mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Emiline P Nicholls, 3rd Great Grandmother
August 25, 2013
— 3 Comments
The grandmothers
My 3rd great-grandmother was born in Somerset, PA in 1837. She became the second wife of Thomas Peterson, a widower, in Ohio in 1855. Her parents had moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio before 1850. I know her father, Amos, was a teacher, but have no records of the schools, or the times. After the Civil War she moved with her husband and children to Kansas to homestead. She survived Thomas by many years, and in 1920 was living at the home of her daughter, Harriet. She is the short one on the right side of this photo. The age of my Uncle Ernest on the left side tells us this was taken in Ladore, Kansas about 1918.
Emiline P Nicholls (1837 – )
is my 3rd great grandmother
Harriet Peterson (1856 – 1933)
daughter of Emiline P Nicholls
Sarah Helena Byrne (1878 – 1962)
daughter of Harriet Peterson
Olga Fern Scott (1897 – 1968)
daughter of Sarah Helena Byrne
Richard Arden Morse (1920 – 2004)
son of Olga Fern Scott
Pamela Morse
I am the daughter of Richard Arden Morse
Since both Emiline and her mother were born in Somerset I have joined the Somerset Historical Society and have engaged the services of the professional genealogists on the staff. Next week I will have the chance to visit not only the place, but also have the fun of doing some fully professional investigation. I expect to learn a lot about the history of the area and what was happening when my family lived there. If I am lucky I will also find some information on Emiline’s husband, Thomas. Since I have been doing this research for so long I am excited to learn how the pros approach it.
Exorcist Archetype
August 24, 2013
— 5 Comments
What kind of power does an exorcist have? Technically Catholic priests are in the business of exorcism, but in day to day life some people play the role of the exorcist to friends or family. I personally do not have much experience with this archetype, but we all recently witnessed a bookkeeper in a school in Georgia display extraordinary ability to drain the evil out of a situation. Antoinette Tuff found the strength to talk down a deranged gunman with 500 rounds of ammunition. Later in an interview she told the 911 dispatcher with whom she had been on the phone that she had been terrified. She called the courage to act the grace of God. I imagine that priest or not, it is always the grace of God that provides the purging of evil. Do you have any experience with exorcist archetypes?
George Harvey Taylor, Suicide Victim
August 23, 2013
— 3 Comments
George Harvey Taylor
I have found a true treasure today as I prepared to write this post about my grandfather, George Harvey Taylor. Somebody has placed his photo on Ancestry.com. I instantly knew it was he because he strongly resembles his children, one of my uncles in particular. This is the first time I have seen his image. He committed suicide ten years before I was born, and for at least the first ten years of my life he was never mentioned. I am not sure how old I was when I learned from a cousin that he had killed himself at home at night, his youngest son discovering the body in the morning. It shocked me out of my wits. It still does. The tightly held secret probably had some initial seed of the suicide of one of my cousins in about 1970.
George Harvey Taylor (1884 – 1941)
is my maternal grandfather
Ruby Lee Taylor (1922 – 2008)
daughter of George Harvey Taylor
Pamela Morse
I am the daughter of Ruby Lee Taylor
George Harvey was born in Texas in 1884 to parents who had moved there from Selma, Taledega to be precise, Alabama, after the Civil War. He met his wife, Hattie May Long, who had been adopted in Mississippi during or shortly after the war. Her adopted parents, the Longs, brought Hattie May with them to Texas, but seem to have left her brother, Fidel, back in Mississippi. After George and Hattie married they moved to Humble, TX, where George was a meter reader for Texaco on a very large oil lease. He rode a black horse around the lease and read various meters to document production. They had ten living children;Hattie lost a couple of pregnancies; then Hattie May died in childbirth, along with the baby….at home, in 1932. George Harvey was left to raise ten kids, the youngest being only two years of age.
grave in Waller TX
When my mother was near death and demented I asked about her father’s suicide and how she felt. She was not in the house that morning, but had gone to Houston to visit her sister. She said she was very angry at him; the reason given was that the lady next door turned down his proposal of marriage. He had carried on as a single father for 9 years and was severely depressed, I suppose. Suicide often leaves the family ashamed like my mother’s religious family. The taboo subject has strange and subtle effects on those who are left on earth. I know that it shaped my mother’s view of life.
Please join me in raising awareness and hopefully some funding for IAMalive.org. during suicide prevention week, Sept8-14, 2013. This 24 hour hot line is created to help people like my grandpa make it through an irrational moment of fear and loathing. This issue belongs to all of us. You can find the easy donation bottom here, along with a list of thank you gifts. My grandpa George and I thank you as well.
