To-do update

I had a comment on my to-do list asking for an update.

It's been a year and four months since I posted this list. A few are done. A couple have a bit of progress. The red are done. An update:

1. Learn to make a souffle.
2. Visit England.
3. Swim a mile.
4. Make a dress that looks good enough to wear.
5. Learn Spanish. (working on it!)
6. Go to a Broadway show.
7. Sell another article.
8. Make my own tortillas.
9. Make noodles as good as Grandma's.
10. Get my scrapping stuff organized and out of my dining room. Almost done. Soon.
11. Find out who Sarah Serring was. Much progress. Her name was probably Zehrung. (Still working.)
12. Move. Waaaaahhhhhhh.
13. Paint my grandma's kitchen table and chairs.(chairs done)
14. Wash the windows. (Many times)
15. Have six month emergency fund.
16. Ten pounds. Just ten pounds. Halfway there.
17. Clean the master bedroom.
18. And paint it. (Different MBR, still need to paint.)
19. And paint the furniture.
20. And the master bath, while I'm at it.
21. And the kitchen cupboards. Started. A year ago. Different kitchen. Rip it out.
22. And then the dining room.Yep.
23. Reupholster the dining room chairs.
24. Make a perfect risotto.
25. Make money doing what I love.

Unexpected thing I learned from a book

Last week I read The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky. I love reading about food and Americana, so this book--a compilation of Depression-era writings about food from an abandoned WPA project--enticed me as soon as I saw it. The division by regions gave structure to the book, and made it even more informative.

However, my favorite bit of knowledge gleaned from this book was personal. I have always felt a bit of an inferiority complex about my clam chowder. You see, it has bacon. We like it that way. I grew up with it that way. My mom made it that way, and she learned from my dad's mom. But what restaurant clam chowder has bacon? I always figured this was some Hoosierizing of the dish.

But, as I learned, I was mistaken.

One of the oft-debated, but very authentic ingredients in real New England Clam Chowder, is salt pork or bacon. Which is then removed and the onions sauteed in the grease. That's what I do. Some add it back in; some don't. I do. My grandma was a Ruhl. Her mother was a Harrod. Her grandmother was a Pipes. HER grandmother was a Harriman from New Jersey and HER mother was a Hathaway from Massachusetts.

That's in New England. That's about the only part of my family tree that has roots in New England. But I like to think that that is where the clam chowder came from.

Digging

Yesterday morning was a rare treat. I spent the morning in the genealogy department at the library surrounded by family history books and my trusty Pinky.

I'm working on gathering my documentation for my DAR application, and did find some more specific place names and times yesterday that should help with that process. Of course, I kept heading off on rabbit trails. It's almost impossible for me not to! I love history, and my favorite part about family history is the way that you can see the larger historical events play out in a family or community.

As I worked on my Harrod history yesterday--my great-grandmother was Alta Jane Harrod Ruhl (in the picture with my great-grandfather)--I kept getting pulled into peripheral lines reading about soldiers and pioneers. It's so cool when disparate family lines criss-cross and I find that my fifth great-grandfather on my father's side, Levi Harrod, who fought in the revolution, and his brothers knew my first cousin nine times removed on my mom's side, Daniel Boone.

I found my husband's grandmothers maiden name, Garriott, intermingled with some Harrods in southern Indiana and several other names that are significant in my research, giving me more rabbit trails to follow.

Bethany and I are going to Salt Lake City at the end of the month for a convention, but I am hoping to be able to squeeze out a little bit of time to visit the Family History Library, although I don't have any illusions that I'll actually have time to get any research done.

This and that

Bethany is home and thoroughly exhausted. She had a fantastic trip and will be blogging about it soon. She has either been in class or at work almost all of the time since she came home.

I have emailed and called regarding the Issues, Etc. situation, and I would encourage any of you to do the same.

I am going to be getting a free "early reviewer" copy of a book because of Library Thing. The funny part--and those who know me well will appreciate the humor in this--is that the book is from DK Publishing.

I'm excited about tomorrow. I have a call in the morning that promises some exciting news regarding my primary business and later I will be meeting with my first "paid" genealogy client. (I put paid in quotation marks because she bought my services at a silent action, so I'm not making anything. But she did pay a nice amount!)

I love cemeteries

Okay, I may not love all cemeteries, but I love the country cemeteries where earlier generations of my family are buried. (The one above is Elhanan Cemetery in northern Wells County.)

For a history buff like me, who is also part of a close family, family history is a natural interest. I have been researching for over 10 years now, but moving to northern Indiana five years ago really reinvigorated my searches. Both of my parents are from the county to the south of Fort Wayne, and the last immigrant ancestors of mine arrived there in the late 1840's. Our families were among the early settlers of three northern Indiana counties: Adams, Allen, and Wells.

