Your Christmas Bonus

And you thought all that time I spend on Ancestry.com was wasted............

Hey Norm!

I went to Paula's Christmas show in Walton last night.  Don't you agree this character would have made Dad very proud?  Paula did her usual wonderful job.  The audience was eating right out of her hand (ha ha--che was the cook--get it?).  There was a definite buzz when Paula came on stage.  Like it or not, Paula, you have fans!

There were 3-4 younger teenage girls sitting behind me reading the program out loud. 
"It doesn't say who the director is" (an odd comment from a young teenage girl I thought)

"Oh--here it is Molly Taylor and Paula O'Brien"

"I know Paula"

"So do I"

"Everybody knows Paula"

Truer words were not spoken for the remainder of the evening.

It made me smile and think about the legacy Paula has working in her favor.  Weenie was also well known and apparently quite popular.  I think everyone knew who he was also.  Dad brings his theatrical adventures to Paula's history--I think Dad was pretty well known in theatrical circles in Silver Creek and his performances were worth waiting for.  Sadly, my primary memory of Dad in the Walton Theater was him saying LOUDLY during one of the Christmas shows "I can't hear you".  Yikes.  Regardless, Paula's doing a grand job of carrying on the Irish malarkey and Walton is lucky to have her.

Thanksgiving wishes

Sounds like everyone has wonderful plans for Thanksgiving this year.  Although it would be nice for ALL of us to get together, it's nice to know there are several pockets of Thanksgiving goodness sprinkled all over the place:  Erie, Harpursville, Oxford, Walton, Otego and beyond. 

At an "ultimate" family Thanksgiving table, I'd love to gather all those relatives we've lost as well as those in the present.  There are some lost souls I am hoping to gather back up into the family tree.  These are the people I haven't been able to work on long enough to complete their picture, their stories. 

Timothy Ryan the grand patriarch (so far) is one of those.  He's as far back as I've been able to get in the Ryan family line and I don't really know too much about him yet.  He's our great great grandfather and I find him very intriguing.  His story will be a great challenge but I'm hoping for the best.

Gammy Flynn (Barbara Lippman Flynn) is another.  I know quite a bit about her life in the United States but she was born in Germany and I'd love to get a handle on her German life as well as some ideas about her parents and other siblings.

Matthew Fisher is our great great grandfather who settled in the Ellicottville area and I'm exceedingly curious about him.  Another lost Irish immigrant.

Of course, there are all those Nevins that supposedly came to work on the Erie Canal and then scattered to the winds.  I've never really had any hint that this was the case, but I don't disbelieve the stories Nanny told.
Frank Nevins is a brother to our great grandfather Henry Nevins and he's a lost soul (to me) as well.  I believe he went to California at some point but I haven't really been able to pin him down either.

Wouldn't it be grand to gather all these people around a table?   I feel a little like I want to scoop them up and sit them down so their stories can have some kind of substance. 

My first Thanksgiving turkey 20 years ago this year.  Perhaps the lost ancestors wouldn't notice I cooked it upside down..........Enjoy your own wherever you are!

Gloucester Report Part 2

In addition to the nature oriented adventures and the family time, we also hit the jackpot with family history resources!  We went to an antique store and found

This is a program that states: "We, the members of the Gloucester Service Chest welcome you to our entertainment, an Old Time Minstrel Show, which is given for the benefit of all our own boys in the Armed Forces."  It was held on January 20 1944.  I suspect you already know where this is going, but here's what I found inside:

Dad must have been only about 16 at this time and it's gratifying to see that his End Man experiences had a long history.  Edna Handran was on the ticket committee--she's Dad's first cousin.  So far, I don't recognize other names.  But it was a neat little find. 

Tim and Emmy graciously allowed me to bring home the Ryan Bible.  I'd already taken hand notes from this Bible many years ago, but nothing replaces getting your hands on the actual book!

This is one of the pages at the back of this very large old Bible.  It's missing both covers so I try to be extra gentle with it.  Most of the notes are in the same handwriting and I don't know who was documenting the family information, but I feel a kinship to her (because it's almost certainly a female).  I've been wanting to spend some significant time with this Bible for a long time and I'm very happy to have the opportunity. 

As an FYI:  it is Calvin in the previous video entertaining Jim.  Or perhaps it was the other way around, but it's definitely Calvin. 

Also as an FYI:  this blog is now 5 years old!  I'm quite impressed with myself and am very appreciative to all of you that take the time to read it. 

