Bonfire

It was that most wonderful time of the year again: Guy Fawkes Day, also known as my birthday. I knew it would be our last one in Kentucky and so I wanted to have a special bash with special friends.
Since we hadn't done anything for Halloween we made it a costume party, had gingerbread Guys and masks to decorate. And I made a 7-layer bean dip I was ESPECIALLY proud of...making (argh, thanks to Shay, I now feel great guilt every time I end a sentence with a preposition.)

We had some other delicious food (including some "authentic" Bonfire Toffee brought by the Powells), played a couple rounds of Clue Charades, and then headed outback for the main event.

Shay, with Guy chilling in the background.

We actually had two life-size effigies: our Guy made by Shay, and another made by Elder Migliori in honor of him completing his mission (he made it out of one of his suits, but the girls insisted he remove the tie as it was too gorgeous to burn).

Remember, remember
The fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Don't ask me what Shay was, it was apparently something rather complicated like gringo/green guy/I don't know, though his frog mask went really well with his outfit when he ran around with it on for a minute. I was a newsie.

Get it? I'm Jack. Kelly.

 Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Serendipity

As I said, there were not very many specific places where I knew Martha had visited. And we just went up to Point Park on Lookout Mountain to see Umbrella Rock. But as soon as we walked through the gates, I immediately recognized something from several of the photographs.

Martha is in center without her hat.

What had just looked like a smaller Jefferson Memorial with extra columns (which would be awkward since Washington D.C. was not in the Southern States Mission) turned out to be the New York Peace Memorial, with a Union and Confederate soldier shaking hands at the top.

Not quite the same angle, but I didn't have an original with me to compare. But my bottom may have sat on the same spot where my great-great grandmother's bottom sat. Whoa.

This may not be as awesome to you, but I love these little, amazing discoveries that shed light on the story and the bigger picture. It's why I like to fancy myself a microhistorian. Details, yum!

Pardon Me Boys...

We didn't have time on the way down to Georgia to stop in Chattanooga and we weren't supposed to have time on the way back, but thanks to a late, stormy night and a generous, concerned benefactor (Dad), we were able to get a room just a few miles from Lookout Mountain.

Lookout Mountain was a significant character in the Civil War, but to me it was much more important for a different reason. When Martha Smith (Merkley) served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1910-1912 she worked in Atlanta, Tennessee, East Ohio, and Florida. If she kept a journal it's been lost to the ages, but she did take lots of photographs that still survive today.

While she was excellent at labeling people, there aren't many other details, and there are very few specific places I know she visited. Umbrella Rock atop Lookout Mountain is one of them.

Martha is 3rd lady from left.

Martha is 2nd lady from left.

Umbrella Rock used to be uber famous, there are probably thousands of pictures out there of people atop it, from Civil War soldiers to vacationing families to Mormon missionaries. Thus I was profoundly disappointed at what has become of it.

Granted, it's next to the edge of a big cliff and I can see some concern there, but 1. There are lots of cliffs at the Grand Canyon and 2. It's not just about the cliff. They put up some little building/memorial/I'm not really sure its purpose or why they had to build it soooo close to Umbrella Rock that you can't actually get a decent view of Umbrella Rock. On top of that (the subject, not the building or the rock), there could at least be a pretty gate and small plaque celebrating its famousness. If I had ANY money or clout I would tell those people there they should have a campaign for people to send in photos of their ancestors atop the rock and perhaps a small donation to built a proper fence and a small exhibit with all the photos. It would bring in some money and more importantly, publicity, which would bring in more money (And then maybe the front desk lady at the hotel would have the faintest idea what I was talking about when asking for directions).
Whew. Stepping off of soapbox....now.

Wow, that wore me out. Guess I'll have to save my awesome serendipitous discovery for a Part II.

Immersion

At the end of October, Shay and I made a trip down to Georgia for a special event. While Shay had lived there during the filming of Andersonville, it was my first time on actual Georgia soil (though I had sat in the Atlanta airport with Mom and Dad waiting for our connection to Santo Domingo in December 2006).
Anyway, it was not only my first time in Georgia, but also my first immersion event. In this case it meant everyone was assigned a real person from the 1865 census and expected to be that person throughout the weekend, participating in pre-assigned vignettes and accomplishing certain goals.
Shay and I were William and Catherine Hobbs of Lumpkin, though for the weekend we were boarding at the Barr farmhouse (Mr. & Mrs. Barr were our good friends, Mark and Beverly Simpson) in the fictional town of Westville.
Shay was the town's tinsmith, but I still had to help out to earn money to pay for our meals. I tried selling a few things at the ersatz market, but that didn't add up to much so I needed to find something else to do. I considered peddling tinware, but I didn't think it was fitting or proper for a young, married lady to be out going door to door all on my own, and I could not find anyone to accompany me.
And then I found one of the greatest salesmen of all.

