And Then One Day "Home" Takes On Its True Meaning

Inside of me has always been a being that wanted to be part of a large family.  What I got was a small family with it's ups and downs like all families but still after 53 years I have not changed that gypsy type vs rooted type person.  Currently I am viewing this as my lack of commitment skills not being so sharp.  I was born in Akron Ohio, lived there until 5 and was uprooted to live in the Rochester NY area.  I lived in three different towns by the time I was in 3rd grade, the third town I lived in until I was in 9th grade.  Still, I would not call those towns "home" nor even Akron for that matter because what sense of roots can you feel at 5?  In 9th grade my mother remarried to a wonderful man who taught my sister and I that "Dad" was not a bad word.  I was angry from being uprooted from my friends and made them pay dearly with my awful awful behavior..something I still regret to this day.  My "Dad" will never know how I suffer still at how awful I was to him when all he did was offer me unconditional love.  And in one short year of living there the Police Department knew me well.  Thankfully I wasn't a career criminal but did have a year of the worst of decision making skills possible, lol.  Still, through all that HE taught us what it was to have a "home town" and he taught us the value of community.  I wish my Mom had been more a part of his community.  I am the "daughter" of a volunteer Firefighter and watched a man dedicate a good 30 to 40 years to the fire department of what I consider my "home town".   I remember in my early 20's I wanted to be a firefighter too and he told me no.  I said I would do it anyway and he said no, I could join the Ladies Auxiliary which I took (at the time) as the highest insult.  Well come on, back then I was 20 and the Ladies were all my mothers age and older!  And that wasn't what I wanted to do, I wanted to save the world!  He was adamant.

Forward time, I owned a house in my home town and divorced.  I wanted to start "new" and moved to a neighboring town and learned what it was just to live "somewhere" not live home.  Sadly, I didn't see this at the time but when I think back I remember feeling odd in my move but threw myself into work and social life.  I met a man and married him, we decided we would buy property in my home town and in the meantime we would move to a town in the next county to save money to build our house.  Well, best laid plans.  My daughter started school there, we saw a house we liked and bought it but still didn't give up on the house build idea and then my marriage with him didn't work out.  By then my daughter had just a few years of school left before she graduated so I stuck it out so she could graduate with the friends she had grown up with.  It was the best of sacrifices by the way.  She came out of her school years with life long friends and a sense of home.  Sadly, I never did make this town that I lived in for 16-17 years "home".  I was involved in many things but still always considered Webster my home.  So then my move took me to yet another town surrounding Rochester which was 15 minutes closer to work for me and where my daughter was going to college.  So I lived there for 3 years for her.  Now this is another town that I could have gotten involved with but I didn't because in the back of my mind for 30 years now is to end up back in my "home town" to put down my roots and involve myself in all the things I wanted to do there.  Are we seeing the transient trend to my life yet?  It's exhausting isn't it?  So now, my daughter is finished with school and she is moving in with her fiance and what did I do?  Moved to yet another town, a town I do like very much, and the bonus!  A 7 minute commute to work.  And still, going on 2 years here and I am still not involved in my community because I STILL consider my home town my community.  And if volunteerism is that important to me, wouldn't any town do?  Now don't get me wrong, I am active in many ways in helping other people but it is not me really dedicating my living breathing life in helping people the way I want to.

So.. This past year has been a doozy and maybe it took this past doozy of a year to bring that mirror up for me to take a good and hard look into.  I met a man who is the embodiment of what I have always wanted for myself.  He is his community and he happens to be from my home town.  And while I have been "home sick" for a very long time even if local, gosh, he made me even more homesick.  And for years, every time I drove through town for whatever errand I had to wonder why I was not back there yet.  So recently I have been ready to return "home".  Seriously, my commute would be like 20 minutes instead of 7 minutes so just what is the problem?  Well one is that I like being on the closer side to my kids but that is just geography, we are all still local.  It is not like they are states away.