Memory Therapy
August 22, 2013
— 3 Comments
forsythia
One week from today I will be visiting the town near Pittsburgh where I grew up and went to school through 8th grade. I have not been there for almost 50 years, so things will be different…and yet the same. I tune in to the daily tweets of @thomasmooreSoul because I find them to be just the right amount of therapy for a single day. A long time ago he tweeted that talking about your childhood openly, telling stories you remember, is a great way to make sense of the past. I have been exchanging pictures and comments with some of the former classmates for about 4 months now, as we prepare to meet in Oakmont, PA for their (I was already gone) high school reunion. I can say that Tom’s advice about childhood stories is powerful. Each one of us remembers different parts of our class story; I am sure being physically in our old school will spark some memories we have not discovered. There is something unaltered about all our personalities that I can’t put into words, but next week maybe I will.
Before we all get hauled off to the memory wing of some care home we have the opportunity to get together to reminisce about our seriously good old days. A few of us are already gone, naturally. Such is life. It ends. I look forward to stirring up some memory/emotions from my childhood with the classmates with whom I shared them. I have travelled the world, but this is time travel in a sense. I am not sure what kind of deeper meaning will be revealed, but I expect it will be more helpful to my psyche than years of analysis might be (I am too thrifty to find out). Buckle up, gentle readers, and prepare to time travel with me to the ‘Burgh next week…back to the future.
Suicide Prevention
August 22, 2013
— 4 Comments
Everything I know about suicide prevention I learned as a volunteer at the VA. We were given training in order to spot and prevent suicidal tendencies. The powerpoint included many graphs that drew a grim picture of the rise in military suicide. The number killing themselves had already surpassed the number killed in battle, and the line was hyperbolic. They also showed us the most at risk groups by state, age, and other demographics. They showed us how many Vets had committed suicide within days of a visit to a VA facility. They showed us in scientific and very graphic terms how seriously they were failing to prevent suicide. At the end of the factual part of the presentation they told us the solution for all involved was trust the VA. They said if we reported the suicidal patient to the VA they would make sure it would be handled professionally. They saw no irony in showing us how miserably they were failing, and then asking us to trust them. I had worked with them for years, and had not seen them execute reasonable care for the patients I visited. My guys were frustrated and unhappy with VA services. I was unhappy too because it was impossible to upgrade any of them.
My last Vet had been not only vocally suicidal for a long time, but had been allowed to go alone out in traffic with his electric scooter on a busy street. Demographically, he was in the top percentile of the group most likely to kill themselves. He lived in a care home, care being the obvious missing feature. He had problems too numerous to mention that were never solved by his visiting VA social worker who was dispatched to help his with his day to day issues. My experience trying to help him from within a wasteful, non functional system funded by my tax dollars made me feel angry and hopeless. They asked us to report problems with the Vet’s care, but then did nothing to remedy the problems. I had to eventually resign from the program because it made me feel much worse knowing how the Vets are really treated. To say it left a bitter taste in my mouth is an understatement. I need to remedy that.
It is never a good idea to go around with a bitterness. Some bloggers I admire and want to emulate are promoting a fund raising effort for Suicide Prevention Week, Sept 8-14, 2013. Funds raised in this campaign will be used to keep the IamAlive hotline open 24 hours a day. I am proud to support this effort. Suicide is not a personal problem as much as society’s issue, especially when our retired and active duty service members are so much at risk. This simple fundraiser benefits any and everyone who may be in a moment of terror. That could be anyone, any time.
Sarah Rebecca Lewis
August 21, 2013
— 2 Comments
Seal of Virginia
Sara Rebecca Lewis, my 7th great grandmother, was born in colonial Virginia. She married James Jones in 1665.