This adorable little redhead could talk her way into anything, including people's pocketbooks. So I made up some tin whistles and she and I started working our way around, practicing again and again why everyone needed one and how much they cost. To the townspeople she convinced them blowing the whistle would scare away the naughty, naught Yankees [soldiers] who were occupying our town. And to those soldiers she would remind them that they promised to take care of us and buying a whistle would help us buy our meal.
Not only did we make enough to pay for my our meals, but we sold every whistle as fast as I could make them. At the end I paid my little helper so she could buy some candy and gave her a whistle of her own to keep.

I don't know if I was accurate enough that weekend, but I had a great experience and got to spend time with wonderful people.

Watching the naughty, naughty Yankees leave town.

My little helper with her mom and baby brother.

Pumping the bellows

The farmhouse

Making whistles and primping for the job.

Something curious-the overall theme and storyline of the event was that the war was over, but there had been a murder that required federal troops to occupy our town, which meant martial law, a trial, and lots of arrests and drunkenness and revelry. But that wasn't my storyline. I lived outside of town in the farmhouse and just did what I needed to do to get by. Just like all those times I'd ask Great-grandma what she thought of the Great Depression and World War II, and she'd say, "Not much. We just did what we had to do."

A Lost Register Found...Then Lost

Once upon a time I had an ancestor lost to the pages of history. John Register came to America ahead of his wife and children, and then vanished. The worst part was that the son I come through was born after John was no longer in the records. Fortunately, Dad and Mom were able to go to Kansas and meet some long lost cousins, and finally solve the great mystery. John was neither eaten by a bear nor abducted by aliens, but was killed by a falling tree. Plus, these cousins had the receipt that was made out to his widow, Harriet, for the grave plot in Medina, Ohio.

So......after the Fair at New Boston wrapped, Dad and Mom commissioned us to go to Medina to the Old Town Cemetery to his plot number to take a picture of his headstone. Here's what we found:

We walked up and down, making sure the map wasn't wrong, but there was definitely no sign of him.

Refusing Dad's orders to start digging around for John, we left and headed to the "modern" cemetery to see if we could find a map to look for John and Harriet's daughter, Eliza. There was no map and no sexton (after all it was Labor Day). I told Shay to keep driving around (this cemetery was quite large) while Dad tried finding a map online. Then, like a miracle, I just happened to spot her headstone. Ta da! So at least the trip yielded something substantial to post on ancestry.com.

Back to the Fair

We made our third trip to the Fair at New Boston over Labor Day weekend.

We got in Thursday night and set up in the dark, once again. But instead of having to sleep in the van that night, we were invited by our "Ohio Parents", Kacey and Kathy Crager, to sleep at their house. It was so nice and refreshing that we stayed there Friday night as well, and appreciated their hospitality very much. We could have stayed Saturday night too, but there was a chance of a storm, and based on what happened the previous year, we didn't want to leave our tent to the wind's fate.

Meanwhile, Shay had a brand new pair of Russia sheeting trousers, entirely handsewn by yours truly ((that means me) and by entirely I don't mean the few parts in the beginning the weaver helped with to save me some time). I had one month to complete them, which was quite a task considering the few other sewing projects I've taken on I had to spend a month just staring at the instructions before even doing anything. I was still flat felling seams all the way to the event, but all in all, I'm quite proud of them.

Weaving: A Specialized Skill

As the weaver tells many of the visitors to Fort Boonesborough, most families on the colonial frontier would have known how to spin and would have spun much of their own thread. But-not every family would have known how to weave or done their own weaving. Of course, the hardest part of weaving is knowing how to set up the loom in the first place.

Well, I got lots of practice this year. I got to assist Mary Beth in dressing the looms almost every time she started a new project. She even let me do the most tedious work again and again (OK, I volunteered because I wanted the practice). And a few times when we had different days off she left the loom all to myself to weave cotton, lace shawls for her. (And she let me keep the first one I made even though she insisted it wasn't bad)

150 Years Ago in Perryville

On October 5, we returned to Perryville, Ky to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War battle there. It was one of those decisive battles of the war, in that it sent the Confederate Army south, and eventually out of Kentucky, never to push north through the state again.

Actually, we arrived on the night of the fourth for a long night of work. Due to some heavy rainfall the battlefield had recently received, no vehicles were allowed down into our camp. That meant hauling our shop on foot, by golf cart, and by ox wagon. It took hours and then we still had to get the tent up and everything in the tent, including ourselves.

On Friday I taught a flint and steel class to a few of the civilians and spent the rest of the day trying to finish getting ready for the weekend, like finishing the sewing on my new dress, the wool petticoat, corded petticoat, and a collar and cuffs. I never did get around to finishing the bonnet I was working on.

