Lizzie’s Jewelry Box

I can’t think of a time that I was not interested in history or about my ancestors and I have always believed the two are interconnected.  The more I learned about history the more I learned about our ancestors and this is how my journey began.

As the years passed and my research hours turned my simple folders and charts into narrative histories I realized that I needed to record the stories behind my family’s heirlooms, photos and keepsakes. These treasured pieces held a sacred meaning to their owners. In preserving what has been passed down to us we not only tell the story of our ancestors but they also hold a piece to the communities we lived in.

There is a jewelry box that sits on my dresser that belonged to my great grandmother Elizabeth Catherine Decker Thompson.  It’s a modest three footed six inch round porcelain jewelry box with a delicately painted design that has not faded much with its age. It opens with a clasp to reveal what was a silk lined interior and over the last hundred years it has held the treasure of its three owners.

It was a gift to Lizzie from her husband. She was a farmer’s daughter who never lived far from her place of birth and married in 1907 when she was just seventeen. She began married life farming in western Douglas Co. Nebraska and in 1913 her only child Vera Elizabeth was born. I cannot think of a time that I was not aware of this jewelry box and as a little girl I learned its significance.

Farm life at the turn of the century could be a hard existence and everything the couple purchased had a practical purpose. Lizzie had longed to own something special, something feminine that did not need to have a useful function but was resigned that it would be a future purchase.  My great grandfather Garfield Thompson understood how much was denied them in simple luxuries and what it would mean to his wife if she owned this yet unidentified piece.  It was on a warm summer morning on a trip into the city to spend the day at the fair, that he surprised her as he led her into the store and suggested that she choose a gift for herself.  To her delight and after some hesitation Lizzie proudly chose her jewelry box.

Lizzie treasured her jewelry box and it sat on her dresser waiting to be filled with all the future things  that she would hold dear. She wrote the day she married, the day her daughter was born and the date she received her jewelry box on a slip of paper and with her broach and a few hair ribbons she placed these contents inside.  When their daughter turned five they gave her a gold bracelet and it was placed inside Lizzie’s jewelry box for safe keeping.

Life takes unexpected turns and Lizzie, who was six months pregnant died in Dec. 1918, shortly after her daughters fifth birthday, a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic. She was 28 years old. The jewelry box now had a new purpose and meaning. It held the cherished memories and story of its owner and when it was given to my Grandma, Lizzie was not forgotten.

Its contents have changed over time. When my Grandma was in her seventh decade of life she said it was time I owned the jewelry box. It was a privilege and honor to have accepted it and when I opened it there was a single gold bracelet staring at me.  d  sen she wrs old she passed th decade she said it was time I owned the jewerly . They forgedOne day I will give this jewelry box to my daughter.  I am not quite ready but when I do I will add my own special piece for her to find.

This little jewelry box has a history. It tells the story about a woman who died too young who had hopes and dreams. It tells the story about the connection my Grandma felt to a woman she barely remembered and always missed. It tells the story of farm life in the early twentieth century and about the horrific flu epidemic that plagued Nebraska and the world.

Our ancestor’s stories take us back in time and allow us to be a part of our history. The family treasures’ that were important enough to be passed down thru the generations give personality to our ancestors and offer us a glimpse into the communities they lived in. We have a lot of stories waiting to be told. We have it in our homes and on our shelves and in the oral history that was repeated through the generations. We should not overlook this part of our history.  It tells our story.

There are some things we are not able to part with such as my great grandmother’s jewelry box but I can write a short story and attach a picture so that her story can be told.  We can leave written records and label old photos for our future generations. We can share our story or family history with historical or genealogical societies.  We can preserve our grandmothers wedding dress or loan it to a museum collection. We can donate the old box of letters or the contents found in the old attic trunk. We can share the history of our towns and our beautiful land. There are many ways in which I can share my ancestor’s stories and preserve our history.

Our stories matter. History is about people and the communities they lived in.  In taking the time to record and share our history we leave something valuable behind for the generations that will follow us. Our stories are tomorrow’s history.

