Knowing your place

I read an interesting blog post here on the link between family history and children's self-esteem. A study done by MARIAL followed several families with children aged 9-12, recording how often the family discussed ancestral stories, including stories of the parents when they were young. They discovered that the more children know about their family's history (family stories, hardships, occupations, triumphs, anecdotes) the more psychologically resilient they were. The children who participated in dinnertime and casual conversations of family stories had higher self-esteem, fewer behaviour disturbances and a greater sense of their ability to positively affect the world around them.

Do you know where you came from?  Your place in history? Here's a photo of "Grammie" Ethel Grant surrounded by her extended Gilchrest family. Ethel is the young girl center front.

Field trips!

For a presentation in April at the Timberland Regional Library Friends and Boards Forum, I will be talking about doing genealogical research in the field. Literally. This gravestone rubbing is one that I made back in 1988 when my dad and I drove from Massachusetts to Vermont on an ancestor hunt. We knew the cemetery was on the "Old Niles Farm," which, of course, no longer exists, but undaunted, we headed out to the small rural community of Halifax, Vermont. After a few false starts, and asking directions along the way, we parked the car alongside a promising-looking field in the general vicinity of our destination. It was summer--hot and muggy--and as we caught sight of the cemetery, the mosquitoes caught us. Swarms of them! We reversed our steps, drove back into the village and bought mosquito repellent, then tried again.
The cemetery consisted of about a dozen stones, in varying degrees of decay, fallen over and forgotten among the weeds, but sheltered under the trees.
This rubbing, made that day, is of Sarah (Frink) Niles, my 5th great-grandmother: "Late Consort of David Niles, who died in the revolutionary service, at White Plains in 1776."
As important to me as this find was, more important was the occasion to experience it with my dad. He was gone from us six short years later, and I cherish the memory of that adventure with him.

Heirloom story

I'm teaching a class this morning about Genealogy and Family History (do you know the difference? Answers here) and mentioned the importance of family heirlooms. Here is a photo of a photo of my grandmother, Ethel Frances Gilchrest Grant, at age 18. As a homemaker, she would wear a housedress during the day to do her cleaning, cooking, etc. Then right before her husband arrived home for dinner she would change into a new (clean) housedress. She made two quilt squares using fabric scrapes from her housedresses, but they never became a quilt. I put these wonderful heirlooms into hoops to preserve them and the story of her life as a conscientious homemaker.

[Below is a photo of "Grammie Grant" as I knew her, in the early 1960s]

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Tribute from her son, Donald: "My mother was a very easy-going person, always finding the good side of people. I never heard her say anything bad about anybody. She would say, "if you can't say something nice about a person don't say anything." She loved people and was always a pleasure to be with. She was a good mother to all us kids and did most of the bringing up of us alone because Dad worked nights--4 to midnight--for over 20 years. She was a good-looking lady and a nice soprano singer. She sang in the church choir and taught Sunday School. She also was quite a poet and wrote a lot of poems and read them over the radio station. She played the piano and sang at home practicing for church. I remember my dog would howl every time she sang; she had a very strong high voice and when she hit the high notes that dog would go nuts! I'd say, "Ma, he can't stand your singing!" and she'd say, "well then, put him out!"
She was a great mother and I wish she could have lived longer so I could better repay her for what she did for me. She never got to go anywhere or do anything because my father was either working or hunting or fishing and the lack of money and us kids kept her tied close to home. She was a very religious lady and got a lot of comfort and pleasure from her church. Your mom lived with my parents for a year before we got married and for the two years that I was in the service in Germany. They were very good friends. I remember one day I was giving Annie heck about something and my mother grabbed me and said, "Now you be good to that girl and don't you hurt her!" So from then on I was out-voted.

Learn then do

I attended a RUSA conference in Seattle last week and learned from Anne Mitchell (Ancestry Anne) @f_f_stories  about different ways of searching in Ancestry.com for varied results. Came home to my library job and got a call this morning that gave me an opportunity for hands-on practice with that very thing! The patron was looking for an application for enrollment in the Five Civilized Tribes from 1896. A search of her ancestor by name yielded no results, but when I went through the collection THIS way: Search > Immigration & Travel > Citizenship & Naturalization Records > U.S. Native American Applications for Enrollment in Five Civilized Tribes, 1896 There it was! At first glance I only saw the index, which information the patron already had, but by choosing to "browse this collection" I could put in the parameters from the Index and arrived at the actual application documents. Turns out it was a DIFFERENT Thomas Giles, not her ancestor after all, but the search was productive in that it ruled OUT info and gave me new knowledge in search techniques.