mermaidcamp

mermaidcamp

Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water

You can scroll the shelf using ← and → keys

I Adore Elisio Pitta

December 13, 2013 — 2 Comments

I met Elisio Pitta 20 years ago when he visited Rancho la Puerta to teach and do a capoeira demonstration.  I had never seen capoeira before and was fascinated by the grace and power of the movements.  He taught us some Brazilian folkloric dance also.  We were all beginners, but he managed to get us all moving and enthusiastic in the few days he was our teacher.  I have had the opportunity to learn from excellent teachers, but his talent to both teach and move was beyond compare.  I never really attempted to learn the form, but I never forgot it either.

His career in dance has taken him around the world from his hometown, Bahia.  He lives on a hill with a fantastic view of  the Atlantic and has very deep cultural roots in the city.  He has been performing a new dance of his own creation there this week, and soon will take the show on the road.  Next month he will perform Othello in Shakespeare’s own country, in Liverpool England.  Using Brazilian music and original choreography by Elisio he interprets the classic story of jealousy and regret.  He dances the part of Othello and projects the other characters onto the stage in preproduced segments to tell the story of Desdemona’s ill fated murder and his subsequent remorse.  He is using contemporary props and costuming in the production to go with his digital cast members.  I asked him why he decided to be Othello and he told me that it is the Year of Shakespeare and he always wanted to do it.  Classy.

I admire his extreme creativity and dedication to the art of dance.  His natural talent is obvious, but he has used his talents and his strong cultural lineage to transcend boundaries.  I think Shakespeare is proud of him.  I am pleased to know such a talented and artistically ambitious man.

Olga Scott Morse, Education Pioneer

June 20, 2013 — 1 Comment

My grandmother, Olga Scott Morse, was a teacher of business skills. She graduated with her masters in education after she had four kids. She left them at home on the oil lease with their dad during the week to attend classes at Oklahoma State University. I believe that in the 1930s this was a bold feminist move. After graduation from OSU she taught typing and shorthand at a junior college near their home in Tonkawa,OK. Learning to type was a bold femenist move, believe it or not.  Her students learned shorthand and typing and other current secretarial skills.  The school to day is called Northern Oklahoma College.  I stopped at the campus when I went to Oklahoma on an ancestry hunt a few years ago.  I found her name in an old yearbook in the library, which was fun.  I also looked through a lot of photos from the history of the school, where my dad and his brothers were students, but I did not find them. I walked around on campus, taking a break in my drive.   Later, I found a picture of her with her students in the 1930’s in front of the  central building at my uncle’s house in Wichita.  I easily recognized the building since I had just been there.

Her mother, Sarah Helena Byrne, was a teacher and her great-grandfather , Amos Nichols,was also.  My father was a university professor.  The teacher archetype is all over my father’s family. I wonder if this is a DNA situation or all the reading and discipline that teachers represent.  She was a farmer when I met her, having long since retired, but I remember her typewriter on the farm that had black keys..no letters.  She could wail on that thing, but she had little reason to to so.  I asked her to because I liked to watch her do it. She was a woman of many skills and talents, including flower and vegetable gardening.  Most of the fruits and vegetables we ate in the winter in Pittsburgh were grown on my grandparents’ farm in Arkansas and frozen. I picture her in a sun bonnet, like all her friends wore, on the farm.  Visiting the college where she taught before I was born was a really cool experience that showed me a part of her I never knew.  For her day and place she was super highly educated and accomplished.

Olga Fern Scott (1897 – 1968)

is my paternal grandmother
Richard Arden Morse (1920 – 2004)
son of Olga Fern Scott
Pamela Morse
I am the daughter of Richard Arden Morse

John McGalliard and Human Error

April 9, 2013 — 7 Comments

Coat of Arms

Coat of Arms

Although I love this family from Ireland, alas, Roger has helped me see that the last reliable information in this tree belongs to Mary Wright of Somerset, PA, so this is NOT my ancestor.  I am leaving the post for those seeking John and what I have found about him..but I have to kiss him goodbye.

John McGalliard was a teacher who was trained as a minister in Ireland. He settled in New Jersey about 1750, and survived for 17 years in the new world. His son was a tailor who took off for Ohio and became a postmaster.  Ohio was extreme wilderness at the time. These Irish came to America long before the potato famine to seek a new adventure in New Jersey. What inspired them we will never know.