This gives me an enormous feeling of connection to this part of the country. I love finding the homes that family members lived in, seeing the churches the attended--and often helped build--and walking through the cemeteries where they were buried. I love finding newspaper snippets about their comings and goings, reading their letters, and seeing their names on old plat maps.

I love the cemeteries for their serene country settings. I love the signs of the faith that was an important part of their lives. There are eight cemeteries that I know pretty well, now, but each time I go I seem to make a new connection. There are a few I have yet to find. A beautiful fall day is the perfect time to go search.


My great-great-great grandparents, Joseph and Anna Harrod moved here from WiIlliams County, Ohio.

Their son Enos and his wife Hester have one of my favorite headstones. Enos and Hester's daughter, Alta Jane Harrod Ruhl was my great-grandmother and I was named after her.

Living in the past

Those photos sent me into a genealogical frenzy, the likes of which I haven't seen for a while. I have spent the better part of the past four days deeply engrossed in a couple of my family lines.

I have figured out a lot about the photos and I am going to post on my genealogy blog about that in a little while. We are fairly certain that we know where the house in the picture was. If you are familiar with the intersection of Coliseum Blvd. and Lima Road in Fort Wayne, you've been there. That was the site of my great-great-grandfather Louis Bracht's farm in the early 1900's.

All of this sent me to the library to look at other records, and I have learned much more about this branch of my family.

Since I was going to the library to look up Bracht obituaries anyway I decided to look at some other branches of my family who might have ended up in the Fort Wayne paper when they died.
In one of those I found that an ancestress had brothers with a different last name than her maiden name. Several hours of research later, I had discovered even more family ties to Allen County than I knew that I had.

This photo is Flora Bracht Hildebrand, the same woman who is holding the baby in the middle of the old picture. In this picture the baby she's holding is me.

On a mission

Today I'm in detective mode. My mother showed me this picture yesterday and I want to figure out who these people are and where they were. The first will be easier than the latter, because we have some clues about the people.


We are fairly certain that these are some of the same people. It may have even been taken the same day. The taller woman in the center who is holding a baby, with a little girl standing in front of her is my great grandmother.

I think I know about when this was taken, but if any of you are photo-dating buffs I'd appreciate the input.

Letters

I had a wonderful day with my mother yesterday as we sorted through a couple of the many boxes of photos, letters, and newspaper clippings that my grandmother had accumulated in nearly ninety years on earth. Not only did she have letters that she had received, but also some that my great-grandparents had sent to each other when they were courting during 1907-09.

One of the treats was a stack of postcards from the early part of the 20th century that were mostly the communications of my great-grandmother's siblings to her. They lived in Fort Wayne and another town to the north, while my great-grandparents had remained in Magley, a little town about forty miles south of Fort Wayne. These were the written equivalent of a phone call, making plans for a visit the next Sunday, or sharing little bits of news.

The other letters that had us crying from laughing so hard were a number of letters written by my mother and grandfather to my grandmother--and her missiles in return--while she and my youngest aunt were on a trip to California in 1962 to visit my older aunt who was a Navy wife living in Oakland while her husband was at sea. She was gone for three weeks, and because long distance phone calls were still prohibitively expensive, all of the news and thoughts that they had during that time were written down.

What a treasure! This is the best insight I've ever had into my mom as a teen, before she was almost killed in an accident or was worn down by years of a dishonest and irresponsible husband. We laughed and laughed.
Her descriptions of the actions of my grandfather brought back so many happy memories.

We also found a bunch of letters that my little brother wrote to my grandparents when he was a kid. They were adorable!

Last night on the way home I started thinking about those letters, and the treasured letters that I have: letters from Colin when I was away at school; letters from my grandmothers, full of news about their gardens and what they're doing; postcards from my mom when I was in college; letters from Bethany at camp. These are all little insights into these people and I'm glad that I have them.

This has also made me determined to write more letters and encourage my children to do the same. It takes more thought to put news into words than it does to make a phone call. Email is impersonal and transitory.
Part of the magic of those old letters is seeing the handwriting, unique to each individual.

And think about the recipient. Getting the mail has become a chore. It's usually bills and a mountain of junk. Or some days it's just junk. Think of the little jolt of happiness that comes from seeing your name handwritten on an envelope that is obviously personal. If you write letters you might even get some back!

And of course the genealogist in me is screaming, "Write letters! Leave something of yourself for your great-great grandchildren to find."

Photo Hunt: Antique

Antique:

1.	of or belonging to the past; not modern.

2.	dating from a period long ago

The first picture is the headstone of my GGGGGrandmother who was born in Pennsylvania in 1803 and came to Indiana in 1847. She died here in 1896.


This is an old farm wagon under the overhang of a very old barn on a fascinating farm just south of Fort Wayne not far from the airport. It's many outbuildings are rather dilapidated and it looks abandoned, yet the grounds are kept perfectly.