I Just Love This Photo!

I'm busy working on a long blog post with the story of the Whetstone family but miss posting here, so thought that this might be a good time to share some of my favorite family pictures. You've see a lot of them but my thought is to select just one and then write everything I know about it and make some observations too. Might just make a game of it and play, What Do You See?

So here goes and the first one is a picture of my great grandfather's house. He was Daniel Williams and a recent blog post was the story of that family.

The Williams home, built about 1899, in Ocean Allegany, Maryland.

Pictured are:

Back row, left to right: William Williams (1884-1964 ), his wife Lillian "Lillie" (Merbaugh) (1884-1964 ), Tom Williams (1890-1951 ), and Jane (Price) Williams (1862-1939),

Front row, left to right: Cambria "Camey" Williams (1897-1960) my Grandfather, Joseph "Joe" Williams (1895-1948), Charles Williams (1899-1979) and Aunt Betty's father, a neighbor, and "Blackie" the dog on the fence post.

So there it is, and I dearly love this picture. Aunt Betty and Mom both have copies, and now I have this electronic copy. Aunty Betty says that the house was built by Daniel and Jane (James) Williams about 1899. Charles, Aunt Betty's father was the only child of Daniel and Jane born here, but many of the family lived there from time to time and so the next generation was also born there.

I see here a two story frame house with balanced and even architecture, painted to emphasize the trim and make the overall impression more decorative and appealing. There is pride even today when Mom and Aunt Betty talk about this old home place. And notice the contrasting painted brick-a-brack on the top of the porch posts. Someone took care with how this home presented itself.

I also like the front fence and the rambling garden with trees and perhaps climbing roses festooning the porch. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you'll see what might be some type of crisscross wire making a structure for the climbers growing up the front porch. And is that a fruit tree on the right side? It looks tidy and well kept. Aunt Betty's note on the file says that a street car ran right in front of the house. How proud the family must have been to ride it and see their house as it was undoubtedly admired by riders.

Aunt Betty tells an interesting story of life in this house. You see in these parts the mineral rights were not sold with the land so the mining company could dig a mine right under your home. Even today this practice continues. Some days, Aunt Betty said, you could hear the miners right below the house, talking, and digging away. At one point the activity was so energetic that it moved the house right off the foundation! Imagine!

Mom says that there was an outhouse down and the end of the yard but by the time she was a very little girl, about 1920, there was a regular bathroom in the house on the first floor. Her Grandfather Williams was very ill near the end of his life right about then and we speculated that perhaps the bathroom was added on the first floor to make it easier for him.

There was a natural cold spring that came out of the ground in the back yard. There were a lot of them then, Mom says. The water was cold the year round so the family kept butter and milk in the indentation in the earth where the spring came out. In the house between the dining room and kitchen was what we might call a pantry, a short hallway with shelves, That was where Mom went to check to see if there were any pies available.

Every time I go see Mom it's my intention to drive the short distance from Frostburg to what's left of the once prosperous coal mining community that was Ocean. Next time, for sure. I wonder where it got that name, because believe me, it's no where near any Ocean!


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-just-love-this-photo.html

Thoughtful Tuesday: Young and Old Grandfather Williams

I love the Geneablogger's wonderful Daily Blogging Prompts because they lend structure to my blog posts and keep me moving through the week. Quite a while back and inspired by them I thought of a new one, called Thoughtful Tuesday. The objective was to contrast the young and the old version of an ancestor and illustrate that with photos. Of course for my many less wealthy ancestors who could not afford the delights of the photographer's parlor, there is no photo record from those years of the last half of the 1800s. This young and old contrasting just doesn't have enough range, so I decided to do it for grandparents only.

I've done three of my grandparents and the only one left is my Grandfather Williams, Cambria Williams (1897 - 1960) named after the Cambria mountains of Wales but always called "Camey". He was a handsome young man and throughout his life had a big luxurious head of hair.

But I'm getting ahead of myself! First let me give you the links to the three other grandparents so you can see how this has been shaping up. And I'm posting the less-elegant form of the full link because some might have trouble with the usual "click here", or so I'm told.

Grandmother Williams
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughtful-tuesday-grandmother-williams.html

Grandpop Kelly:
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/thoughtful-tuesday-young-and-old_30.html

GrandMa Kelly:
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/thoughtful-tuesday-young-and-old.html

All right, we're all caught up. The Williams family, headed by Daniel Williams (1852 - 1920) who was born in Wales, and his wife Jane Price Williams (1862 - 1939) was a large house full of kids and, at times, grand kids. It stood in Ocean, Maryland a small place no where near the actual ocean but in the mountains of Western Maryland and at the heart of the coal mining fields. Daniel was a coal miner and a foreman, so he was a good earner, as they say. With eight boys and one daughter, there were plenty of mouths to feed. But young strong boys could work in the coal mines if they had an "in", and Daniel's boy sure did! Here's what Aunt Betty wrote to me a while back about Daniel:

Daniel worked for the Consolidation Coal Company as a foreman  at mine #16 at Ocean, MD which is about a mile from where he lived. He was chosen to take a large lump of coal from Ocean Mines to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

 

When it came time for Camey, the second youngest boy, to take his place in the mines, his father tried him out and then fired him saying that he wasn't cut out for it and was "lazy". Mom remembers clearly her father telling about this and saying he was so claustrophobic down in the mines that he was happy to be fired.

