We'll Be Back

Our recent trip to Ellicottville prompted me to take another look at our connections there.  This is where our Nevins family in America took root.  I can say this with fair confidence now that I have some new information about John Nevins, Mom's great grandfather.  I don't think it's a small coincidence in the cosmic genealogy world that Dad took a job in Ellicottville and lived there himself for a while but that's already been covered!

When I undertook a review of the Nevins/Ellicottville research, I found a document that shed new light and re-invigorated by research efforts. 

This is a copy of a page from the Cattaragus County/Ellicottville Draft Registration for the US Civil War as of July 1 1863.  You will see a John Nevins listed at the very top of the page as a 30 year old single farmer born in Canada.  This may seem like a small piece of information, but for my research, it broke through a bit of a brick wall that I'd been banging my head against for several years.  I feel quite certain this is "our" John and it places him in Ellicottville in 1863.  I knew he married Julia Fisher in 1866 somewhere in New York, and now I feel quite certain they married in Cattaraugus County.  Placing a person in a location within a time period is a very critical piece of genealogical information.  I am quite thrilled.  You may stop yawning now.

I do not believe John actually enlisted.  There were a number of draft registrations for Union soldiers--1863 was the first.  John appears to be a Class 1 which makes it seem as though he could have enlisted and served.  Each county had a quota of men to provide for service but it appears he was not called to enlist nor did he choose to enlist.  I may yet find that he did indeed serve but perhaps from another location.  We saw this with Grampie Brown (he enlisted from Wisconsin when his home was in Buffalo NY) and presume it is related to the enlistment bounties paid.  Counties or regions tried to "up the ante" with their required numbers by offering a bounty for enlistment and it was not uncommon for potential soldiers to shop around their services to obtain the better bounty money.  Substitutes could also be "bought" for a drafted solider so this is another possibility for John though I believe it unlikely that a farmer would be able to pay for a substitute.  OK, done with the history lesson for this post.

On to the Fishers.  My attention to Ellicottville Nevins must also include the Fishers.  Julia Fisher Nevins had a brother Christopher who also lived in the Ellicottville area.  I was reviewing holes in my research and noticed that his family needed some attention from me.  Christopher had 6 children and I decided to concentrate on the males since it's a little easier to track them down.  This decision led me to a very odd, sad story that I thought you'd like to hear.

Christopher's oldest son Mathew married Catherine Simons and had a child Eveline May born April 22 1896 in Ellicottville according to church records.  This family lived in Ohio in the 1900 census and I was unable to find them after that which was weird because of the young child and their fairly easy names.  I couldn't let that go and kept looking finally finding the following:

Evelyn Mae Fisher, 7 years old, died of cold and exposure on a street corner in Spokane Washington in 1904.  Her last residence was listed as Elk British Columbia.  This haunts me.  How did this happen?  I've gotten no further in this story line but it feels a little bit liking I'm taking a commercial break on the Who Do You Think You Are? show.  We'll be back after the following messages from our sponsors.

Congratulations Chris and Lori!

I've said it before and I'll say it again--Facebook is an amazing phenomenon!  Thanks to FB, I can share this GREAT wedding photo of Chris and Lori.  I love the flowers on Lori's bike.  This is maybe the best wedding photo in my collection.  Congratulations to you both and welcome to the family Lori!

Huge AWW factor too honoring Lori's mother on her birthday with such a happy event.  Stay safe.  Can't wait to see you both.

So, that's another August date to add to all our family weddings.  Nice.  To celebrate our anniversary this year, Jim and I went to Letchworth State Park.  I was hoping to practice some new photography skills and I remembered this was a beautiful place especially for waterfalls.  This is the closest to the effect I was aiming for:

I wanted to get that silky flow look to the waterfalls.  In general, that did not happen.  In fact I feel as though I haven't taken a really decent picture since I've tried to improve my skills with courses and such!  I think I'm trying too hard to create picture taking opportunities. 

Anyhow,  Letchworth is very beautiful and I was reminded of an earlier trip from my Geneseo years.

1976

I think the picture above may have been taken from the bridge you can see at the top of this picture.  We couldn't get back up there this time. 

1976 with pocket camera

2013 with DSLR

I do not recall taking these other Letchworth pictures but we did hike up about 4286 rickety stone steps  to try to get up to the bridge to take a replica picture there too.  The air was thin, I swear.  Anyhow, maybe Chris remembers this trip better than I do. 