The Gloucester Report

Another great trip to Gloucester is officially in the books.  We did some new stuff, some old stuff and got to hug babies.  Everybody is doing well and send their best wishes back this way.  We got to take Tim to Cape Ann Brewing for lunch.  He'd never been so it was great fun to introduce him to one of our Gloucester favorites.  We saw Kevin briefly to say hello and he seems to be doing fairly well.  Emmy told us some stories about their most recent trip to Ireland all the while STRONGLY encouraging us to accompany them to Ireland in the near future.  Cathy and Chris are great--and I don't need to tell you how wonderful it was to spend time with Julia, Calvin and Claire. 

One of the new things we did was sign up for a guided tour of "the Island" (as our guide calls Gloucester--technically I guess he has a point since you must cross a bridge in order to get there).  I wanted to see Dogtown and the Babson Boulders I've heard so much about.  Good thing we had a guide--there is no way on Earth we'd have found them and then found our way home again by ourselves.  As the guide told the story, Dogtown was the center of town in the early days occupied by many fishermen widows and their dogs.  It's very far from the water and absolutely in the middle of the woods. 

The Babson Boulders are huge pieces of granite carved with words of wisdom.  Apparently Mr. Babson hired some out of work men during the Depression for this and there are a little over a dozen of them.  Here's an example.  Maybe you can see it's kind of desolate.

On our own, we decided to go find Crane Wildlife Refuge and ended up at Crane Beach on Sunday morning to find we weren't alone on the beach:

It's a massive beach and there were probably about a dozen horses getting their morning walks on the beach.  It was really cool.  Literally and figuratively. 

Here's another view of the beach.  I think this is a really neat shot.

Good bye for now!  More cool finds to follow in a day or so.

Happy Halloween 2012

I'm a little disoriented this week what with the storm interrupting my usual careful attention to the holiday.  I'll say Happy Halloween and hope you are all safe and dry as I believe you are.  The news media has been talking a great deal about "Frankenstorm" but I'll tell you what Perfect Storm is brewing.  Those of you that teach already know what I'm talking about.  I challenge those of you that do not teach to walk into a school this week (allow me to suggest middle school) and face the outcome when the following ingredients are combined:  a full moon, Halloween and sugary treats; impending/recent storm/early release/day off; AND (in our case) a field trip.  Yikes.

I thought you would enjoy the following trip down memory lane for Halloween celebrations:

 Still as cute today!

 Your favorite blogger

 Nanny probably about 1915

 Ryan P

Calvin and Claire

Miss Julia 2011

And the classic!

And with this, we'll fly off to enjoy the holiday--and Happy 21st to my favorite bat.

Who Needs Facebook?

I was so surprised to find Weenie on Facebook!  I don't think many people my age can say they found their grandfathers on a social networking site.  Made me wonder what Weenie would have thought of Facebook.....I expect he would have taken it in stride the way he seemed to do with everything else.  At least, that's how it appeared to my young eyes. 

But social networking has been active for ages and ages.  Remember the party line we had on Dennison Road?  That seems to me to be the ultimate precursor to Facebook.  You were connected to others (although not entirely by choice) who could monitor your activities anonymously by listening into the phone conversations.  Facebook stalking in its infancy.

Local newspapers, though, take the cake for hotbeds of social sharing.  You would never find such enlightening and entertaining information today in newsprint (if you can even find newsprint at all).  I am very grateful for such news flashes as they help build a more robust picture of our ancestors and their lives.

John Nevins is our great great grandfather (Henry's father).  This appeared in the Ellicottville Post Wed Oct 5 1898 and brings to mind the gigunda wind turbines they are bringing into Gloucester these days.  Everything old is new again.

Mary is Henry's next oldest sibling.  This appeared in the Ellicottville Post Wed June 14 1905 and pre-dates the All American Girls' Professional Baseball League ("There's no crying in baseball!") by nearly 40 years.  Nice that everyone in town knew about the black eye.

So, just to prove this stuff didn't just happen in Western New York, this is from the Boston Daily Globe Aug 2 1920.  Mrs. Ida Ryan, aged 27 and good-looking was the wife of Richard Ryan (Grampie's brother).  This would have been Dad's aunt.  All of 4'7" and 85 pounds, she could have blown into the harbor, but apparently she eventually returned home.  I do not yet know "the rest of the story" but there are all sorts of implications in this article:  "Quarrels with parents or relatives, anxiety to dress in better fashion that their pay envelopes will allow, love affairs, unrest and plain wanderlust are given by the police as primary cause in most cases".  Sometimes I wonder if we've really come very far in cases where young women disappear.
**I have just discovered that Ida Ryan was owner/manager of a tea room by 1940**  I hope she was happy.

Such articles don't appear anymore, but I wonder if those Facebook posts will be available to our descendants?