back to that period of my life.

My surroundings were idyllic and like paradise so my recollections of the background music that filled my life carries that connotation also.

Yesterday as I drove in the car I put one of my CSNY Cd's in the stereo. (That's Crosby Stills Nash and Young for those too young to know...)

To my delight my 6 year old daughter knew the lyrics as well as I did.

Here was our favorite from yesterday:






 Before the drive in the car, but after I heard the reference to the Lovin' Spoonful, I also was made aware of Richie Havens' passing.

Here is another influence in my childhood:

One of my favorites of his covers:

When music is so simple, so revealing, so pure - how can it not touch a person's heart?

Then again these songs reflected what I was being taught in my everyday life so it all seemed to flow together and seem right with the world.

Little did I know that the world across the creek and down that country road was so very different than what I was taught at home, or what I was hearing in the songs on the radio.

When life gets crazy, or I do, I always turn to those songs of that time.

There was a great collective angst in the American life at that time, even if we were told to have a Coke and a Smile, or use Palmolive to have the softest hands and nails - thereby making our domestic lives blissful.....or some other tripe that was thrown in our faces by media.

I know my forum here is history.

Art history is so relevant.

Cultural history in all forms is so relevant.

There are things to be learned in all the corners of life folks.

Art is just one of the mediums in which we are pushed to tweak our perspective to see the other person's perspective a bit better.

Maybe their perspective is so much more like our own than what we previously believed.

Music has always been a basic human common denominator.

Across all cultures people can enjoy a simple beat, rhythm, tune, note.

I challenge you to go out and find a common rhythm with another being today.

MAKE history for a change, not just read about it, or ponder it.

Me, and our dog Troubles -aptly named, roughly 1972 or so.

-Suzanna 

FOREBEARS

I joke a lot about the term above - FOREBEARS.

I have said a thousand times it makes me sound like I came from a clan of cave bears or something.

As you well know I look to my ancestors a lot and try to envision what they worked so hard for so that future generations (me and mine) could have life better than they did.

I really feel the NEED to not let their hard works, efforts, values and morals go to waste.

I guess if I did not feel that MINE reflected all of THEIRS I would not desire to uphold THEIRS so very much.

Today while mindlessly gulping up images from my Facebook news feed I stumbled across one image that stopped me in my ancestral coal tracks.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Time-Travelers-come-travel-back-in-time/284477301577152

My Kentucky families came from farming, tobacco fields, moon shining, and coal mining.


Pretty typical when you talk about the 1700's to the 1950's.

My father's parents and grand parents basically told him to get his young 15 year old rump away from all the rough life "back in the hills" and make a new life in Connersville Indiana.

Dad's life has not been easy.

Dad's life has been much easier than that of HIS father (who died of TB when just in his 20's with a young wife, two boys- Uncle Robert and my dad, and aging parents to take care of.)

Dad's life has been much easier than that of HIS grandfather's (whose OWN father died when he was young and had to help HIS mother raise the other children.)

Dad has had quite a few modern factories to work in, modern warehouses, he even worked in a hospital.

Heck, in the 1950's, when dad came to Connersville Indiana the economy was so good that people were walking and shopping downtown from dawn till dusk three deep in the sidewalks.

That's the way folks around here tell it.

And by all the photos in the museum and history books it seems that IS the way it was.

Dad says that you could set out in the morning to get a job and by noon you could have FIVE!

I think Dad worked every job he could find so he could make money.

Times were rough growing up in the mountains of Kentucky, so he had the example of "HUSTLING your rear", or working hard as he would say.

Every thing Dad has provided for his entire family has been much better than he had it or the generations before had it.

Dad also made sacrifices for his family that enhanced OUR lives, but perhaps did not provide for his own person aspirations like he first thought it would

He wanted to go to the Air Force.

He was too young and wanted his mother to sign papers -  she would NOT!

(THANK YOU GRANNIE KATIE.)

If she had, then Dad would not have stuck around and met Mom.

He would not have seen her black hair and dark cat eyed glasses and beautiful 1950's curves in a skirt and totally change his mind about going any where that she was NOT!

I am very thankful for all of this because I am the very LAST child they had!

I waited on the side lines for QUITE awhile till it was my turn at bat!

Maybe that is WHY I am thankful for all the serendipitous events that led up to my life.

When I was a teenager I asked my Dad why he never went back, like many did, to Jackson County and build a house on his share of the land.