Recently I said at work.. "Oh I never felt like this area was home, I easily could pick up and move anywhere to start a new life…" 

Christmas Eve morning, 2012, the incident of open fire on Firefighters showing up to put out a fire turned out to make me the largest of liars in that above statement.  The Firemen that were wounded and died are from my "home town".  I would have taken this incident anywhere in the world personally having grown up in a firefighters house but this was my home town and this stuck the very core of what I consider home.  This man I spoke of above is a first responder as well, they are all hero's every day of their life.  In the days that followed I showed up to help at that fire department and had the delightful experience of the women of my home town making me feel so welcome and remembered.  Two of the senior Ladies looked me up and down and said I looked familiar and as soon as I spoke one heard my mother's voice.  In June of this year I was very ill and almost didn't make it.  I asked myself what would I be doing with my gift of life?  For a very long time I have been ignoring the call and the hints and the things that happened that were pointing me home.

And so… it's time to go home.  It's time to fulfill the legacy I want for myself.  I think Genealogists and Family Historians can understand this maybe better than most.. We strive for our history and roots. 

Rest In Peace and thank you for your selfless service to our community Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka.

Happy New Year to good.

Update and Gosh the DAR is a lot of work (the real lesson)

It has been a long time since I have blogged. I have good reasons why but feel I did not use my time home to its fullest potential. I suppose I am too hard on myself because it is hard to be productive in anything when you are not feeling well.

I have been sick this year. And when I say this year, I really mean this year.. like since March! I had been having some stomach problems for a year and a half and well, that turned out to be a faulty gall bladder which was the easy part. I just added some serious complications to the mix to make my year "fun". So after months of jaundice, infected stones in my bile duct and the topping on the proverbial sick cake, I added a trip to the hospital emergency, blood infection and! septic shock. I am happy to report, add my doctor's big grin here, that I have come through the septic shock with no permanent disabilities and alive. Woot! I was very lucky and this leaves me with this thought this week (my final follow up appt was this past Monday)… just what will I do with what I have been given. I am looking at some of the areas of my life that need improvement.

I was home from work three to four months and I can not report any outstanding genealogical progress. Once in a while I would immerse myself but it just isn't easy when you feel like crap and it takes all of your energy to walk from one room to the next (regaining my strength has been long and boring....). Thank goodness for my children who I depended on heavily. My son.. I can't say enough about how much he helped me as he took on the bulk of the responsibility. I did a bit on my Fender line, finding more documents on ScotlandsPeople and I did solve the mystery of an incorrect father in my family tree on that side. On the Stockton line I sat down a few times determined to get this Stockton business done to a point I can add a supplemental application to my DAR membership.

And this brings me to the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). Wow, is it a lot of work! It should be, I know, my first application was easy as two family members were already members of the DAR so my job was to prove myself to my great grandmother. That was a piece of cake. Now I am breaking off the proven line to another surname and it is not so easy now! My target applicant is Reverend Robert Stockton of Barren County, Kentucky. There is a lot of source material for him but it is his son Robert Junior that has been the chore. He didn't live long so a paper trail for him has not been easy. However by the detail of the Reverends will and his gift of land to Robert Junior I am on a roll. His daughter, Elizabeth (Betsey) Wilson Stockton is mentioned in a few of these documents and with her husband (my Hugh Lawson Baldwin) so all of the family connections are finally made. I think I am at a point to pull it all together and sit down with my Chapter's Registrar and see what I am missing. I think I am if not holding enough documentation, I am close! Another woot here!

Stay tuned…. :)

Guilty Pleasures and the "Oh! Shiny!"

I saw this first on Facebook with Sue Peterson posting her blog (Long Lost Relatives) and then I went to the blog Susan's entry had originated from by Leah Kleylein (Random Notes) that she had read. So I thought I would do that too and then Sheri Fenley (The Educated Genealogist) posted her blog too! So here is mine, my other life or, the random "Oh shiny's!" in my life.
 
When I am not working on my family history, I...:
 
I work full time - not doing my genealogy (I confess my mind is on my family history work during this period of the day. I am a podcast junky, listening to genealogy, knitting, spinning, health, well all sorts of podcasts!).
 
