Early signs of Spring again

In addition to the Jays and squirrels I am feeding all the time, a new flock of birds has appeared in my back yard. I think they are lovely, but since I don't actually have any interest in Ornithology, I don't know what they are. Still, I am always encouraged by early signs of Spring. (Or maybe this isn't one of those... who knows?)

My daffodils are starting to poke their heads up again, and even though I now know they won't bloom until March, I am looking out from my window every day, counting them and measuring their progress. And although there has been a pool of ice behind the house for a week, there is something blooming profusely in the road medians that just shouts "Spring is coming" in our recent sunshine. (I want to say it's heather, but am not sure of that either! Good grief! I have some 'nature' studying to do!!)

Anyway, with the death earlier this week of my son's father, we are glad to have the promise of spring in our lives just now. It is so hard to see your children go through difficult times - and the death of a parent is one of the most difficult, particularly when so unexpected and untimely. You don't know what to say or how to help, but being a parent yourself (even if he is an adult too) you can't help but feel like you should be able to make things OK.

But I can't. So I look for signs of Spring instead.

Snow Day

Snow in the Northwest today! It's always exciting - though not always in a good way. Seattle's Eastside is 'tech country' and that means a global workforce. We're talking about people who literally went from a donkey cart to a BMW on Seattle freeways, just in the last few months - and it's not pretty.

So I'm home, waiting it out for a bit, hoping the traffic will warm up the roads, and the less-cautious will reach their destinations without running into me.

I'm feeding squirrels, taking snow pictures, watching traffic cameras online... It's a snow day. Or morning, anyway.

Optimism

I was paying the bill for my cell phone service. You know the little boxes they print in the 'amount' space, trying to get you to use machine-scannable numbers? They ask you to put one number in each space...

Sprint, in its infinite optimism about making money, provides its customers with this guideline for indicating how much you are paying:

$_, _ _ _, _ _ _. _ _


I had to look three times. Admittedly my cell phone bill is in the 3 digits (besides the 'cents') but 7 digits? I suppose it could happen...


I shudder to think.

Calvin and Hannah

Finishing up with family pictures here...

William (of the fake beard) had several sons - two that I know of, but maybe more that someone else knows of - and one of those was Calvin (1862 - 1937) who married Hannah Ziegler (1865 - 1940) in June of 1889. As far as I can tell his mustache is real, and he looks quite dashing there in his formal portrait. Hannah isn't so bad her own self. And to marry in June... very romantic. (Or maybe not so much in 1889, but maybe they were trend-setters.)

Here is a picture of them, in their later years, sitting next to each other and between Calvin's brother Addison and Addison's wife Cecilia. They are sitting on a bench at Scoop Reed’s park (Mr. Reed had a dock and diving board, and boats to rent, picnic tables etc.) at Bunker Hill in Pennsylvania.

Anyway, Calvin was a saddlemaker and worked in Hottenstein's store in Lebanon, PA:

And Hannah and Calvin begat Paul (1890-1956,) my own maternal grandfather, shown here with his dog, Jerry...

... And again, many years later, working in his office at Metropoliton Edison at 7th and Chestnut, Lebanon, PA.

War Vets, II

Major disappointment in genealogical meanderings here…

I was looking for Civil War service records in the PA state archives and found that, generally, they are more informative and complete for the Civil War vets than for the Revolutionary War vets. Except, of course for the ones I'm looking for. Here's what I found for John Dissinger:

Not particularly informative, huh? Maybe someone else in the family (probably) knows more, but all I can get is that he entered as a private, was a first lieutenant when he came out and was in the 142nd Regiment of the Pennsylvania Infantry, K Company (which might have been organized at Harrisburg, September 1, 1862, but might not have...)

I found a few 'cards' for William Kurr too - hoping them to be our friend with the fake beard - but the 'muster in' and 'age of enrollment' dates just didn't match up to his age at the time.

I could have made a good story about some of that detail if I could have found it. With this one, for example:

But as it is, I think I'm done with history. (This history, anyway.) I'm not very good at it. I like pictures better, and I have a few more to share... another time.

War veterans

I was looking for war veteran records, as our family history indicates 4 ancestors who were in the Revolutionary War and at least one, but probably 3, from the Civil War. I started with the D.A.R.