August 3 1985

Twenty eight years have gone by since this day.  Half my life ago--I was 28 that day.  I enjoyed looking at the pictures again, especially the backgrounds.  So many of these people are gone from our lives but I'm very grateful for the time we had together.  I hope you enjoy this little trip back to a hot August afternoon.

 I notice Dad's eyes are closed here but I still like the picture.  I think I had to slow him down--I didn't want to race down the aisle since the day was so long in coming.

 Great shot of Jean and Burt.  God Bless them.

 I see Paula, Kathy, Nanny, Burt, Judy, Mary Jane hugging. Nice memory.

 I love the informality of this.

 This might be my all time favorite picture of all of us together. 

Two moms and two mothers-in-law

Peter Buteau, Chris (looking very snappy) and Ron

And the classic post party picture. That's when you knew the night was done.  G'night all.

Keeping Score

The New York Times recently published this article about baseball scorekeeping using pencil and paper.  It expressed many of the (oddly) fond feelings I have for the 25+ softball scorebooks in my archives.  Although I did come to appreciate scorekeeping software for it's mathematical efficiency and record keeping capacities, I still believe the pencil and paper method creates its own story.  Judy also keeps score for her teams and has been seen using something with an on/off switch in that role--as well as a pencil and book.

This is a page from our 1992 scorebook.  You can see it's well worn and a little bit beat up.  It was near the end of the season (game 21 out of 23 and a state championship).  What I've always loved about these is that you can go back and be pretty clear on the game sequence. 

I can remember the day in 1981 when Ron came into the library and asked if I was doing anything that night.  He'd love to teach me to do the softball scorebook.  We played Blue Ridge in my very first game.  Ron taught me to use a green pencil for hits and red for errors.  This made it easy to find them quickly in the book.  I began a tradition of giving away the green pencil at the end of the season to the player with the most hits. The red pencil was awarded to the player with the most errors until it began to be politically incorrect even though it was done with good humor and affection.  Ron taught me to note balls and strikes because it would help to keep me paying attention to the game.  He was right about that but mostly I think it was because he never had any idea of the count from one second to the next.  I cannot tell you how many times I reminded him of the count on a batter.  He never retained it.  Ever.

This particular game was played in Dunkirk as part of the state championship series.  The other team arrived at this field not far from a sewer plant and they were GIANTS.  Jean Valvo came to the game and gave it her best effort to say the appropriate things.  One of the players went down with an injury and Jean was rummaging in her purse for ANYTHING that might be remotely helpful.  We only scored one run in this game but it was enough to win.  On the other side of the book, the Brocton players never got further than second base in this one hitter for our pitcher.And if you look, I think you can see their pitcher was no slouch; eight of our players struck out.

Anyhow, these scorebooks are like old friends.  I attached them to a clipboard, clutched at least 4 pencils and balanced a camera around my neck.  I regularly endured muscle soreness as a result holding tight to the clipboard at the odd angle required to accommodate the physics of scorekeeping.  On at least one occasion, the old scorebooks won over a recalcitrant student who's mother was one of our best hitters.  I dug out the scorebook and used it to help make whatever the point of the lesson was and he was recalcitrant no more.

In the articel, on mand (about my age) noted that "keeping score by hand 'helps fuel my anal retentiveness.'"  Yes--what he said. 

Some experimentation to share with you

Despite the rotten week we've had, we did have a good time for the few hours that we were in the Tampa area with Kathleen and Nick last week.  We flew out on July 4th and the airports were VERY crowded--this surprised me.  But we got to their house in plenty of time to relax in their pool, have some drinks and await the evening's fireworks.  A powerful storm rolled through--they have been getting nearly as much rain as we have had lately--and the power went out for a bit.  We were worried there wouldn't be fireworks due to the weather.

Boy, were there fireworks!  They live right on a little Tampa Bay inlet so they are directly on the water.  Across the water is Sylvester Stallone's house.  Just above his house is where their fireworks go off.  That was the show we were waiting for, but all along the water's edge for about 270 degrees, there were fireworks going off.  These weren't little bottle rocket fireworks.  These were the real deal.  I've never been so close to so many fireworks!

One of my main objective on this trip was to experiment with some of the new photo techniques I've been learning and get some decent fireworks pictures.  I think I did OK for the first time especially considering that it was sprinkling and there were explosions going off on all sides.