I have just taken on a part-time job (I went to the retirement meeting at work, had heart failure)
 
I play Angry Birds sometimes.
 
I play Frontierville. (Yeah, I know.)
 
I play Castleville. (I know, I know!)
 
TV. Many years ago, when my daughter was a pre-schooler, my day was filled with the TV always on so one day we turned it off (I seriously dumped the ABC line up of soaps! 18 years ago!), she got 2 hours a day of TV, we got a couple hours at night and over time I just stopped altogether. Then I started to work at this job 6 years ago and listening to my co-workers talk about shows and joining the Survivor pool for three seasons without knowing what the show was about I slowly started watching TV again!!  
 
Currently I make sure I watch:

Biggest Loser

Parenthood

Ghost Hunter's

Ghost Hunter's International

Being Human

Antique's Road Show

Harry's Law - but I seem to miss it all of the time.
 
Aside from regular TV, movies, I love movies, period films most but I am hooked on the Transformers movies, do not ask me why, it is out of my usual genre appreciation.
 
Costuming!! If I could get my lazy butt in gear, Costuming would be my second passion after genealogy. I follow blogs of amateur costumers, and the contests like Realm of Venus Showcase. I love costume diary's, there are so many bloggers out there. I am in the SCA, fringe member, and am changing my persona from 1500's Turkish to 1500's Italian, I think. I just want to be Safiya of A Thousand Dresses. I currently have working class Italian ren garb in the works but am mentally preparing to do a complete ensemble… someday.
 
(Shhhhh. Secret thing: Roleplay. I roleplay on AOL, building a story with other people typing back at you is a lot of fun.)
 
Spinning. I love to spin. I have three spinning wheels, enough fiber for twenty years worth of spinning time and guess what… THREE DUSTY spinning wheels!
 
Knitting. I am not great at it but I do enjoy it so I knit. I always have a project in my work bag, lunch was always my knitting hour but then I got onto something else. This past week I have been knitting at lunch again and reminded how much I really do enjoy it. It's just too bad it takes me 6 months to do one pair of socks. I have enough yarn for a few years of knitting projects based on my speed at getting things not finished.
 
There is so much more.. I have too many likes and I think that really hurts me in being truly "expert" at anything. My concentration is always so thinned out over too many areas. Jane of all trades, Master of none.


 

Where I fit in, in a nut shell… and what is coming in 2012

This post has been rolling around in my mind for a while now and then the recent upswing of discussion of the shift in the Genealogy world with the advent of the internet and social media makes this post rolling around in my brain timely. I now wish I had gotten right on it at first, I might have been the trailblazer! A few things happened within the last few months which made me think about my place in this wide world of the social media collective.
 
I am a hobbyist when it comes to Genealogy. I will never be a super Genealogist or super blogger. I will never be famous or a leader in our vast environment of all levels of family historians. I will have my good months of research and I will have my months of not so much progress. I will never be a professional. My blog will never carry up to the minute news or teach people how to be good Genealogists, I am adequate at it, but it will reach out to those that just might be stuck on a family name we share and it will be a beacon to reach out to those that share my ancestry. Those are the things I will never be. Now the things that I am. I share the same passion as the rest of the genealogical community. I am passionate and love every minute that I am involved in some form of my quest to know my roots. My mind is 24/7 on this quest. Ask my family, friends and co-workers, haha. The collective energy of the genealogy community keeps me inspired and tackling problems in my family tree. I love to learn, I love to share and I learn so much from those people who are the super stars in our growing world. I don't have to be a mover and shaker and I appreciate when the big names are nice to me and realize I am there and part of our collective community and I try very hard not to take it personal when they are not. I am a webinar junky, podcast junky and I am broadening my horizon's and have registered for NGS 2012. I am very nervous about that, I have a shyness that can be crippling and going someplace without a close friend to cling on is really pushing me out of my comfort zone. Just saying. I am very excited about it though and I will be the one there trying to make one with the wall. There is me in a paragraph.
 
