Geneabloggers Winter Games 2010

It was not the best week to join two "olympics" challenges - a week with extra hours and night meetings at my "dayjob." I met some of the challenges last weekend, however. I really wanted to participate in the Write, Write, Write! category, but I decided that just one advance blog post wasn't enough to count. I also tried to put all my surnames in a Wordle picture, but it came up sideways in my blog, so I deleted it.

I did earn one medal, Gold - in Genealogical Acts of Kindness! I sent photos to Trent Briles to add to his Mt. Pleasant cemetery project (I didn't post to Find A Grave because I overlooked that part). I'm still indexing the 18th-century minutes (church records) for the Moate Meeting in Ireland. And I added more genealogy blogs to my "follow" list. The latest one is "Southwest Arkie."

Things I would still like to do in the near future:
- Join the Randolph County Genealogical Society (had hoped to check that off last week!).
- Enter the new information from my research trip to Ireland, with citations, into Reunion.
- Back up my data, after I've entered the new records.
- Create subpages for this blog, listing family trees or at least surnames.
- Read and comment on other genealogy blogs.
- Create a timeline for the English family line (started this a few months ago).

Thanks to Geneabloggers for these great ideas, and a fun Winter Games!

Tombstone Tuesday - Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, N.C.

A couple of years ago, I stopped by Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Hillsville (Trinity mailing area), N.C. I hadn't been there since about 1990, when my mom pointed out a few ancestors and I had written down their information.

This latest trip was an impulse visit, just to show a friend where some of my ancestors are buried, so the only information I brought was in my head. I found tombstones for the Routh and Kindley families, but something nagged at me. I thought there had been more. I saw several small rectangular stones the size of my hand, which might be unmarked graves, in the middle of the cemetery. When I got home, I dug around and found pictures I had taken on my first trip. Sure enough, some of my family's graves were missing.

Last fall, Trent Briles posted a transcription of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery online. What a lot of hard work! He expressed some frustration about the missing stones, and the fact that the church would not let him see their records. I don't know who the other stones were, but two of them were as pictured here, ca. 1990.

Philmon P. (Plummer) Copple, born 14 August 1824, died 24 January 190(7?).
Barbara M. (Miller) Copple, born 22 December 1823, died 20 July 1904.

According to the 1880 census, Philmon was a farmer, and they lived in Tabernacle Township (Hillsville area).
Their daughter Adaline, who married Jacob Shadrach Kindley in 1871, was my ancestor.

Snow and books

Was it two weeks ago - when the first big snow came, and they were telling everybody to stay home, and off the roads? I was fine with that. It was the weekend, I had milk, bread and toilet paper, and I was ready to hibernate.

But then I got a call from my sister, who knew the magic words: "Would you like to go to a book sale?" We're not talking about a big box store, we're talking about one of those annual church sales (a synagogue in this case) where you scrounge through tons of books to find treasures. With wine and snacks. Oh, and they would pick me up and I wouldn't even have to drive.

I said, "I'll meet you outside."

Although the crowd was light, Beth David Synagogue in Greensboro had planned this all year and they were going through with their sale. The selection was great, although I finally had to stop looking after almost filling a box. They had everything by major category, and I was thrilled to find a vintage book table. And, thank the Lord, we crazy bibliophiles (yes, it runs in the family) made it home safely, although it took nearly an hour to go 20 miles and we passed several cars abandoned in ditches.

I got a heavy volume of Shakespeare; no date, but it looks late 19th-century, with the gilded cover unusually sharp. A 1962 paperback of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Another decorative book with the gilt worn off, Don Quixote, undated but the owner wrote 1885. A few Modern Library editions (they had many) - Classical Myths, Oscar Wilde, Jane Eyre and The African Queen.
Some modern ones for me to read: Burning Bright, by Tracy Chevalier; Tears of the Giraffe, by Alexander McCall Smith; and all three of the Griffin and Sabine series.

Yep, 'looks like I went a little wild. But when they totaled everything up at less than $40, I didn't feel guilty at all. What a great deal!
It's just that ... where am I going to put all these books?

Geneabloggers - Let the Games begin!

This blog has grown, in a wonderful way, into a travel-genealogy-books (aah, those words just make me happy) niche. I thought it might change the tone too much if I tried to promote my Creative Memories business here, even though pictures and history naturally overlap into preservation and scrapbooking. So, Travels with Books has been sorely neglected the last few weeks because I divided myself into a new blog for my business (Save the Pictures), a Facebook page and a new Twitter identity. All that has been a bit overwhelming - feels like I have multiple social personality disorder!

To give this blog a boost, on a lovely snowy Saturday, I've signed up for Geneabloggers' Winter Olympics. They have six competition categories: 1. Cite your sources, 2. Back up your data, 3. Organize your research, 4. Expand your knowledge, 5. Write write write! and 6. Genealogical Acts of Kindness.

Already overwhelmed, I don't think I'll tackle 1, 2, 3, and maybe not 4 at this time. I cite sources as I enter facts into Reunion, and I haven't added much to that file since I backed it up last year. And although I'd love to put more photos into albums, I have to order some things so this is not the week to do it. I'm going to try events 5 and 6, which include things I hope to do anyway, like blogging and indexing.

Opening ceremonies are Monday. You still have time to sign up! You can start with your own flag, like this one: it represents the English family, who came from England and Ireland to the U.S.