"I just wanted better for my wife and kids, honey."

Dad never wants to put anyone or their way of life down, so it was hard to get more out of him than that ....until I was old enough to ask more pointed questions.

I learned to ask questions in a way where he could just tell it like it was, not having to make a statement that would pass judgement.

He, too, likes to be reverent to the efforts that were made for him.

Basically his answers summed up to this:

While he loved his family very much and they were the closest things to Heaven he thought he would ever find on this side, he realized that there were things about that life he just refused to have in OUR lives.

NO moon shining and running!

NO coal mining life and death and diseases and enslavement.

NO tobacco field dreams to be dashed with pests and floods.

NO rocky top mountain poverty farming.

Not all areas there in Jackson county offered this type of life, some were better, some were worse.

BUT, these were the choices offered to my father and he said "No thank you. I will make mine up here in Indiana."

He sacrificed life with the family he knew that was left in Kentucky for life with family that went on to Indiana.

He sacrificed life there to have a new family here.

MY LIFE was a paradise on our little farm in southwestern Fayette County Indiana, thanks to BOTH Mom and Dad.

Where I learned to run bare foot in the grass and gravel alike and wash my hair in the creek with my big sister!

I have to also thank my older siblings.

They worked harder than most of their friends in the 1960's and 1970's on our farm, but still we had it better than earlier generations.

We had electricity, running hot and cold water, we had an indoor toilet (which believe it or not you I-phone using techie junkies most folks in rural Indiana did NOT have until into the 1960's!), a telephone (with party line- EVERY nosey little sister's dream!), nice clean electric heat (in the newly added bedrooms), lush vegetable gardens and wild berries, apples and other fruit growing on 65 acres, I don't recall how many head of cattle (enough to be called a herd!), pigs, chickens, wild game, and T.V. (WHEN you could go outside and turn that monster sized aerial antenna pole -  AND when Channel 4 Indianapolis decided to have good enough signal to reach all the way out here in eastern Indiana!)

Dad had a rattle trap farm truck that would take us down dusty roads in the summer time to get a Chocola or Charms Blow Pop!

That same truck would scream all the way to the Nulltown Store

or Jim Lakes Grocery in Everton in the winter time for some treat as Dad stopped to get a plug of tobacco.

Yep, my childhood was a paradise.

I have all who came before me to thank.

OH, Suzanna! MARCH

March is a very busy month for me and my family historically.

Most of my family has been farmers, no matter if they were also factory workers, teachers, lawyers, soldiers, restaurant owners, retail workers, carpenters, you name it.

USUALLY they were farmers too.

That's just how it was.

If you had ground to work at least there was a garden going.

ALSO...

In my family March is a time for birthdays.

So I GUESS you could say the previous July was a very busy month historically for my family......

OH, Suzanna!

Any way, both farming and birthdays were the switch in gears that pulled my family out of the winter dens to brush off the wood ash from the stove and breathe some fresh almost spring air.

(Remember how when ever I read about my genealogy the term FOREBEARS always pops up? Well I thought I would start referring to us as though we were/are those bears I am always hearing of...hence the use of "dens" in the above.)

My son's birthday was the 7th.

And so of course that started the motherly boo hoo fest that lasted for 24 hours and ended in swollen nasal passages and longing for my grown 24 year old child six hours away from me. (And incidentally made me cling to my much younger six year old still home with me all that much more.) He is 100% what the typical American USED to be viewed as - a mutt. Just going back to his Great Grandparents he is: Irish/Polish+ French/Spanish and IrishIrishIrish/German+ Scottish/German. There is Catholic and Jewish and Protestant and Anglican and Quaker and Pentecostal and maybe even some American Indian beliefs in there, heck I don't know. The kid is a mess I tell ya... Actually, he is really well rounded and a more solid character I have yet to see in a while.

My father's 75th birthday is today, March 11th.

 (My father is the #1 Flawed Hero of my life. Thank you Mom and Dad for deciding to get hitched and have too many kids- of which I am the LAST one....) Dad's humble beginnings and his dedication to working to constantly improve his life are what drew him to my mother. Mom, the black haired beauty with the quick wit (and mouth? "WATCH IT SUZANNA GAYLE!") was just what he was looking for to launch his empire of Johnsons along the banks of the Garrison Creek...hahaha. Actually if you ask them both they probably had no idea WHAT they were doing! I am just glad they did it!

HIS brother's birthday is March 13th.