Aside from the online presence, I feel memberships in Societies are very important and a presence in them more so. In the last year I have made good on my resolution to get myself out more and involved. I have always wanted to do this but again shyness in big crowds makes not going places alone very easy. Well, I can say that I have pushed myself out and into these meetings, DAR and the Rochester Genealogical Society, and have enjoyed myself very much and really do like the physical community that is waiting for those who come out and join. I am also a member of the NC Genealogical Society since much of my ancestry is there and it is my way to help support that community. Tennessee is pending, I have sent in my form and that is another state with much of my ancestry.
 
And now on to Projects 2012 - -  
 
I have one personal genealogical project that has to do with me. Once I am done being mad about it, I will work on it.
 
DAR - I was pinned and swore my oath to the DAR in December after two years of being a member and not being involved. I found it to be a wonderful personal moment in my life. Wasted time, I so enjoy the meetings. I have a handful of possible Patriots to add, Reverend Robert Stockton, Edward Weatherly, Samuel Walker, Thomas Blakey and a couple more, oh and John Duncan, the big mystery man in my family tree. So 2012 will be a year I set a goal of 2 supplemental applications made.
 
Cattern Walker Cowden brick wall. I have always felt she was the mother of my James C Cowden and 99 percent of the trees on Ancestry have Nancy Crewse as his mother. My Ancestry tree did too because it is a tree that I import a lot of junk info into as clues so I don't forget about them. My personal RM5 tree on my pc has my actual information sourced and cited. If I can somehow prove Cattern was alive when James C Cowden was born and is his mother, that will open up Samuel Walker as a supplementary application.
 
Bannister Hensley - the mystery man.
 
Transcribing - I have a pile of deeds that need to be transcribed for three different families..  
 
Scanning - I have a lot of scanning to do. Photo's to scan and share of my Grandmothers side of the family. There are a lot of unidentified photo's and hopefully, someday, if I find cousins from Dundee, Scotland from my Fender clan, maybe they will be able to help me figure out the faces!


Blog more -- yeah, I say that every year...
 
And this is just the short list….


 

 

 

 

The Stockton Climb into the DAR

Currently I am working on a few possible Revolutionary War ancestors but I am a VERY distractible which makes me laugh because every report card of mine in grade school said I had a hard time staying on task. I am a wanderer and so over time, especially the last ten years, I do cut myself some slack and follow my focus. I am more productive that way in a round about sort of way. It does frustrate me because a dozen different times I have told myself one family at a time, thorough, get everything, move on but….. Then the drift comes along again. It annoys me because I am a doer, I like to get things finished, I am a list maker and once I write it down on a list, I am obsessed until I can cross it off. As you can imagine with what I have said just in this paragraph, this can cause a lot of conflict and frustration in myself. As I age, this just seems to worsen. Ah well.
 
So I am back on this Stockton thing! Again. And I have made some very good progress. My Elizabeth Stockton who married Hugh Lawson Baldwin is the daughter of Robert Stockton Jr, son of Reverend Robert Stockton of Barren County, Kentucky, who was a Chaplain in the Revolutionary War. Now to prove that Elizabeth is the granddaughter of the Reverend. Robert Jr. died in 1815 at the age of 43 and so far I am not finding a lot of documentation on him so connecting Elizabeth to the Reverend is a series of hops over Robert Jr. Reverend Robert Stockton's will mentions Robert Jr as being deceased but does not mention his grandchildren. There is a lawsuit over a slave girl named Eliza after the death of Catherine Blakey Stockton (Reverend Robert Stockton's wife) which mentions Elizabeth as a granddaughter. I have ordered that from the Kentucky State Archives and I am waiting for that. I did however order the marriage bond for the first marriage of Elizabeth to William C Wilson and there are three names to link Elizabeth to the Reverend Robert Stockton. I do wonder why he was not involved in this transaction.
 