A lovely bookish day

One of my favorite quotes in life is from my mom: "The Saunderses would do without food before they'd do without their reads." I pretty much lived up to that last week. January's been a tight month, bringing a cut in my income. I had planned to treat myself to a night out last Saturday, a film festival and the book store in Greensboro. I weighed that against the need for groceries. I had meat in the freezer, a can of milk in the pantry — I decided I could go a few more days without a trip to the store!

I had my mind set on stopping by Jason's Deli, a wonderful "healthy" place near the theatre. But I discovered that the film cost at least $10, and I had $20 in my pocket. Hmm. I decided I really would rather have dinner and a book. I hadn't interested any of my friends in a cultural film outing, so I had no commitment to go.

Earlier in the day I had become frazzled by my mental to-do list and had rested with a book — Roots, by Alex Haley. A pounding at my door interrupted me; it was the mailman with a large box. I happily opened it to find a shipment of Elizabeth Peters' books that I had ordered.

That night I had a lovely salad with chicken pot pie soup and Jason's decadent croutons. Then I went to Borders on the excuse of looking for Bird by Bird — a writer friend told me I must buy it and read it immediately. Their only copy had a bent corner, and I was distracted by several other titles as I wandered around the store. I sat in an armchair and looked over the choices, devouring part of Women, Work & the Art of Savoir Faire: Business Sense & Sensibility, by Mireille Guiliano. I really wanted to buy it, but could only afford one book this time (the ones I wanted were still in hardback, but I had a discount coupon). I finally decided on The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch.

It was so lovely just sitting there, looking through books, surrounded by books, a trio of customers visiting nearby, an employee passing through with an armload. A very satisfying evening.

The coldest winter

As I try to fictionalize the story of my real ancestors, just to fill in the gaps, I keep finding that real life is more dramatic than I could ever imagine.

A great frost and famine plagued Ireland in 1740-1741. As if that weren't enough drama, I thought maybe my MC (main character) Joshua might fall through some ice and survive a bout of pneumonia, which would bring him and his wife closer. The first problem with that idea is that there are no loughs (lakes) in Moate, where the English family lived. I could, however, have them go to one of the fairs in Athlone or Mullingar, which have rivers and lakes. But a fair, during the worst of winter? Hmm.

I went back to Jonathan Bardon's A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes (highly recommend it) to read about the great frost. The stories are sobering; about one in five people in Ireland died during the "Year of the Slaughter." (The 19th-century famines were nothing to this, percentage wise.) Even the great ports, like Dublin, were frozen over so that boats couldn't come in. Then I saw, staring back at me on page 249, that the drought brought horrible fires with it, including 20 houses burned "in the village of Moate, Co. Westmeath." What?!!! Moate is not even in the index of this 531-page tome.

Twenty houses gone, in this small village, during two arctic years. How many houses were there? Could Joshua's house have been one of them? I thought that the Quaker records from Moate must mention something, so I checked. Drat! The second book of minutes, which I am indexing, starts in 1743! I looked over my notes from the first minute book, but I was just skimming for the English name during my trip.

I'm not sure where to go with this, yet. I'll have to figure out how many people lived in Moate that year. I do know that in my own 21st-century town of almost 10,000, losing 20 homes would be devastating.

Books of 2009

I feel pretty good about myself when I look at the list of "books I'm reading" on this blog. But let's see how I really did. Here are the books I read in their entirety in 2009:

1. Deep River Friends: A Valiant People, by Cecil Haworth - I actually proofread this as an almost-final manuscript. It was exciting to hold a final copy in my hands last summer!
2. I edited another manuscript, a book of Quaker biographies. I don't want to give out the title until it's closer to publication.
3. The Last Camel Died at Noon, by Elizabeth Peters - I read her Amelia Peabody books for sheer enjoyment.
4. Books, by Larry McMurtry - I enjoyed reading about the life of another bibliophile, especially while camping. In answer to a friend: yes, I sometimes do finish reading nonfiction books!
5. Philippians - in the Bible, but it's called a "book."
6. The Scotswoman, by Inglis Fletcher - my first Inglis Fletcher book, inspiration for my own fact-based historical novel.
7. Stone Cold, by David Baldacci, audiobook - A lot of action, good characters and plot, but I started in the middle of the trilogy, which was probably a mistake. I read The Collectors last year and this was the sequel that wrapped up the storylines.

Now, here are the books that I partly read in 2009:
-- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - Excellent. I read the whole thing, but started it in 2008.
-- Financial Survival, by Kristen Eckstein - Practical advice for a tight budget. I read most of it, but I'm one of those people who will stop and work on the "how to" of one chapter before I read further.
-- Moate: A History, by Liam Cox - I would have read this whole book if it were still in print! A lot of history about the small town where my ancestors lived in Ireland. I devoured the pages that I had copied at the library during my trip.
-- A New History of Ireland - read a few chapters during my research trip to Ireland. Good, but overwhelming.
-- A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes - great anecdotes, so you can eat up history in bite-sized, tasty pieces. I've been skipping around.
-- The Last Days of Black Beard the Pirate, by Kevin P. Duffus - impressive research, going back to primary sources the way genealogists do. His style is a little annoying, like a Discovery channel special. I started this after Thanksgiving and I'm still working on it.
-- Swahili - I finally found a decent phrasebook with pronunciation tips. I actually am reading the non-dictionary parts.
-- The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog, by Elizabeth Peters - I just finished this, so it's officially in 2010. Loved it! I felt an extra connection with the plot because of events going on in my own life.

So there you have it, not quite a book a month. I did not have particular goals for 2009 and I'm proud of the editing work this year (in addition to proofreading the news at my office job).
My only reading goals right now are research for my novel. Next up: Roots and The Peaceable Kingdom.