(Although, Uncle Robert is older than Dad, his antics all throughout his life has always made me THINK he was the younger one when I was small! ) Uncle Robert is only comparable to Uncle Si on Duck Dynasty, but actually he could teach Uncle Si a thing or two about being an awe inspiring Uncle. He too, chose his wife VERY well. Aunt Donna is a SAINT! That's all there is to say about THAT!

MY older sister's REPEATED celebration of her 16th birthday is March 17th....

(She is the dark haired beauty with the icy BLUE eyes! Every bit of the paternal Irish Pearson/Murphy comes out in her I tell you! And a bit of the crazy Scottish from Mom's side oozing out every once in a while!) My sister was my mother's chief of staff in our house! My sister has said that there are so many Johnsons that the last time she got to go to the bathroom alone she was 14 months old - when my oldest brother was born! She will just LOVE that I told that one..... My sister's character LOOKS more wild and crazy than mine...but SHE is the one that has constantly tried to teach me "what a lady is supposed to do" since I jumped onto the scene(I was born breech with my feet first!). I just didn't listen too well, I guess. I dress conservatively, but I am the one with all the hair brained ideas!

April and May are also big birthday months for my family, but March seemed to just burst forth and break through the icy winter with party after party and spring cleaning and spring farming and planting to do.

It was and is one of my favorite months.

We have days like yesterday - in the upper 60s and just so nice!

And today- almost 50's and over cast, but hints of spring popping out all over!

We are truly blessed!

Happy March!

-Suzanna

Gearing Up for the Connersville, IN Bicentennial Celebration

I promised this morning on Facebook that I would post here ways to spiff up the homestead to help Connersville show its best face forward this summer.

So here we go:

1. Really simple here, just make sure the place is clean, neat and tidy.

    Don't have the ability or the tools to do this? Call a church in your neighborhood, there are plenty of hands looking for community projects to do and help out.

http://inwhiteriver.wrsp.in.gov/EVENTSCALENDAR/Event/EventID/424

2. Fresh coat of paint to things that need painted.
    This can get costly I know, but sometimes if you call around some of the Big Box stores have some returned paints that may just be what will fill the bill for your needs. These returned paints are marked down for a quicker sale. Call locally first. If you don't have luck there, ask the managers if they would consider having a Bicentennial Spring Cleaning Sale - it could help them clear off some merchandise and help the area by having more affordable paint supply right before the throngs of folks come in to town to see us again after so long!

3. Do some historic landscaping.
    Would like to do this but just do not have a CLUE as to where to begin? Call the Master Gardeners and gardening clubs, even the Extension office may have some info for you . Certainly the Fayette county public Library has SHELVES of books dedicated to gardening/landscaping.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/mg/about.html

4. Along the same lines but a bit off the beaten path (pun intended) plant an historic veggie or flower garden this spring!
   There are some awesome materials on the internet and again at the library about:
     - Victory Gardens
     - Victorian Herb Gardens
     -Pioneer Kitchen Gardens
     - Truck Patches (Some of you may be too young to remember truck patches, they were what great grandma grew as EXTRA produce to have ready for the man that drove the Tomato Truck, the Turnip Truck the Potato Truck, etc. around and bought produce from local residents to sell at the town market.)
     -1970's Back to The Land Movement Homesteading Gardens (this includes urban gardens too!)

5. Add some vintage signage to the side of your garage.
    Some of the old signs were just absolute works of art. Don't have a couple hundred dollars to plunk down for a vintage metal sign? Look up the design on the internet and print it out, transfer it to some ply wood, paint it and clear coat it. Sure it won't last 70 years (or maybe it will) but it will be a fine piece of work you can take pride in. And it will help Connersville put on some new summer buttons and bows, hats and gloves, shoes and spats....you get the idea.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-STANDARD-SERVICE-PORCELAIN-SIGN-5FT-X-3FT-DOUBLE-SIDED-/321056328237?

6. Fix up some of the spots on the facade of the house and buildings on your lot that need attention.
    Even a brightly painted white house with gingerbread trim is quaint and inviting, making folks want to see more of our little town. Don't have the tools or the knowledge to do that? Why not call the Optimists Club, the Rotary, the boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts...you get the point. There are plenty of groups with in our community that may have folks that would love to teach you how to do these things. JUST ASK!

