Category: Family

Related People

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My Grandfather (well, one of them)
My Grandfather (well, one of them)

I’ve spent quite a bit of time today with my mom looking at family letters, journals, pictures and memorabilia. I am very confused and totally impressed with anyone who spends more than half an hour studying genealogy. Think of it this way – most of us know who our parents are. That’s two people. A lot of us know or have known one or both of our sets of grandparents. It’s not too hard yet – that’s just six people all together. A few of us knew great-grandparents, or heard about them from people who knew them. We’ve just added eight more people to the mix, fourteen to keep track of. Still with me? Now maybe you get married and have children. Those poor kids have double that number to figure out because you’ve just joined them to another line of your spouse’s ancestry. And that number doubles every time you go back another generation. We haven’t said anything about aunts, uncles or cousins yet either.

And ancestors can really confuse you if they happened to have more than one marriage. Also in the past, people didn’t have a lot of imagination in naming their kids, or they were too busy, or something. They just kept picking the same names that their father or uncle or sister or brother had. So every generation had repeats with a number behind the name. (If you care about genealogy, pick a unique name for your child, please.)

I’ve about decided that I’m not going to get it all straight. I’m just going to remember some of the neat stories. For instance, one of my ancestors (George Boone III, poor guy) came over from England and enjoyed dabbling in real estate. He was the original owner of the tract of land in Maryland that became Washington, D.C. and in fact, Georgetown is named after him. There is even a plaque in the city that says so. Pretty cool, huh? Yes, there was also a George IV,

Another of my ancestors named Squire Boone (and I have to hand it to his parents for thinking of a name I certainly wouldn’t have thought of) had two sons, Edward and Daniel. He lived in Kentucky and yes they did have coonskin caps. Edward was my ancestor, but he was killed by Indians and his brother Daniel helped raise his children. I haven’t figured out how many “greats” I have to attach to it, but Daniel Boone was some kind of an uncle of mine.

There’s lots more and the really great thing is that so many of my ancestors were the bloggers of their day. They wrote journals, they were newspaper reporters and writers of one sort or another. Many were school teachers or ministers which gave them a familiarity with writing and an appreciation of family histories. One of “my people” sat in a tent one night during the Civil War and put down his thoughts in a poem and we have it today.

My great aunt Esther was one of the historians for our family on my mother’s side. In spite of the fact that she wrote a lot of her notes on napkins, and lost pages of letters all the time, she did have a large collection of family history that she passed on to my mom. That’s the material we are sorting through. My mom has compiled a two volume history from most of the writings but what do we do with those precious originals? I want to thank my ancestors for writing about their ordinary lives, which, turns out for some of them, were pretty extraordinary. If this makes you want to start a journal, I’m sayin’ just do it!

Do you have an interesting story in your family history? Tell it to me, please.

Winter comes.

Shirleyjdietz4 Comments
the cold season
the cold season

Hayward, Wisconsin is a place where it snows. The flakes were flying as we drove into town last Thursday for Thanksgiving.  The white blanket covered the ground and the fallen logs where we walked through the woods the next day.  Every gust of wind through the branches of the pines sent snow raining down all around us. At first, the cold was frightening but as I stayed out in it and worked up a sweat, I got used to it.  Now, four days past Thanksgiving, it is snowing again and this time it’s a storm big enough to deserve a name. Cleon.

Our trip into town proved the roads were icy with wet slush.  The sky is one solid, gray cloud that descends down to meet the horizon, cutting the visibility to about a quarter mile. Variations on muted gray, black and white with a little brown thrown in are the only colors nature has today. Things would seem dull if it weren’t for the colored lights and Christmas decorations up and down the streets. Hayward is a small town, a very small town, but it is the only real town in quite a large area of forests and lakes. And it is large enough to have a Walmart, which was a very busy place today.