Sarah Rebecca Lewis (1643 – 1725)
is my 7th great grandmother
daughter of Sarah Rebecca Lewis
son of Ann Williams Jones
son of George Darden
daughter of David Darden
daughter of Minerva Truly Darden
daughter of Sarah E Hughes
son of Lucinda Jane Armer
daughter of George Harvey Taylor
I am the daughter of Ruby Lee
When her husband died she was given 4 human beings and the right to live on the plantation for life. Reading her husband’s will I notice how all the slaves, even the unborn ones, are willed as chattel to the members of the Jones family. The document starts with Almighty God and then moves directly into slavery. This is how Virginia was colonized:
Will of James Jones (I) (Chappell, Dickie & Other Kindred Families, p.63-4)
In the name of God. Amen. I James Jones (I) being weake and sick but of sound and perfect mind and memory, praise be therefore given to God, doe make and ordain this my present Last Will and Testament in the manner and form following, that is to say. First and principally I commend my soul into the hands of Almighty God, hoping through the merritts, Death and passion of my savior Jesus Christ to have full and free pardon of all my sins and to inherit everlasting life; and my body I commit to the earth to be decently buried at the discretion of my Executor, hereinafter named, and as touching the Disposition of all such temporal estate as it hath pleased Almighty God to bestow on me I give and dispose thereof as follows:
First. I will that all my debts and funeral expenses shall be paid and discharged.
Item. I will that my loving wife have the Labour of four negroes during her natural life, they are named Will, Robin, Maria and Betty. Provided they are not removed off the plantation I now live upon, if they are, then Immediately to return to my executor, which plantation I will my wife shall live Upon during her life.
Item. I give my wifes two sons two Negro children, one named James, the other unborn, the first child that either Betty or Maria shall bring to be the other, which two negro children to be Disposed of to my wifes two sons as she shall think fit, the unborn and the born child James to be and remain with their mothers till they come to the age of two years and a half year. My will is likewise that my wife have during her life what household stuff my executor shall see fit and that she have a reasonable yearly maintenance out of my stock.
Item. I give to my daughter Mary Dardin my negro man Jo –during her life.
Item. I give to my daughter Elizabeth a negro named Hanna to be at her disposal to do as she sees fit.
Item. I give to my daughter Hanna one negro named Jack to be at her disposal at her death or before as she sees fit.
Item. I give to my daughter Rebecca two hundred acres of land, lying in Surrey county, beginning from the Swamp up by the Spring, South, to the outline, that to be the headline, to her and her heirs forever.
Item. I give to my Granddaughter Eliza Glover, one hundred acres of land on the south side of Pond Runn, to be her and her heirs forever.
Item. I give to my grandson James Jones, this my plantation I live upon after my wifes Decease and all my land in Prince George county, after his father and mothers Decease, to him and his heirs forever.
Item. I give to my Grandson Thomas Chappell (Thomas Chappell Sr. (III)) one hundred acres of land lying in Surrey county from the Swamp South, joining upon William Cocke above the outline, to him and his heirs forever.
Item. I give to my Granddaughter Jane Cocke, daughter of John Cocke, one negro named Amy to her and her heirs forever as also one feather bed and bolster, one rug and one blanket, and if the ticke be bad Lett a new ticke be bought, as also two young cows, one young mair, One Iron Pot, two Pewter Dishes and one Doz.of Spoons.
All the rest and Residue of my personal Estate, goods and chattel whatsoever, I do give and bequeath to my Loving son James Jones, full and sole Executor of this my last Will and testament and I do hereby revoke, disannul and make void all former wills and Testaments by me heretofore made.
In Witness whereof I, the said James Jones (I) to this my last will and testament do set my hand and seal this the 6th day of April A.D.1719.
James Jones Seal (Sealed with wafer)
Signed and sealed in the presence of: Gilbert Hay Edward Prince Thomas Temple
At a Court held at Merchant’s Hope for Prince George County on the second Tuesday, in May, being the twelfth day of said month, A.D.1719, the above written last will of James Jones, deceased, was exhibited in Court by James Jones, his Executor, who made oath thereto and it being proven by the oaths of the witnesses thereto a certificate was granted to the said James Jones for obtaining a Probate in due form. Teste: Wm. Hamlin, Clerk
Wife’s letter to the Court:
Worthy Sirs: Having seen and heard read the Last Will of my late husband, James Jones, deceased, I therefore think fit to acquaint your W.p.T. that I think myself justly dealt by therein and to prevent further disputes I desire the will probated, I being willing to rely on the Legacy left me in said will. Given under my hand and seale this 20th April 1719.
Her Sarah X Jones Mark Seal (Sealed with red wafer)
Teste: E. Goodrich Mary Loyd
To the Worshipfull: His Majesty’s Justice of the Peace for Prince George County
Endorse This !!