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/tim%20the%20tool%20man%20taylor
Classes

7. Create a block theme.
    Many neighborhoods around Connersville were built around the same time. Some are Victorian, some are more 1920's Bungalow era, while others are the post WWII subdivision construction. There are many others. Try to get others on your block to agree to decorate, landscape, or paint their homes in the historically correct time period.  Remember: the Bicentennial will coincide with 4th of July. That means a common theme could be 4th of July through the years!

8. Wear a vintage outfit to the festivities or just at home while doing yard work that week!
    Yes, it sounds silly, but you just may inspire some others to do the same thing. ( I do NOT advocate wearing your full 19th century trapper's gear or your Civil War era ball gown while pushing the lawn mower the week of July!)

http://emeraldparlor.wordpress.com/simplicity-pattern-reviews/

9. Sit out on your front porch more, or maybe even for the first time.
    How does this help? ANYTIME a community is out and about to see what's going on on the block makes a community better. there is more interaction. One can see other's needs better that way and can think about how they can help their neighbor.

http://www.sweetpeachblog.com/journal/2012/10/10/professional-porch-sitters-union.html

10. Become a local amateur historian. AND share your knowledge.
     Do you like the theater? Music? Art?  Collect as much info as you can on Connersville life and share it with your friends, loved ones, co-workers, class, church group or what ever!  It matters not if you are a professional or an amateur, just get out there and showcase your talents and interests.

Whitewater Valley Arts
Brian Keith Wallen
Old Photos in a musical slideshow

     Like model building and have some pretty cool examples of home made kits? Share it with some of the Facebook Groups created to help organize and celebrate Connersville's  history.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seattle_-_Boys_with_model_airplanes_at_Alki,_1925.gif


Are you a hairstylist and know tons and tons about vintage quiofs? Give a demo at a local salon a few times- you may be able to pick up a few more clients just by showing them how to do a Regency Up Do!

http://pinterest.com/bonlet/regency-hair-styles/


The ideas are endless.

My point is that you do not have to have a house in town to affect a positive response from others around you to help give Connersville a spit and shine. Sometimes our minds need to be kick started with new twists to older ideas for us to feel like we have something to give.

At the very least you can contact me here, OR you can contact the Fayette County Historical Society or the Bicentennial Committee and ask for more details on what help needs to be done around the community.

-Suzanna

OH, Suzanna! Women's History Month

I regret that my internet connection was seriously messed up the last few weeks. I am hoping that is all resolved now.

Actually, not having the distraction of the questionably useful internet, I was able to catch up on some reading materials that had been patiently waiting on my desk.

It is a long twisted story that even I do not remember how it all brought me to researching Virginia Claypool Meredith this last week. I THINK it involved: Purdue Home Extension materials, 4-H, and other agriculture resources in Cambridge City Indiana.

Little did I know that my limited access to the internet would allow me the brief foray into the world of "The Queen of American Agriculture." It was just enough to wet my appetite for a good story of the type local girl makes good.

I was not even thinking of Women's History Month in March.

Yes, sometimes I am that oblivious, er... dedicated to my research!

I have to admit that when a program on Women in History is announced I immediately have visions of suffragettes with banners stretched across their bosoms marching forever in the streets from the 19th and early 20th century along with the bra burning feminists of the 1960's and 1970's and it all just starts to make my eyes glaze over. I am sick to death of the extreme view that media and our collective memory paints on women's history.

http://coreycr0910.wikispaces.com/Wyoming

http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/meaning-what-all-the-bra-burning/

For every one of those women screaming at the top of their lungs and waving their hands there were uncountable ones working within their own communities to raise themselves and others up above what was status quo or what came before. QUIETLY. With love and care.

We like to think, here in our modern era, that excitement and extreme action are the only things that will make change.

Do not get me wrong - there is a time and place for all of that. Just not always in my FACE!

A repeatedly clanging cymbal causes more harm than good in the orchestra.

Many people have shown us time and time again that if we behave better, we will BE better. If we think higher, we will BE higher. If we act nobler we will LIVE nobler. That is a grand way of saying there is an enormous amount of very hard work that goes into actually making change.

I think many have heard me go on and on before about how everything is tied to dialog and relationship.

One of the hardest things ever - even now- is for the opposite sexes to get to a point that they can converse and so foundationally get to know the other and therefore better understand their perspectives.

How is that done?

Well, I turn to histories, personal ones, and national ones, for an insightful answer.