The document is written by Nancy Blakey Stockton, who is the widow of Robert Stockton Jr. , giving permission for William C Wilson to place bond for Elizabeth's hand in marriage with her signature. There are two signatures as witness, one is Catherine B. Stockton and Joseph B Stockton. Joseph is clearly defined in Reverend Robert Stockton's will as his son so Elizabeth's mother, grandmother and uncle all have their hand in approving this marriage. With that will I think that is sound evidence that this is my ancestry line and will be making my supplementary application for Reverend Robert Stockton in the DAR.

Reality of a Dream ~ The Loss of a Mother

I had a dream. I had dreams of falling off bridges over and over again. The one thing that terrifies me the most, bridges, came to me in a night long of nightmares and no matter how many times I woke up I would go back to sleep starting up where I left off. Falling and falling… falling. It was an endless cycle that night and when I woke up it was Sunday morning and I had a horrible headache. I think it was the night she died, this is what I believe. Was that my fear of losing her? Was it that there had not been the time to tell her all of the things I needed to tell her? Things should not have been left between us as they were. Both of us are to blame in this. Were the nightmares her fear of leaving? Was she not ready? In my heart of hearts, I am not sure she is at peace. I have seen a peaceful death in my daughter's father, Kevin. I have asked Kevin to help her if she needs it. When we viewed her at the funeral home all I could see was my Grandmother and I was so surprised. I had never really thought my mother looked like her mother but there it was much of Elizabeth Fender Duncan there in her daughter.
 
I have lost my mother too early. She was found August 30, 2011 and it seems as though she went swiftly. I am grateful and thankful that she went as she did and not suffering for weeks, months or years. She was very lucky to be given a quick out. I hope I am as lucky when my time comes. I couldn't have stood to watch her suffer and I never felt she was fully content in this world. In some ways I know she is happier. She has been so unhappy since my step father died. A local psychic took one look at me and my mother about 20 odd years ago… or maybe 30. She said I had an old soul and I was my mother's soul's teacher and here to bring her through this life. I am not sure how I feel about these things but I am not sure I did too swift of a job here either.  
 
It was never easy being my mother's daughter. She and I are so much alike in many ways but there is a lifetime of head butting. She was a difficult woman but I loved her with every ounce of my being. I marched to my own drum from a very young age and she liked everything around her to be as she liked it. So I fought the control as most children did and do.  
 
I have lost a parent, my mother, and it is turning out to be a hard thing to reconcile. We all made mistakes, we all could have done something different. What I do know is it gives me a view of where my energies need to go. My family unit is strong but it will be made stronger and there are things I have to do and say to my children so that they know where they fit into my life.
 
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of humor, fun and good times in the long past years. In fact the funeral director was very patient with my sister and I as we let our senses of humor get the better of us while making arrangements.
 
The news came on my birthday… this birthday thing is an interesting thing.. Carrie Baldwin (My great-great grandmother) lying in her dying bed asking the date until March 24 hit, and then she died, in peace. Her husband's birthday and death date were March 24.. That was my mother's birth date too. She did not die on my birthday but that will be what he death certificate reads.
 
And a note to the Genealogists, I thought I was being such a dweeb when the funeral director was going over the information for the death certificate and obituary notice. I kept interjecting with information saying I wanted it clear for those looking at this information in 100 years. He was nice, tolerant but then toward the end he added something else to the obit and got this little grin on his face and said, "for the future researchers". I had to laugh and it turns out he is married to the Town Historian so he knows! It was odd at that moment all I could think of was the various webinars I have sat in on hearing, "the facts of the death certificate is only as good as the informants knowledge". I am happy to report that a future genealogist will get accurate information from these two sources.
 

Rest in peace, Mom. I love you.
 

JoAnne Duncan Statt

March 24, 1940 - August 30, 2011

 

Elizabeth Fender Duncan, JoAnne Duncan Stevens Statt & Sharon Stevens Lighthouse

Ten Years Later ~ September 11, 2001

I am so enthralled with the history of my ancestors that many times I forget that I will be part of history some day. I wrote about this before in a post about having seen the Wall between West and East Germany and now it is gone. This is for my future generations who might wonder what it was like back in the olden days of 2001.
 