Kathy Haley Buhrman

 

 

Be the Biographer of your family

Be The Biographer of your family LET YOUR ANCESTORS VOICE SPEAK. TELL THEIR STORY.

 I enjoy teaching family history and in my classes I am always stressing the importance of accurately recording our family history. I want my students to understand and use sound research methodology and to be more than an internet genealogist. I want them to understand that there is more to researching our family history than hitting the green leaf on ancestry.com   Don’t get me wrong, I use ancestry.com and it is a terrific resource that I subscribe to but we seek the truth from all the wonderful repositories that hold information and we want to be more than a name collector.

Charting the basic information of our ancestors is just the beginning. We must tell their stories.

The names we discover give our ancestor’s identity but their records tell us how they lived danced and sang and offer us a snapshot of the communities and the world in which they lived. Our story will be so much more fascinating and interesting if we describe the emotion and the personality of our ancestors than if we only collect their names or list the facts.

I have a picture of my great, great Grandma, Mary Casey Carver. But I know little about her, the woman she was. Written oral family history states that she was from Effin, Co. Limerick, Ireland, was educated at the national schools and lived on the River Shannon. She survived the potato famine and emigrated with her sister who died aboard ship, whose name has always been a mystery. But who was my great, great grandmother?

In researching my great, great grandparents I learned that Mary was the mother of seven children, two having died in infancy.  I know she was born in Ireland about 1835 and married my great great grandfather, John Carver, in Norwich, Connecticut in June of 1856.

In 1869 the young family migrated from Connecticut with a group of friends with the purpose of moving to Nebraska.  Mary was a farmer’s wife and lived in Nebraska for the remainder of her life having died in 1906 and is buried next to her husband in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Burchard, Nebraska.

No records have been found listing her parent’s names and no obituary notice was written. She was not named on any property nor voting lists or county biographies. These are her basic facts from the records I have found for Mary to date.

We all hope to locate a lot of records on our ancestors but sometimes there are not a lot of factual records to work with in which to write the stories of our ancestors. So how do we write the story about Mary Casey Carver when records are scarce? How do we give her personality?

 We examine every bit of information we have for clues. We broaden our knowledge to include what we know about her family and community. We read local newspapers. We learn the history of the communities she lived in and we create a timeline of historical events that would have shaped her world.

 We recreate her life with the knowledge and information we have. And we begin to tell the story of who Mary Casey Carver was. We can tell the story behind her name and be true to the known facts.

If I was to include the likely way the family would have traveled when they migrated from Connecticut to Nebraska in 1869 her story would become more interesting.

If I were to include what their journey would have been like I am adding more details.
If I were to describe how she likely felt, I am adding emotion and giving her personality.

 I have not found Mary’s passenger record but I can imagine how she felt when her sister died at sea. I could write:

“Her final goodbye was to her sister said somewhere over the vast ocean near the end of their voyage, an unceremonious burial as cold as the Atlantic waters. She did not want her burial in the icy cold dark waters and she stood silent, her composure almost stiff, as her sisters body was led to drift away into the sea until lost and washed out of reach. Not one tear could be released. Not that day”.

 We do not need to write expansive narratives and I could shorten it to say “Her final goodbye was to her sister said somewhere over the vast ocean near the end of their voyage, an unceremonious burial as cold as the Atlantic waters”.

 With just one piece of information I have described emotion. I have given her personality and shown some insight into how Mary likely felt having buried her sister at sea.

 Not all of our family history is going to be written in the past tense but we can use the same principles that we apply for our ancestors as we do for the living.

My brother is the consummate story teller and his subjects are often about family. He can stand in a crowded room and capture an audience and make you laugh. We shake our heads hearing the stories repeated, knowing it won’t be retold the same yet he remains true to the facts and we anticipate the reactions.

 Story telling is an old tradition. It is oral history. I don’t think he has written down a thing but he has shared family history. He has given me a story line. I can begin with “Your Uncle John…”

I have family history and personality.

 My brother also has three older sisters and three younger sisters. Just writing down our names it becomes obvious that my brother did not grow up in a male dominated world. What a story he could tell! There is always more to be learned about a family and we need to look beyond the obvious facts.