We have to be very careful to NOT idolize characters in history. No human is perfect. NO ONE. Not in history, not now.

We have to weigh their actions, attitudes, and fruits of labor in light of their circumstances and limitations.

Each one of us is made fearfully different. Our personal, educational, financial, physical, AND FAMILIAL circumstances always come into play.

One thing I have always been fascinated with is how in the later half of the 19th century folks SEEMED to have a more intense sense of duty. There was a push to be and act and think better. More improved living. REVOLUTION. UPHEAVAL. Always with an (at least) outward face of action for the betterment of mankind.

Somewhere that all changed.

Virginia Claypool Meredith was a woman that lived through all of this and started to see the decline before she passed away.

I think I would have like Jenny, as she was called by her family and friends.

http://www.mrlinfo.org/history/biography/meredithvc.htm

She liked to play and work like the men farmers did in her time (1848 -1936) She wanted to do many different things in her life, not just one profession and one passion. She loved to write and she loved to speak publicly - after a time.

She loved farming. It was in her blood and soul.

She loved the Whitewater Valley and was loathed to leave it each time work called her.

She loved being active in her communities and doing things that produced real action, real change, real help.

She had many struggles in her life despite coming from more than modest means. My means have always been modest, but the struggles I identify with.

She used her mind, her lovely speech, her kindness, her money - when appropriate- to affect positive changes for personal circumstances, but more for her community.

Her desires for improving women's lives, she maintained, were also desires for improving men's lives.

{"We seek to emphasize what we truly believe, that the farm and its home offer an opportunity for the investment of all that manhood is or may be - for the investment of all that womanhood is or may be."
- Virginia Meredith, from a speech given at the Annual Conference of Farmer's Institute Workers, West Lafayette, Ind., October 1910.-}

The above quote is from the book "The Queen of American Agriculture" by Whitford, Martin, and Mattheis, a part of the Founders Series of Purdue University Press.

Another of my favorite quotes form the book is:

"Indeed, a very modern definition of education is that it consists of the development of intelligence, a training of skill, and the learning of how to live agreeably with our fellowmen.." - Virginia Meredith, The Purdue Agriculturist, March 1924.

I realize that maybe folks that were involved with Purdue University may be very familiar with the legacy of Mrs. Meredith. However, not being connected with 4-H, FFA, or Purdue University, I had not heard of Mrs. Meredith except that she was the wife of Mr. Meredith, daughter-in-law of Civil War  General Solomon Meredith.

She grew up on the Maplewood Farm of her father Austin Claypool, in Connersville, Indiana. (By the way- today is Connersville's 200th birthday celebration at the Fayette County Public Library. On April 13, 1909 Virginia spoke at the dedication of FCPL's predecessor, the Connersville Public Library.) I grew up in the Connersville area.

As the Meredith family farm is just mere blocks from my home here in Cambridge City, Indiana, I know what she looked out on every day. I know the area that inspired her. I know of the culture and times she lived and what influenced and inspired her from an early age.

I feel I have very much in common with this woman that lived until a mere month before my mother was born.

I have thought of that often. My mother's mother was an educated woman, taking great pains to stay up on what was new, and current, and educational, and progressive. As my grandmother was born in 1904, she surely must have had Mrs. Meredith as one of her inspirations of her childhood. My grandmother was born and raised in Shelby County Indiana, daughter of farmers for generations and was a teacher, and later a welfare field agent in the 1930s- 1940s.  So much of her upbringing was like Mrs. Meredith.

Did grandma know of her? Surely. Did she pass on what she thought of her? Not to me.

I have spent my whole life looking to others that have gone before me to inspire me to be a better person, to look to them on how to make life better for me and others.

Virginia Claypool Meredith is one of those people who, even after nearly 80 years since her death, is still inspiring people with just her life as a testimony of how to be better.

-Suzanna

Oh! Suzanna

This winter has been an odd one for me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dejavu66/7905624272/

Illness, car problems, and icy roads have kept me mostly at home.

As in other times of my life, this has left me plenty of time to reflect on how my situation puts me in a position similar to previous generations of women in my family.

Up until about 50 years ago it was common for the wife and mother to stay at home most of the time to tend to the house and home.

As those previous women would attest to I am sure, it is a mixed bag. Sometimes it is maddening. Sometimes it is a great relief to not HAVE to get out and GO!

My attitude will undoubtedly change in a few weeks when the green shoots and tender buds start to appear on the scene in greater numbers. But, for now being at home as a necessity has not been so awfully, well...AWFUL.

