Goodbye 2013

     As 2013 draws to a close, I sit her and think of the wasted days and wasted hours.  The time I could have spent writing this blog or doing some research was spent waiting for my chronic daily migraine headaches to go away.
     I think my headaches are finally gone.  I hope and pray they are.  I visited a holistic doctor who is also a chiropractor and have been pair free for three months.
     I had put my family tree on hold to research my best friend's ancestors.  I made it back to Germany and Ireland for Lillian and England for her husband but I still have not found my Irish ancestor.  I have been stalking, I mean... Seeking my 3rd great-grandmother, Emily Sheldon and I'm starting to believe that she might be hiding from me.
     I'm hoping 2014 brings better genealogy success.

     Happy New Year! 

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

The Gift of the Magi 

 by O. Henry

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again—you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

~ Christmas Eve ~

 

 

 

'Twas the Night Before Christmas
or Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas
by
Major Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828)
(previously believed to be by Clement Clarke Moore)

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled down for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN! On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONDER and BLITZEN! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my hand, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"

Until recently it was believed that this ballad was written in 1822 for Clement Clarke Moore's two daughters, Margaret and Charity, and later anonymously published in the Troy [New York] Sentinel on December 23, 1823. But, according to University of Toronto English Library, in 2000, Don Foster, in his book Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (New York: Henry Holt, 2000) was able to demonstrate that Moore could not have been the author. Foster concluded that it was probably written by Major Henry Livingston Jr. For another analysis of the authorship see Christmas (Moore or Less?).

Visit A Mouse in Henry Livingston's House for a biography and an account of the quest to correct the authorship of this poem.

According to sources cited at University of Toronto English Library, the last two reindeer were origianlly Dunder and Blixem and were "[l]ater revised to 'Donder and Blitzen' by Clement Clarke Moore when he took credit for the poem in Poems (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1844)."

~ Count Your Blessings ~

     My maternal grandparents were kind and generous people.  They didn't live in the lap of luxury but they shared what they had and always helped others.
     My grandmother died six days after my 14th birthday.  Before MaMa went to Heaven I spent a lot of quality time with her.  She told me stories about the people in the old family photos which sparked my interest in genealogy.  We played cards together and she started to teach me how to crochet before she became sick.  I wish she had taught me how to cook.  MaMa was an excellent cook.  Her food was delicious.  I was truly blessed to have had such a wonderful grandmother.  MaMa loved geraniums.  I'll never forget the day that she gave a woman walking by the window her favorite potted plant.  I asked her why she gave the lady that geranium when it was her favorite.  MaMa told me that the woman admired and complimented her on that plant every time she walked by and if she liked it that much then she could have it.
     My cousin and I often ran errands for my grandmother.  Nancy and I dropped off and picked up bags of laundry from the laundromat and sometimes went to the nearby supermarket two blocks away or the corner store for milk.  When MaMa sent either of us to the store, we had to walk across the hall to Mary's apartment and ask her if she needed anything.  Mary was a very sweet old lady who had a few cats living with her.  I liked Mary but dreaded knocking on her door because the smell of Cat hit me in the face every time she opened the door.  She was nice though.  My grandmother used to look out her kitchen window while cooking or just throughout the day.  One day while looking out she saw an elderly woman struggling with two shopping bags as she walked along with her club foot.  MaMa sent me and Nancy out to help.  We asked if we could carry her bags home for her and we weren't allowed to take no for an answer.  We only walked about two or three blocks but it felt like two or three miles because those bags were heavy.  That's how MaMa was...  helping when she could even if it was help she recruited from me or my cousin.  :)
     My grandfather brought home strays.  There were two dogs that he rescued during my childhood.  Sam was a beautiful husky who had been abused and had a bad burn on his side.  I remember my grandfather applying the medicine everyday.  Sam was very friendly and eventually was stolen. The next dog to come along was Schaefer who was found roaming the grounds of F. M. Schaefer Brewing Co. where my grandfather worked as a truck driver.  I forgot to ask my mother about any animals he rescued while she was a child but she told me about Walter.
     It was Thanksgiving Day in the late 1950's in Brooklyn,NY.  My mother was around 9 or 10 years old and she still remembers her father bringing Walter home to share dinner with the family.  My mother doesn't remember much about that day.  All she could tell me was that Walter was the neighborhood drunk who had nowhere to go for the holiday so my grandfather brought him home and my grandmother set another plate on the table.