 I can look at family traditions. The tradition of having oyster soup on Christmas Eve is a familiar ritual for many of us that dates back generations and we likely all have similar traditions.

 My mother is a third generation American born of Irish emigrants. I realize that potatoes are a mainstay of American diets but she could cook potatoes a hundred different ways with every meal and has been heard to say how much nutrition is in potatoes and that if the potato was the only food at our table that we could survive. I have always wondered how much Mom may have been influenced from our family having survived the potato famine and how much her reasoning was because she genuinely liked potatoes.

 I can be reasonably sure that Mary Casey Carver planted potatoes in her vegetable garden and had memories of the potato famine. I would likely be correct believing that she shared some history of having survived the potato famine with her children. I can write and elaborate about the potato famine and how in part it likely shaped the woman she was.

 We can learn about our past from our mothers and grandmothers and the men in our life too. We only need to examine why our family acts and behaves the way we do.

 If we have old heirlooms and family pictures they have a story waiting to be told. While most old photos capture a serious looking ancestor and Mary Casey Carver’s was no exception, some photos offer us a terrific snapshot of who our ancestors were. There is an old black and white family photo of my Mom and her family posing for the camera with the standard straight posture but in the background my Uncle Leonard is captured with body in motion and a mischievous smile that shouted he was full of life. Had I not known my Uncle this photo would have given me an immediate window into his personality. Adding a name and a story to that immortalized face brings personalities to life and we use it to tell our stories.

There are a lot of ways we can tell the stories of our ancestor’s personality and the lives they led. We just have to look for them. We use the information we have gathered to build a medical history of our family by recording the known causes of death of our ancestors. Property records or the lack of them can suggest if our ancestors lived a comfortable life. Occupations suggest a lifestyle.

 Given names can leave us clues too. James Arthur Garfield Thompson born in 1880 was named after President Garfield and we can be reasonably certain that his parents had a political reason for their son’s namesake. The history of the locations and time era suggest how our ancestors may have lived their daily lives. Our ethnic and religious backgrounds may have influenced how our ancestors led their life.

 My research on Mary Casey Carver is unfinished. But when information is scarce I continue to challenge myself to learn more about my ancestors by analyzing the records I have discovered to record the personality and lives of my ancestors.

 

 

 

Happy New Year

Its a New Year-2014. I understand the reasoning of using the January 1 date to make resolutions for the New Year. I really do and it in itself is not a bad idea. We need goals. We need to make promises to ourselves and reaffirm commitments and keep them. But I did not make any resolutions that I was not likely to keep or that in a few months my determination would wane, I can't say that I really made any resolutions, nothing new anyway. Most of my goals have spilled over from 2013 to flipping the calendar to 1 Jan of 2014. That isn't to say that I didn't try to complete some goals or projects by December 31, I did. It gives me that extra push.

I work with lists. Maybe I am to organized but I still write out my goals, my to do's. It gives me a visual. I like that, maybe I need that. I work with lists whose time does not always coincide with the months and dates and years of the calendar. It is constantly being revised, deleted when completed and a new one added. Maybe a new one is added before one is completed. It keeps me focused. I can not think of a time that I did not have goals or a list of do's.

It is like spring cleaning, which I still do, but it is not marked by the calendar telling me it is the first day of spring. It is not going to get erased off my annual list. But I know it will be spring when I do it. And that is okay as long as that is my goal.

We needs goals. We need a plan. Most of my goals can not be marked on a calendar for a specific day as I would write down appointments or the days that I am teaching a class.Time does not discriminate with the last day of an old year or the first day of the New Year and I just can not wrap up my goals timely to fit the mark of a New Year. It is okay if we use the first day of the new year to examine our goals or to add new ones but we do not erase our current goals so it is equally okay to flip the calendar and keep working the list.

Lately my goals are more of the black and white variety of ink and paper, of reading and writing. Submit that article; finish that story; do the research to finish story; read those books, new PP for presentation. And yes, write on blog.

Happy New Year!