There is a rhythm that has been lost in the repose that used to go along with the winter season. I have always been one that was a bit too attuned to the natural rhythms of life than what this most modern of societies likes.

If it did not feel right or natural and felt against the grain in a major way, I had been encouraged to just "Get over it and go on." That is sound advice in most situations, and so I did.

But...

There is such a thing as knowing what you SHOULD be doing in accordance of WHO you are.

There is a great deal of treasure built into quiet times. Reflection, contemplation, self inspection.

There is a great deal of treasure built into reflecting on society too.

How does one compare one's self to society?

Most of that is determined by what you are taught.

But....

There is a thing. Heredity.

That is where genealogy has helped me to understand WHY I am the way I am more than anything else.

Maybe it is not so for everyone else, but for me it has opened a new door to understanding my character traits.

Why do I feel as though the life is sucked from my very bones unless I live near water?
Why do I have a proclivity to gusting winds and biting cold stinging my nose?
Why do I not feel healthy unless there is a deep grounding cold prompting my heart to blast my thick blood through my hearty vessels and give warming life to my extremities?
Why do I hold up in any 18 mile mountainous hike better than most in my hiking parties, even though I am in middle age and now overweight?
Why do I challenge any attempt to take my freedoms away from me as though my life blood were being mortgaged?
Why do I favor music created from strings and percussion more than any other?

As I have spent most of my life looking at how I was formed - the gene pool, the attitudes, the society, the experiences - I increasingly believe that so much of that was set forth as building blocks of what could be. And then my own will, knowingly or not, was what decided to pick up certain of those building blocks over others.

Genealogy is history after all. Our personal history. We are commanded to learn from history. Not to make the same mistakes made before.

Quiet time is needed to reflect on the steps to follow this command.

In an attempt to answer for my self the above questions on my personality I have gleaned a wealth of POSSIBLE reasons.

Always remember, after a certain point of going back down your family roots, most things just CANNOT be proved. So, here is where researching local and world history/social studies comes into play. Trying to find the world social climate helps you to guess at what things are most likely to have occurred and why.

Social norms change sometimes dramatically, and sometimes not very much at all in a short period of time. There is always a WHY. It just is not always so obvious.

One question has always driven me in my research, whether it be genealogical, scientific, historic, etc.:

How will this knowledge I find provoke a change in me and how will I then use it to change me and mine?

Along the way I have received great joy from poking fun at myself and supposed ancestors that have helped make up the fabric that was used to stitch me up in my mother's womb.

One of those stories can be summed up as follows:

George Hume 1698 - 1760
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY/2000-05/0959432220

Goofy looking kinda guy isn't he?

Well....

He and his entire family, as well as Clan,  (go research the history of Scottish clans...Its all very confusing and silly really. A medieval Jerry Springer show if you ask me!) get their Jacobite butts kicked in the Stuart uprisings to throw King George into the ocean, oh! I mean off the throne. In the process these upstarts and threats to the throne have all their titles stripped and holdings, properties, monies etc dashed away and many are imprisoned or sold into slavery in Barbados!

George, the one with the smart alec little smirk in the portrait  above - gotta love that! - was pardonned his prison sentence on the condition he leave Scotland and never return! HA! Talk about burning bridges!

Now, there is dispute as to whether he came to the Virginia colony on his own, or if he pretty much was thrown in the bottom hold of a clipper ship and dumped at the first opportunity to say he was in the American colonies!

At any rate he lost NO TIME AT ALL once his cloth slippers hit the wooden dock or the muddy bank, whichever was the case in 1721!

1723-26 he was the Assistant Surveyor of William and Mary College; 1726 Surveyor of Spotsylvania County; 1727-28 laid out Fredricksburg, 1729 was commissioned First Lieutenant in Captain William Bledsoe’s Company of the Virginia Militia and served against the Indians, 1729 became receiver of His Majesty’s Rates on Tobacco, 1730 Justice of Spotsylvania County, 1731 Deputy to the King, 1739 Vestryman of St. George’s Parish, Spotsylvania County and Deputy Surveyor of Orange County, SIGH…… 1751 Surveyor of Orange County, 1755 Surveyor of Fredrick County  AND had the time to teach SURVEYING -  to GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

We all know that Washington was an impressive individual, but how did he become that way? He had MENTORS! For a little bit more on Washington check this out.