9/11 (September 11, 2001) will forever be a historic marker on the pride and resilience of Americans. I wonder if the Terrorists responsible counted on America standing strong and collectively circling the wagons to take care of its own. There was a rash of military enlistments after this unspeakable act of cowardess, people became Hero's in an instant and everyone that day was an American, not just the neighbor you really didn't like. Did the Terrorists know at the time that what they did was strengthen a country and each and every family that lives under America's glorious flag? There is something that happens to humans when we are put on the defensive, we are protective and we will take care of business. Anger, pettiness and cruelty is put aside as tragedy is a quick reminder of all of the things we love or admire comes front and center for us to clearly see and how fragile they are. For a while we could forget animosity and hold hands while we collectively struggled through the pain of trying to understand this act of violence.
 
For me it was a normal work day. I worked at a small family owned business and one of the engineers came in to our office with the oddest look on his face and said he couldn't believe it but a jet had crashed into one of the buildings in NYC. We looked at him with disbelief and went to the television in the meeting room to turn on CNN and couldn't believe what we were seeing. In the meantime it was time for me to go to the post office so I did that and as I came out and sat in my car the radio said the second plane had crashed into the other Tower. What??! My apartment was across the street so I went there to turn on the news thinking I had misheard what was being said and there, just in time, I saw the footage of the second airliner making its final journey. Then came the news it was possibly a terrorist attack. Stunned, being a female, that maternal instinct of wanting nothing but my children with me and right now kicked in, I made myself drive back to the office where we sat watching a tv as reports came in about the plane in Pennsylvania and the brave passengers making sure more didn't die. There are moments in a life that you just do not forget. Ever. This is a moment for me. I will never forget the very real visual of the news footage. I will never forget the feeling of my heart sinking and my gut twisting. I will never forget that urge to collect my children and protect them. I will never forget the anguish I felt for the victims as the death toll alarmingly rose. I will never forget the looks on the faces of those I worked with as we watched helplessly with tears staining our cheeks in stunned silence. I will never forget how I wished I had been there to help; even if it was handing out a cup of water. I will never forget the stories of people coming together in NYC to help each other no matter what culture or class they were. I will never forget the admiration I hold for the few people I know who made their way to the tragic site risking their own life to help; it's what they do. I will never forget all the people who died that I did not know and the few I did know but not face to face but an online community I interact in. Still, they were special and their absence is still felt 10 years later. I will never forget the kindness of my boss and the look in his eyes when he told his two female employees to go home to our children. You never saw two women move so fast. I will never forget the fear in my 11 year old daughters eyes and her being afraid to go back to school. What if a plane drove into her school, she asked. For days she was afraid to leave me, she said she didn't want me to go away. Could I assure her nothing would happen to us here in a place you wouldn't think of as a target? It stayed with her quite a while, her school art work depicted planes and buildings.  
 
I am extremely proud of my American Heritage. I come from a line of generations that have fought for this country since the American Revolution. This is not the first time American's stood strong to protect American soil and 9/11 will not be the last. 9/11 gave us a glimmer of what it was like to be our ancestors of generations past from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the first battle of the Civil War and further still to the first battle of the Revolutionary War. 9/11 is a bit more personal by the mode in which our enemies chose to attack us going after innocent and helpless civilians. Every generation has that kick in the pants reminder about who and what we are.
 
Today I am thankful for those that saw us through one of our darkest hours with courage and selflessness. Policeman, fireman, military and every citizen who reached out a hand, I thank you. I thank you all for reminding us all what it is to be an American and in general, a decent human being. Thank you for giving up your own lives to those who were in need and terrified beyond anything comprehendible. A string of pretty words can not possibly measure the actual feelings or do the moment justice. To our teachers, thank you for helping our children through this. This post does not say enough.
 
God Bless America.
 
I will never forget.