I grew up here, in the country outside of Hayward.  I left and came back after I was married.  My children were born while I lived here and although I’ve been away again for more than twenty years it is still very homelike to me. My parents and my brother and his family still live in a development on the edge of town, on land that once belonged to my grandfather. We visited Hayward last June when it was all shades of green, brilliant blue skies, fields full of flowers, flowing rivers, and more than it’s share of the world’s mosquitoes. Now it is different.  It is white, very quiet, dark a good deal of the time, and there are no mosquitoes at all.

It is really quite magical to be able to stay in one place and have it change all around you. You would think you had been transported. I’m just sayin’ I am glad to be here for this first big snow of the year.

white on the road
white on the road
white in the woods
white in the woods

Grandma in her Garden

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My Mom loves to garden.  I call her Grandma sometimes because I have talked to my children about her for years and years. She is their grandma, my mom, Gwendolyn Boone Smith.  Gwendolyn who never had a middle name and didn’t need one because her first name was long enough for two. Grandma keeps saying […]

A Bit Worried

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my not smiling great grandparents
my not smiling great grandparents

I’ve been looking at multi-generational family photos recently and there’s something about them that has me a bit worried.  It stands out so clearly that I couldn’t help but notice – the older generation is not smiling.  I am already aware that getting older has its down side but could it be that old age is even worse than I had imagined?

There could be other explanations, and I’m considering them all.  Perhaps, even though they appear to be looking at the camera and are surrounded by family members who are posing, they don’t know their picture is being taken? No one said “Say cheese”?  Or perhaps they think they look scary when they smile, or maybe those muscles are tired and just don’t function anymore? They are all smiled out?  Could it be that just being there for the photo requires so much of them that they don’t have energy left to pretend that it’s fun?

When I go back to the very, very old pictures I can totally understand the grim expressions.  After all, they had to stand outside, in a lot of dark, heavy clothing, probably for a very long time to get that picture.  Notice that no one has thousands of those pictures in their family albums. But we are in the digital age and have thousands of pics on our phones! We can delete them with a touch of the finger.  If there’s a somber, semi-glaring face in there it must mean something.

And that is what worries me.  Someday there might be a lot of pictures of old aunt/grandma/relative/friend Shirley out there and I would like to either be smiling or making a funny face in all of them.  I want to know that it’s possible, no matter how tired I am, how much I hurt or how old I feel, to hide it from the  “youngers”.  They’ll find out soon enough how much fun it is.  I’m actually practicing my smile variations, hoping that one of them will become so habitual that it will be there on my face anytime there is a camera around.  It’s taking conscious effort but I’m just sayin’, I think it’s worth doing.

Hold On, I’m Thinking…

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20131008_095842
Green to you?

I am, without a doubt, a work in progress.  You would think that after six decades of thinking on different things I would have settled, but it’s not that easy.  The challenges come on a daily basis. I can’t even think the grass is green without wondering what green is and whether it’s the same to everyone who sees it.

I read.

I listen.

I consider.

Sometimes I read to affirm what I already think. When I recognize my own thoughts in someone else’s words I feel a kinship. I am not alone.  Great comfort, that is.  And the more eloquently it is expressed the more I love it and “like” it, follow it and repost it.  It’s not aimed at anyone. It’s about me and who I am.

Other times I read what I do not think, in order to know someone else – someone to whom I attribute great value and respect, or maybe someone who has taken a curiously different path.  I am glad to be reading them.

The funny thing I find is that their path has some of the same landmarks that mine does.  The landmarks, the questions, the struggles are much alike but they are certainly viewed from a different angle.  Seeing things from a different angle is helpful and healthy for me.  The challenges I face make me who I am as I read, listen and consider.  I’m just sayin’ I think it has to be this way and I’m ok with it.

Thoughts on a Clean House

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It’s embarrassing to be reminded.  Some people clean their houses every week, on the same day of the week.

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I’ve come so far from that, and I don’t necessarily call it progress.  My house gets… no wait, a room in my house may get cleaned when it becomes difficult to navigate through it.  My whole house gets cleaned only when I’ve lost something and need to find it. Of course, I might find it in the first room I clean, in which case only one room gets cleaned.