There were almost 100 of these, but I pared it down to some of my favorites.  The house lights you can see in some of them are Sylvester's I guess.   Didn't realize my camera was peeping quite so much!  Enjoy. 

Wait! ...What? Sigh. Shake Head

Ron's memorial is tonight.  You've heard by now that our friend Ron died last week as the result of a tractor accident.  We were in Tampa visiting Nick and Kathleen and were pretty helpless to be of any use but Paula stepped in to give us a big assist for which we are very grateful. 

I don't know how to accurately describe Ron's role in our lives but the fact that  you each already know who he is speaks to the overall impact he's had on our lives.  His influence is infused in nearly every part and parcel of our daily life.  Losing that defies my ability to generate appropriate words.

Many of Ron's actions resulted in WWSS: Wait!...What?....sigh...shake head.  Some of his actions had us laughing and others could be irritating.  That's life in close proximity.  As Amy stated, it never would even throw her off to awaken in the morning to find him seated at our kitchen table having coffee.  Even if we weren't there.  Especially if we weren't there.  Our guests would have to come to terms with this other adult having complete access to our home at nearly any time of day--though most regularly about 30 minutes after he'd had his breakfast at the diner.  Then he'd make his most reliable rest stop on the way to his house...our downstairs bathroom.  Wait!  What?  Sigh.  Shake head.

One day I came home from work to find his backhoe in my yard.  He'd removed our old oil tank (yeah) and then decided we needed a garden in its place.  So he proceeded to create a garden.  And hand me the bill.  Always something discounted from Lowe's.  Wait! What?  Sigh.  Shake head.

Another time Amy tested positive for strep and was required to stay home for 2 days.  Ron was recovering from surgery and offered to stay at the house with her so I could go to work.  I accepted gratefully.  When I got home, I discovered he'd washed my kitchen floor.  Wait!  What?  Sigh.  Shake head.

Just a few days ago, he left a broken tombstone at my house.  Wait!  What?  Sigh.  Shake head.  Less said about that, the better.

And literally hundreds of similar moments filled the years since I met him 34 years ago.  It's a huge loss.  It feels like something really big came to an abrupt halt.  A way of life.  A certain work ethic.  A particular kind of community living.  My own work life.  Damn him.

 Olympics Summer party 1996

 Outer Banks 1996

 Puerto Rico 1998

 Long Island

 2001

June 15 2013 at Mudville

Reminiscing about Silver Creek

Some of you might be following the Silver Creek and Beyond group on Facebook so perhaps you've seen many of these already.  I was having so much fun with it that I thought I'd put the ones together that have special memories for me and see what comes up for you.

 The bank on the corner.  The bank lobby seemed very imposing to me.  

Dr. Vona's office was upstairs in this building.

 In a previous life, I think this was The Royal--it looks exactly the same as I remember it.  Dad would take us in once in a while and we could have ginger ale and dance to the juke box.  It was at the bottom of Oak Hill.  See below

 Though I do not recollect this specific house and sign, I clearly remember the Bentges warehouse and family name.

 Self explanatory!!!!!

 Main Street in Forestville.  I don't have many real clear memories of Forestville except Dr. Raag's office was there (right?).  We would sometimes ride our bikes to Forestville on a Saturday.

 The High Bridge on Dennison Road

 The Main Street School--I believe it contained grades 3-6 and was one street over from the elementary.

 Weenie loved Roof's. I think maybe in our time, that front area was all glass.

 This is what I remember the high school looking like.

 Had to include this.  What a treat for Mom to have a dairy right next door.

 I can almost remember the inside of this just a little bit.

 

Mt. Carmel from a different angle.

 ACME was kind of across from Mt. Carmel.  Mom would go here too once in a while.

 Ludeman's where we'd get our Easter finery.  

I remember baby chicks and/or rabbits under glass in the floor

This must have been the precursor to the Hole-Parker Funeral Home.  Weenie always laughed and laughed at that.  I didn't get it for several years.  Now I can't believe they allowed that for their business name.

So, now if Judy is still paying attention, I wanted her to feel part of this walk down memory lane:

You can see Roof's behind her.  This is on the corner kitty corner from the bank.  The park and gazebo would be to Judy's left.  Circa 1970.  Enjoy.

PS:  Here's a very short clip from YouTube of the Silver Creek footbridge:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW4hSFpg1zM