I think my little Scottish George had a big axe to grind in the back of old King George.

I also think he saw this very promising Washington as a way to build up the next generation to overthrow some very wrong people. I am not saying that George Hume was the man behind the man of Washington - not at ALL.

I am saying that we all become a product of the people and events in our lives that mean the most. And sometimes, just sometimes, genealogy can give you some answers to the ultimate question one asks after EVERY family reunion:

"WHY DO THEY HAVE TO ACT LIKE THAT?!"

http://codexceltica.blogspot.com/2012/08/bring-on-barbarians.html

As a side note, but also a point worth mentioning: the Gaelic foundations of the name Hume (Home, de Home) - Uamh means a cave, a clan's home. The Home or Hume clan motto is A HOME A HOME A HOME. I find this very interesting since my six year old daughter is most concerned about home and what it means to create and hang on to a family.

The Home Clan Tartan:

Hmmmm....
I think I need to make a cloak for my daughter from this and perhaps my son needs a kilt?!

Here are a few interesting links that may help your research:
http://www.averymiller.com/
http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/essays.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_surveyor

For now, I leave you with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSH0eRKq1lE#

Reading List

One of the things I am a great proponent of is a reading list. You have probably been exposed to this inflicted assignment way back in junior high or somewheres about.

I was looking for a list of best sellers from 1913 when I happened across a very interesting blog. From this blog I got a list of best selling books of the time.

On the list was someone that struck my eye as a very literary Hoosier - Gene Stratton Porter. Not her book Girl of the Limberlost, but Laddie.  Now, I was surprised to have never heard of this book, but then again Ms. Stratton was not long on my list of authors.

WHY?! I do not KNOW!

I have absolutely no excuse, just over sight.

So, I have taken it upon myself to at least start with Laddie. Why there? Because in summary it is about a family of settlers here in Indiana. That is it, plain and simple. UPDATE 2/19/2013: This is NOT about a family of settlers, as I had been told. This is about a family after the Civil War. As I am reading this to my 6 year old at bedtime, it is taking a while. So far I am reliving MY childhood days on an Indiana farm heavily wooded and crisscrossed with running water and hills and hallows through this wonderful book told by "Little Sister", Laddie's beloved younger sister. More to come!

It is written for those aged 9- 12 but, hey! A well written piece is a well written piece. AND you all know I love children's stories.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/91157814/laddie-by-gene-stratton-porter-vintage

If you have any recollections of this book please share. 

Here is that list from 1913:

The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill (not THE Winston Churchill!)
V.V.'s Eyes by Henry Sydnor Harrison
Laddie by Gene Stratton Porter
The Judgment House by Gilbert Parker
Heart of the Hills by John Fox, Jr.
The Amateur Gentleman by Jeffrey Farnol
The Woman Thou Gavest Me by Hall Caine
Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
The Valiants of Virginia by Hallie Erminie Rives
T. Tembarom by Frances Hodgson Burnett


For now I will resolve to find a hard copy of Laddie. I MUST hold this treasure in my hands for a midwinter story telling to my daughter - no e-reader stuff for us! It seems to defeat the purpose of an older work to be read in electronic form. It was written with holding and cradling its pages with in your intent grasp. A much more intimate affair.

-Suzanna

OH! Suzanna...What's in a name?

Now, I was not named after any one in particular but it is fun to do genealogy and find there were so many interesting characters with my name back through the years in our family.

Here is a copy of a genealogy done long ago on a part of my father's family that lived way way back over 100 years ago.....

Possibly THAT Susannah was just as mouthy as I and the Indians thought that instead of kill her and bring a host of bad medicine on themselves they would just release her to go back to her people and cause them more harm with her PRESENCE  than with her ABSENCE.....

sigh....OH! Suzanna.

Visit your local library, history museum, Family History Center or Genealogy Center and start your journey into family stories you never knew existed.

Another good resource is to visit Facebook and look for any genealogy pages on areas that your ancestors lived in. My family has connected with quite a few distant cousins we had not heard from in possibly 30 years this way.

Here is one that is from the Jackson County, Kentucky group page and where I got the graphic above:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/289962277699433/

The next one I will try to find is on Stamping Ground,Scott County, Kentucky.
<a href="http://www.genealogyinc.com/kentucky/scott-county/">Scott County, Kentucky Genealogy, Facts, Records & Links</a>

You never know what you will find.

-Suzanna