Here are two pictures I'm thrilled to have from Aunt Betty. By the way, Aunt Betty is Camey's younger brother Charles' daughter. The notations on the photos are hers. What a good idea!

 

See in this photo just above, Charlie, Aunt Betty's dad, is the youngest in front on the left, and Camey the next youngest on the right.

Mom has a photo of her father Camey as a handsome young man, but it was in an old dilapidated domed glass frame. When we took it all apart to see what could be done we noticed that the image was also domed but in very poor condition. I took a couple of photographs of it to see if a repaired version could be made and here's what happened, below. That old photo was doomed for destruction but with a little PhotoShop magic at least now future descendants can still enjoy the image.

 

 

Then Camey met and wed Emma Susan Whetstone (1897 - 1956) and they married 2 Sept 1916. Here they are below with their first baby, my Mom, Virginia Mae, born two years after they walked down the aisle.

 



 



But this exercise is all about contrasting the young ancestor with the old. I can see the ravages of time in my father's parents, plain in photographic form, but Mom's parents seem much the same even though they obviously did age. Look at that photo above. She's serious but gentle and he's smiling and having a good time. That's pretty much how I remember them too, even in old age.

 

This photo above is one of my favorites of Grandfather Williams. He was a very active guy and loved nothing better than being out in the woods hunting or fishing. There he is with a dandy rainbow trout, and a really large one.

Bottom line and my thoughts on Grandfather Williams is that he was his own person. He didn't remain working in a job he didn't like even though it was easy to come by and insured an good income. He took the road less traveled and became a tobacco route salesman with a vehicle to get him down back roads up in the mountains so he could fish or hunt. He did what he loved and it showed in every fiber of his being. May we all be so lucky.

Camey and Emma enjoying the great outdoors in Western Maryland!

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/07/thoughtful-tuesday-young-and-old.html

 

DNA Me: A Good Spit Is Hard to Find

Well I'm off on my DNA adventure! Before the holidays I selected 23andMe to do my DNA test and just after New Year ordered the kit. It came in less than a week and it had been sitting on the table waiting for me to do something with it. Finally the little box was opened and I got on with it.

The first step, as instructed by the lid of the little plastic box in a box - and must comment that the packaging is well designed - is to register the test kit as yours. So off to my browser and input the unique code for my kit. I made note of the code in a safe place in case it's needed later.

After registration, there is the terms of agreement to read, and check off as read and agreed to before completion of registration. After reading recent comments about terms and how one should read them to be sure you are not really buying a timeshare or committing to monthly billing, these terms got a special going over. And it was attention grabbing because it concerned the possible sharing of my survey data, if I decided to participate in their surveys, which I have not done.

The one survey I looked at was all about medical information and I'm not sure quite yet that I want that floating about in a data base. Must confess that I'm not usually one to read terms of use but I will from here on out. Plus, it was encouraging that it gave the choice to opt out. I opted in, just in case I change my mind and do want to share medical data for their research later. Honestly, if I answered the medical survey questions first before getting the test results I might not feel that the results were entirely honest... but that's just me.

Next, spit! Some kits want a cheek swab, but 23andMe wants plenty of spit, or saliva. You can not have had anything to eat or drink in the 30 minutes prior to spitting in the tube. Sounds easy, right? Then why, oh why, is it that if you tell me I can't have anything to drink that is the very moment I'm as parched and dry as desert? But I waited like a good girl and then started to spit.

Now here is the really hard part: you have to spit enough to fill the tube up to the line. Oh, golly! It must have taken me five full minutes to fill it up, but fill it to the line on the tube I finally did. I do envy people who spit copiously. It wasn't until well after I mailed the package back that I noticed on the email confirmation at time of purchase the suggestion that you rub your cheek a couple of minutes to increase saliva. Would have been a helpful addition to the package, and a good tip for anytime you want to drum extra spit;)

The lid comes down on the tube proper and that releases the liquid in the lid. Then take that lid off and screw on a cap, shake for five seconds, and put the tube in a plastic peel-and-seal bag. Back in the box it goes. Done! It really was easy.

The box has an address in Los Angeles on it but the 23andMe web site says that it could take up to two weeks for the lab to receive the sample. Because LA is just north of San Diego where I live, it will be interesting to see how long it does take to get first word back.

As I wait I'll keep on reading and looking at information about DNA for genealogy. I have so much to learn. But I've learned this already... it's really hard to spit that much!

Photo of the day from Aunt Betty's Archive:

Wouldn't they marvel at the wonders of DNA testing?
That's my GGF, Daniel Williams and his family.

Pictured are:

Daniel Williams, 1852 - 1920

Charles Williams, 1899 - 1979

William Williams, 1884 - 1964

Jane Williams, Daniel's wife, 1862 - 1939

Grands, Dan, Lillie, Hilda, and Bessie

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/01/dna-me-good-spit-is-hard-to-find.html