Now I was only familiar with the Daughters of the American Revolution from the song in "The Music Man" about the Wells Fargo wagon coming: "The D.A.R. has sent a cannon for the courthouse square." But it seems that there is quite an organization of proud Americans happy to let the world know that their ancestors are American Patriots from the founding of our great country. To be a member, you must submit miles of documentation supporting your claim to being a 'daughter' but the rewards must be considerable. Suffice it to say I won't go that far (although my husband, who always claims that his family were all either philanderers or horse thieves - sorry Lil - thinks it would be cool.) In any case, the D.A.R. will, upon receipt of an emailed request, do a search for your particular 'patriot' to see if he is, in fact, included in their records. And sure enough, my request for verification of John George Dissinger's service to his new country was charmingly answered by "Patriot Lookup Volunteer," Marilyn:

DISSINGER, George

Birth: GER 1747

Service: PA

Rank: Ens

Death: PA 1816

Patriot Pensioned: No

Widow Pensioned: No

Children Pensioned: No

Heirs Pensioned: No

Spouse: (1) Judith Louser Spouse: (2) Catherine Schweitzer

(I didn't know he had a second spouse!)

For those keeping track, John George Dissinger (1748* - 1816) begat Henry Dissinger (1780 - ?) who begat Michael Dissinger (1810 - 1886) who begat John W. Dissinger (Civil War veteran, 1836 - 1919) who begat Harry Dissinger, who was my mother's grandfather.

Since it obviously requires some effort on the part of Volunteers, I didn't actually submit requests to the D.A.R. for the others on the family tree with asterisks for the Revolutionary War, since my aunt had obviously already done the background work years ago, but I did find another website that provided a little information on them in the Pennsylvania State Archives. So, the 4 ancestors who are American Patriots are:

George Dissinger (1748 - 1816)
Conrad Reinohl* (or Reinoel) (1769 - 1832)
John Pfeifer (1730 - 1798)
Jacob Schneider (1760 - 1842)

The information is disappointingly sparse and, not knowing much about military organization, I really can't make sense of the abbreviated references to battalions and companies. Inquiring minds want to know more. So I moved on to the Civil War, and came tantalizingly close to something...



* You will find that dates and name spellings are a moving target in this stuff. One website explained that there was a lot of 'unsure' and outright untruths in the records, so you have to go with 'close enough.'

The Palatines

There is another ancestor, Henry (Heinrich) Mock whose coming to America is recorded in the family records. (Henry begat Elizabeth who married John Phillipy and begat George who begat Salesa who married John Dissinger and begat Harry, whose daughter Elsie was my maternal grandmother.) Henry Mock came over on the ship Ann in 1749. The references on the Internet to the ships Ann and Princess Augusta include discussions about the Palatine Germans and their exodus from Germany in the 18th century so I got off on a tangent (of course) and started wondering about the Palatines.

They came from the Rhineland-Palatinate region, located along the Rhine River in present day Germany. They were “Martin Luther” Protestants and their own ancestors (from 1517 when Martin Luther published his theses, through the Thirty Years War – 1619 to 1648 – and well into the 1700’s) had suffered religious persecution and regional political conflicts. Food, jobs and land were in limited supply. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Palatinate's lands on the west bank of the Rhine were incorporated into France, while its eastern lands were divided largely between neighboring Baden and Hesse. Besides the devastating effects of war, the Palatines were subjected to the winter of 1708-09, the harshest in 100 years.

The scene was set for a mass migration. And off they went, evidently, beginning in 1709. They sought refuge in England where Queen Ann encouraged their passage to the “Island of Pennsylvania”, with, somehow, the support of William Penn (1644-1718.) Not being much of an historian, this part is murky to me (particularly since my current internet connection is simply too slow to support much more research) but I know that Penn wanted to create a utopian society of God-serving people and had land to support that vision. In any case, the ancestors we are talking of here followed some years after Penn died, so I have to wonder how much real opportunity they encountered. I suspect that they were more in the ‘indentured servant’ period than the ‘religious utopian’ one.

(And somehow they became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, forever causing confusion about whether they were Dutch or German. But since they eventually invented shoo-fly pie, who cares?)