Saturday we finally had our likeness taken together by Todd Harrington and that night I got to participate in the period variety show. I recited "The Old Pioneer, Daniel Boone" by Theodore O'Hara. I wanted to have a a coonskin cap and skins (like skunk, etc.) draped over me, but this is what I ended up with. A coonskin cap, elk hide, and Shay's powder and horn. I had practiced for months and then a few days beforehand discovered my copy was missing one of the stanzas. Nerves held me up when I got to that part and again on another stanza where I think I skipped a line, but I received a roaring ovation anyhow. And it was fun. As soon as I finished, Shay skipped town and ran over to Danville to catch the priesthood session of General Conference.

Sunday was the Battle of the Cornfield which took place in the very spot where it happened 150 years ago. As it was explained to me, the landscape of the cornfield looked very much like it did originally, as both seasons had experienced similar droughts resulting in dry, withering corn. It was somewhat surreal watching the Union boys disappear through the corn and then to see the Confederates do the same thing a few minutes later.

But perhaps the most thought-provoking moment was in the early morning hours of Saturday. There was to be a battle at dawn and I was awakened by the fife and drum corps accompanying the drilling of the Union troops at the top of the hill next to us. I got up and ran to the bathroom and had to stop on the way back where I stood in awe watching the sunlight rise over the troops forming up and marching off to war. As they marched off I could not help thinking of the families and townspeople who watched thousands of soldiers do the same thing so long ago, and knowing many of them would not return. I went back to the tent and laid there listening to the sound of gun and cannonfire, all the while remembering how small of a scale these reenactments really are compared to the battles that took place. Unfathomable and heartbreaking. May it be a history we never have to repeat.

A Bittersweet Anniversary

While everyone else was remembering September 11, 2001, I was remember the September 11th that occurred five years ago. I got up that morning, rode to the airport and got in a plane leaving Las Americas, Dominican Republic headed to Puerto Rico. In the Puerto Rico airport I met a cute young man who refused to believe he was in the United States of America. I also called home and told my mom I wanted homemade chimichangas and root beer for dinner, a meal I hadn't had in 16 months. Then I caught the next plane from Puerto Rico to Dallas, Texas where I had to race to my third plane that would take me back home to the Phoenix, Arizona airport. On the final descent the woman next to me finally woke up from her nap and told me she was sad she didn't realize I was a missionary because she would have liked to talk to me about the church. I gave her a spanish pass along card and invited her to visit the temple's visitor center. Stepping off the plane it was almost refreshing to feel the warm desert breeze again. Well, at least it's a dry heat, not like the Caribbean.

As missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, young men typically serve for 24 months, young ladies for 18 1/2 months. During my time I experienced several extremely painful episodes and developed a constant dull pain in my back right. They did every test possible and couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Eventually, Church headquarters in Salt Lake City determined to send me home. I still regret not trying to fight the decision, b
ut the fact was that I was physically drained. But when I got the phone call from my mission president telling me I was going home I spent all that night crying, along with the next three days. For five years, though much more seldom now, I still have dreams of going back to finish those last two transfers. I love my Dominicans and miss them dearly, and can't believe how fast time has flown since I took off that "Hermana Jones" nametag for the last time.

Editor's Note: I must not write blog posts at midnight after no sleep the night before and not feeling well all day.....It's been six years.

...And Liddle Lamzy Divey

If the words sound queer
And funny to your ear,
A little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing, "Mares eat oats,
"And Does eat oats,
And Little Lambs eat Ivy."

Z. Divey Lelegren

We got a new, 2 week old lamb at the Fort Boonesborough Trade Fair over Memorial Day weekend. He's actually the lamb of the lamb who lived at the fort two summers ago. She had twins and rejected this one, so he needed a new home. The last two sheep here had a very tragic demise and I said the only way I would try again would be to get a bottle fed lamb so it could attach to me and Shay and Schwarz. At least on my end we're doing really well. He goes to work with us so I can feed him and he doesn't even use the leash at all. He stays right by my side and follows me wherever I go (except when I leave him with the weaver to babysit-for bathroom breaks and lunch).

With Shay, they definitely tolerate each other.

 And with Schwarz.....well, as long as Schwarz is tied up they're "best friends". Otherwise, if Divey jumps in front of him, Schwarz gets excited and starts chasing him. Now, Divey may want to play a little, but Schwarz doesn't know when to stop. So we're still working on that, and Divey comes in before dark and sleeps in the back room.

At work, whenever we're in the spinning cabin he likes to nestle in the dirty fleeces laying on the floor. He probably recognizes the sheep smell, but we doubt he realizes one of the fleeces actually came from his own mother. LOL

The face of mischief:

Who, me?

And for those so unfortunate as to have been formerly deprived of knowing this song:

Raid at Martin's Station the Third

On Mother's Day weekend we made our third visit to Wilderness Road State Park in Ewing, Va for the annual Raid at Martin's Station.

We had a good time, sold some tinware, and enjoyed cool weather Saturday and a refreshing drizzle Sunday.