Spot cleaning is my specialty.  Spots on the floor, piles of mail on the table, sink full of dishes, a cat mess, a dead plant, are all within my 15 minute tolerance for housecleaning.  In fact I often turn to these obvious, flagrant crimes against clean to avoid other things I don’t want to do.  High levels of anxiety over other areas of life can be temporarily muted by these small but visible improvements.

My most effective tool against messy, dirty house is to invite company.  I like to have dinner time company and that is my most compelling reason to clean the living room, dining room and kitchen. If it’s the first time in my house for a visitor I am aware of how important that first impression can be.  I can get close to being fussy clean for those people.  If the company “knows” my kitchen from having been there many times, I skip being tidy because I’m counting on that first impression over-riding everything they’ve seen since.   It works.  Kind of…

Overnight company is more of a problem. I should really clean the whole house, except for rooms I keep locked (!!?) My solution is to only invite family, meaning people who have lived in my house before, to stay overnight.  I leave the cleaning supplies where they can find them and if they’re bothered they can do a little cleaning in their spare time. They are on vacation and have lots of that.

My bottom line is keeping relationships as the most important thing.  Remember that little poem?

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow

For babies grow up, we’ve learned to our sorrow

So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep

I’m rocking my baby, and babies don’t keep.

I don’t know who wrote it but I have it memorized from those days in the rocking chair with my little daughters.  It applies to company too, of all ages.  Better to let them know I like them and want to be with them, if they don’t mind my messy house. I’m just sayin’ they might even be relieved to see that my house looks kind of like theirs…

Old Jed

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On this pleasant day off from work I went to see my aunt and uncle who live a short walk away during the winter. Auntie Irene is my father’s sister and has always been one of my favorites along with her whole family – Uncle Bob, cousins Mark, Robin and Todd. They would visit regularly when I was growing up. Their summer vacation was usually spent in Hayward at Grandma’s house and the Round Lake beach. I did a lot of water skiing behind Uncle Bob’s boat, although he loved to scare me by pulling me faster than I wanted to go and heading for the choppiest part of the water to see if I’d fall.

So we were talking and looking at some pictures, one of which was of a big rock in California with a plaque on it memorializing Jedediah Smith.  My cousin Todd is posing by the rock. Turns out Jed is one of our Smith ancestors and his claim to fame is the discovery of a route west to California prior to Lewis and Clarke.  Somehow L and C got credit but evidently books have been written since acknowledging Jedediah Smith with an earlier route. I have been aware of well known ancestors on my mother’s side of the family, the Boones, but this is the first I’ve known that anyone has traced the Smiths back to someone like this. So now I need to find the books and find out what is known about Jedediah. Auntie Irene says he died young, killed by hostile Indians.

Geneology also shows that we Smiths are related to a family named Bunker. They owned the land on which the battle of Bunker Hill was fought.  When you think how hard it is today to make some kind of mark on the world that is remembered at all, it is kind of special to have a family history of memorable characters. We should know about these people. I think it would give us a sense of who we are, who we could be to know who we came from. 

Last year for his birthday I had framed for Dennis the roster showing his ancestor Abraham Starr as a soldier in the Civil War.  It gives information about the whole company, the battles that they participated in, shows that he was twice wounded and honorably discharged. It has colorful pictures on it and, unfortunately, numerous holes that the mice and moths have made in the paper over the years. Nevertheless an interesting piece of history – and now preserved behind special glass on acid free paper for future generations should they be interested.

I’m in the stage of life where I have occasions to listen to the stories of the generation ahead of me and wish that they were recorded.  I can only remember bits and pieces of what I hear. And I wonder what I will have to tell when I’m the oldest generation alive. I spend so much time thinking about mundane things concerning the here and now – it actually feels eerie to think about people much like me who lived and have been gone for hundreds of years who are responsible for my being alive. There are so many stories out there that have never been told…

All for today… back to the here and now.