More trivia from Wikipedia: “King Charles II of England had a large loan from William Penn's father, after whose death, King Charles settled by granting Penn a large area west and south of New Jersey on March 4, 1681. Penn called the area Sylvania (Latin for woods), which Charles changed to Pennsylvania in honor of the elder Penn.”

So now we know. Sort of.

The Princess Augusta

On the internet, I looked up the "Princess Augusta," the ship that carried my ancestor to America. Sure enough, there is his name - transcribed from the ship's passenger list with an asterisk indicating that it was written in his own handwriting, and that he was 19 years old. Amazing. That was in 1736. He arrived in the new world in September.

Hopefully he fared better on his voyage than the folks who sailed the fair Princess two years later, when it ran aground on December 26th 1738, on Sandy Point, the northern tip of Block Island near Long Island Sound, and was ultimately broken up on the rocks. The accounts of that sailing were grim indeed, inspiring a poem to be written by John Greenleaf Whittier, in 1867, "The Wreck of the Palatine" (the name by which the Princess Augusta is generally known.)

There was an 'acting captain' on that voyage, since the master and some of the crew along with many of the passengers had died of "a fever and flux." The reports indicate considerable plunder and mistreatment of the passengers by the crew and there is some confusion about whether the passengers ultimately fared better or worse at the hands of the Block Islanders who rescued them. The poem favors the latter theory, suggesting that the ship was lured to the rocks so she could be plundered by the islanders.

And for centuries the Princess Augusta has returned on the anniversary of her destruction as a 'ghost ship,' glowing fire when it appears.

Cool.

Great Great Grandfather

We had fun over the holidays looking at old family photos and fussing over genealogy. My mother's sister had done quite a bit of work on recording who begat who on the family tree and had developed a 'fan' chart of known ancestors that we were recreating. We were trying to match the old photos to some of the 'newer' names on the chart.

My mother's family had lived in Pennsylvania since the 1700s and we can trace the paternal line back to one Hans Thomas Kurr, born in 1717 in Germany and coming to America in 1737 on the boat "Princess Augusta." Hans' great grandson is my great great grandfather, William Kurr (1825-1884) shown below in a picture that must have done him proud:

So I know you are asking, because I did myself, why there appears to be graffiti on the picture. William seems to have been 'drawn' a beard, as opposed to the more traditional manner of, you know, actually growing one himself. And his coat, for that matter, appears to have been drawn on in the picture as well??? Evidently William had always had a nice beard but had shaved it off and then requested that the photographer fill it back in on the finished photo. We know this because there is a receipt, somewhere in the family archives, from the photographer stipulating the charge for this request. Unfortunately there is no explanation as to why. No indication, either, about whether he was satisfied with the result.

Maybe he had a weak chin.

Other than that, he looks a decent sort, wouldn't you say?

(To be continued...)

Happy New Year!

It's 2008 already.

I wonder how many months I will be writing checks with the wrong dates on them. I get so muddled up about the new year that I'm just as likely to write 1972 as 2008. No reason for it. The mind just 'dips into the well' and, if there is the slightest confusion, simply comes up with a random number rather than work out the reality. Oh well. There are more interesting things to think about - what can I say?

I've been working on pictures, on the family genealogy chart... all kinds of things more interesting than trying to figure out what year it is.

For example, I had a chance to hike with my sister in Sabino Canyon, near Tucson:






And then there was the driving trip itself. I took a picture of the two little goomers in the back seat, who had to share the bigger carrier since there were 3 adults in the car. Happy little travelers, huh?



And, since Todd was with us and just moving to Oregon, I wanted to take his picture next to the 'Welcome to Oregon' sign as we entered the state. Well, he was driving, and he was having nothing to do with that. Running a tight ship, he was. No time for stopping. (These 'goal-oriented' young people! I mean, really!) So the best I could do was to try to catch the sign as we whizzed by, with the notion of photo-shopping him in later. Camera ready, I waited for the border. It came abruptly, around a corner in the road that we took at 80 mph. I clicked the camera shutter and, amazingly, got the sign. Here it is, in all its glory. Chemical toilet and all. I guess I shouldn't try to photo-shop Todd in there after all. Perhaps not one of my better efforts.


We had a great trip. Hope the new year started as well for everyone else!