"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one."   ~Mother Teresa


Happy Thanksgiving.

~ Veterans Day ~

     My maternal grandfather was a very patriotic man who served his country during WWII and the Korean War.  If he were alive today he would be marching proudly in today's Veterans Day parade.




   

       Happy Veterans Day and God Bless America!

                 

~ Scandalous ~

     Nowadays if a teenage girl finds herself in trouble it's no longer a hush hush situation.  There's no need to drop out of school because many high schools offer daycare for teen moms as well as job training.  There are even reality shows on television such as Teen Mom and 16 & Pregnant.  Some girls are turning an unfortunate situation into a profitable one.
     Flashback fifty or more years and that same girl would be sent away to live with relatives in another town or a home for unwed mothers.  The baby would be given up for adoption and the girl would get on with her life.  or she might get married...   like Alice did.
     Alice was my best friend's paternal grandmother.  I had been working on Lillian's genealogy and focusing on her mother's side of the family because it was easier.  I had more names, dates, and records for the maternal line.  All I had for the paternal line were the names of her father and his parents.  I had Lillian's father's date of birth then found the date of marriage for his parents from a site which had been very helpful to me.  http://germangenealogygroup.com/  I told Lillian and she replied "So, my grandma was knocked up when she got married?"  Lillian's father was born May 25, 1925 and his parents were married nine months before in August of 1924.  I told Lillian not to say things like that. I told her that there are plenty of people who conceive on their honeymoon or on their wedding night.  Lillian didn't believe me.  Alice was only 16 when she married Alexander.  I know the names of Alice's parents but know nothing about Alexander so I've ordered their marriage certificate so I can get Alexander's parents names then trace his family.
     In December of 1916, my maternal great-grandmother Josephine married Samuel.  Six months later, a baby girl was born.  That baby was my grandmother.  Scandalous?  Maybe...  for the time...  it was only 1916...  but Josephine was 21 years old and not a 16 year old teenager like Alice.
     Were these 'happily ever after', 'death til we part' marriages for the two young couples?  Yes and No...
    My great-grandparents stayed married until Samuel's death in 1947 but it wasn't a happily ever after.  They had four more children after my grandmother's birth then eventually separated.  At some point, Josie moved to Brooklyn with their two daughters and the boys stayed in Poughkeepsie with Samuel and his parents.  Josie and the girls sometimes visited on weekends.  Maybe Josie would have been happier if she and Samuel divorced just like Alice.
     Alexander and Alice had one more son about five or six years after Lillian's father was born.  In 1930 they resided with Alice's parents but were divorced by 1940 according to the federal census.  What caused the rift in their marriage? Why did they divorce?
     Did the marriages crumble because they married before they were ready?  With a baby on the way maybe they felt they were doing the right thing?  I'll never know about Samuel and Josie since they stayed married and just lived apart but I could order the divorce record for Alexander and Alice to satisfy my curiosity about them.
     I wonder if I'll find any more 'scandals'?

Where was MaMa born?

     I thought my maternal grandmother Eleanor was born in Brooklyn, NY.  I was wrong.  I had ordered her birth certificate from the New York City Municipal Archives and received a reply stating that there's no record of this birth in any of the five boroughs.
     Eleanor Davis was born on June 2, 1917 to Josephine Duper and Samuel Davis.  Her parents were married the year before in Brooklyn, NY and also living in Brooklyn in 1918 according to Samuel's  WWI draft registration card.  The 1920 federal census shows 2 1/2 year old Eleanor living with her parents and younger brother in Brooklyn.
     So,  if Josephine and Samuel were married in Brooklyn in 1916 and were living in this same borough in 1918 and 1920 then I would think that their daughter who was born in 1917 was born in Brooklyn.  Where was MaMa born?
     Samuel's parents were married in Ohio, moved to Brooklyn then eventually settled in Poughkeepsie, NY where they spent the rest of their lives.  I wonder if MaMa's mother, Josie was visiting her in laws and gave birth to her daughter in Poughkeepsie.  Is that why the NYC Municipal Archives couldn't find her?
     Where was MaMa born???