August 21, 2013
— 8 Comments
The era of click to endorse has only just begun. The competition for likes, comments, retweets and tagging is intense and will only become more brutal. LinkedIn has become very brazen in promoting endorsement clicks as a means to engage. Along with inviting 14 year olds to join, they have started to promote connection in a new creepy way. People you may know flashes before your eyes as you check LinkedIn for any reason. I have found new connections from whom I received no invitation, and I am sure I did not invite. I had basically left my profile there alone for months, only to return and find myself endorsed by people I have never met. The reason I had not been involved for a while was an aversion to this spammy, very bogus kind of alleged professional conduct.
I have joked extensively about this with others and have noticed other bloggers taking up the subject. I have decided to do something about the endorsement situation from my own point of view. First, let me say that if you don’t know me and want to give me endorsement clicks on LinkedIn please continue to feel free to do so. The space for written endorsements is still available for the purpose of praising real life shared professional experiences. I intend to use it to create video endorsements of people I actually want to endorse. They will praise people I know and with whom I have had some experience that has been positive. I hope this revolution in candor will raise awareness about all those people who crave endorsement, but who lack the understanding or the skills to acquire it in real life. We need to show them compassion without enabling them.
Tyrant or Weakling, the Shadow King
August 20, 2013
— 7 Comments
In archetypal roles we have potential to play out a positive aspect of a well-known character, such as the king, or play the shadow aspect. The king is such an essential male character in myth and culture that most men see themselves in some way to be a king. King of the home castle may be the only one, but there is a royal male at some point that will be portrayed by a man. The inner king and queen relationship, the balance between understanding and wisdom vs discipline and justice is at the heart of any society. When power is in the hands of weak or corrupt leadership, even within one’s own personality, balance must be restored for the good of society. When we see the strife in Syria and Egypt today it looks like the end of civilization.
The war and economic destruction still rampant in the world is the collective consciousness struggling with this ruling authority. I wonder, when I watch my neighbors as well as rioting middle easterners, if the earth will perish in flames sometime soon. Radioactivity is spewing out of Japan and sewage rolling into rivers all over the globe. When post apocalyptic themes are portrayed in fiction they seem too close to reality today. I love the movie Tank Girl which is a parody about authority, power, and the use of resources. Tank Girl is part of a severely abused underclass, dominated by the all-powerful utility company. They control all resources, except the resourcefulness of Tank Girl herself.
Respecting Religion
August 19, 2013
— 1 Comment
In 1469 in what is now Pakistan, the Sikh religion was born in the form of a teacher, Guru Nanak. He was exceptional as a student, grasping deep meaning at an early age. At this time in history Muslims and Hindus were close and friendly in that part of the world. His ministry was as a poet and musician, a travelling troubadour. He began a line of 10 gurus who passed the hymns and stories along to the future generations. Today Sikhs keep these traditions alive by teaching their children the ancient shabads. They welcome visitors to take part if they like, but there is no attempt to convert. Most Sikhs were born in India to Sikh parents. Understanding some history and philosophy fosters respect for the religious beliefs and practices of others. The group gathers for a meal after the ceremony, which is social and friendly.
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- taus
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- traditional
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- kids move freely
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- kids join
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- congregation
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- guitar song
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- tabla
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- taus and altar
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- instruments
Sikh Gurdwara in Tucson
August 19, 2013
— 1 Comment
I attended the services of the Sikh gurdwara to see and hear my friend Nirviar Kaur Khalsa play her instrument, the taus. She showed me the beautifully carved string instrument a few weeks ago after the services had concluded. She practices on the taus about two hours daily to create the background ragas for the shabads she chants for the ceremony. Her voice is very well practiced to paint these musical pictures of the one, the friend, the eternal guru. The message reminded me of the Sufis, but the service reminded me a lot of Jews and Catholics. The music is all in minor keys (like Jewish music) , and there is no written vocal music. This technique is passed down in person in the same way the Torah is taught in person. The music itself is the prayer and the meditation for the congregation, not unlike chanting in Latin or Hebrew. Her vocation to study and revive some of the most ancient shabads is now her passion. She shares this talent and hard work because she wants to embody inner peace in the Sikh tradition. Although I am not a Sikh I can appreciate her historical preservation efforts as well as the ideas she promotes in her practice.
I asked some of the congregation how they feel about her dedication to master this ancient art and religious practice from India. She is very highly praised by everyone. One lady I had met on my previous visit told Nirvair as she left she wished she could leave a tip for the music, which is a common practice in India. It is remarkable that she is so committed to her vocation to preserve this tradition here in the United States. I learned that professional ragis from Phoenix charge $500 a visit to come to your gurdwara and do the music. Since the entire service is sung the importance of the musical accompaniment is central to the experience.
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