John, Sr. McGalliard (1710 – 1767)

is NOT my 9th great grandfather
son of John, Sr. McGalliard
son of John McGilliard Jr
daughter of John McGilliard III
son of Mary McGill
This is where the mistake was found…starting over from here..such is the nature of research.
daughter of John Wright
daughter of Mary Wright
daughter of Emiline P Nicholls
daughter of Harriet Peterson
daughter of Sarah Helena Byrne
son of Olga Fern Scott
I am the daughter of Richard Arden Morse
John McGalliard and some of his descendants
John McGalliard, educated abroad for the Gospel ministry of the Presbyterian church, came to this country from Ireland and settled at Greenwich, N.J. about 1750. Although trained for the ministry, there is no known record that he served here as either a preacher or pastor. In those old days, however, it was no small part of the minister’s craft to be the teacher of Latin and Greek and other branches of higher learning of the time. Accordingly, we find John McGalliard, early the teacher of a grammer school in Greenwich. This being suggestive of his literary and cultural ability, as well as his spiritual influence and leadership.
From the “Story of the Cumberland County Tea Burners of 1774″, we learn that Joel Fithins, born September 20, 1746, had the advantage of a good education, his preceptor being John McGalliard, who having prepared of the ministry inculcated into his pupils minds the love for English and the literature of the period”.
In 1758, John McGalliard married Hanna Reeves, another native of Ireland, who had come here around 1750. To them were born two sons, John and James and one daughter, Hanna. The children were left orphans before they were ten years old. The father died in 1767 and the mother about two years later.
John McGalliard II
This elder son of John McGalliard was born July 3, 1759. While yet a young man, he set out for the West, going as far as Springfield, Ohio, where he settled and made his permanent home. There he married and became the father of three children. It is easily possible that Miss Virginia McGilliard, one of our Presbyterian Missionaries in Africa, and who hails from Ohio, is a descendant of this family. John McGalliard was by trade a tailor. He also served for many years as Postmaster of his city and community. He died February 26, 1837.
James McGalliard II
James, the second son of the original John McGalliard, was born December 11, 1761. Left an orphan, he was reared by a Mr. Mulford who lived near Roadstown. He took up the then popular avocation of Wheelwright and Cabinet maker. He followed his craft in part at the home and on the farm of Benjamin Keen. After the death of Mr. Keen, this guest craftsman performed the double service of purchasing the farm and later marrying the widow of the said Mr. Keen. The wedding bells were rung on December 5, 1789. They had children, James and Hannah (twins), Eliza, Anna, John and Benjamin Keen. Of only the older son in this family will we be able to write in this brief sketch.
James __ McGalliard
This James was the grandson of John McGalliard whose name and memory we are seeking to honor in this sketch. He married Amy, the daughter of John and Phebe Hires. To them were born eight sons and four daughters, a number of whom died in infancy, or before reaching middle life.
John McGalliard
John, the fourth son of this large family, came into possession of the family home and farm, commonly referred to as the “old home place” at the death of his father, James McGalliard just named. He married Susan Davis. Thier children were Benjamin, Fannie J., Mary and James. Benjamin became a practicing physician in Trenton and was an officer in the First Presbyterian church there. He married Lillian Vannote. They both have died. Thier only child, Elizabeth follows the profession of nursing, and is serving in connection with the Henry Street Settlement House in New York City. Mary married Ephraim Bonham and their children are Chester S. and Susan. Chester married Lottie Simpson of Philadelphia. Their children are Chester, Mary, Charlotte and John. They reside on the old home place.
(note: Elizabeth McGalliard now living at 3333 Madrona Lane, Medford, Oregon
Miss Fannie McGalliard whose vision, painstaking and devotion to the great idea of __ have made possible the consummation of this memorial, resides on Broad Street in Bridgeton. Joseph, the next in this family of James and Amy Hires McGalliard, married Mary Shull. Their children are Lewis, Amy, Esther, Anna and Ella. The next member of the family whose record we are able to enter here was George. He married ___. Their son, George, resides in the Bridgeton area. Thier daughter, Elizabeth, is the wife of Rev. Isaac Compton, a Baptist minister serving a church in Vermont.
The youngest of the family of James McGalliard and Amy Hires McGalliard was Lewis. He married Anna Nichols. Children born to them were Frank, Mary Edna, Bertha and Laura. Laura died in early childhood and Bertha passed away in her upper teens. Frank married Louise Rasohke in 1927. On December 28, 1910, Edna married the minister of the West Presbyterian church, Bridgeton, and now resides at Rahway, N.J. Their son, Maxwell? McGalliard Ewing married Eleanor Shillinger in 1934.
Other McGalliards
The writer here takes the liberty of referring to some other McGalliard, not known to be connected with the family line we have been following in this sketch.
The history of the Old Tennent Church near Freehold, yields some information of value. That record shows that one John McGalliard as early as 1735 was received into the membership of the Old Tennent Church. Please remember that it was John McGalliard who arrived in Greenwich in 1750, just fifteen years later. It could have been the same John, settling first in Monmouth County and later coming to Cumberland, I think, however, that there is evidence to disprove this possibility. Then there is a William McGalliard on record as contributing to the erection of the new church edifice, about 1750, the sum of one pound and ten shillings, and again of Robert McGalliard contribution one pound to the support of the church. There are records of a number of baptisms of infants named McGalliard, and of burials, and near the preserved stones marking the earthly resting places of three members of the family of McGalliard, some of whom are named in this paragraph.
Two other McGalliards, Edward and William, known to the writer, reside in Mercer County in the suburbs of Trenton, both active in the life and work of the Hamilton Square Presbyterian church. Edward, the younger of the two is a ruling elder of that church and is actively identified with the work of the Presbytery of New Brunswick. What connection the Trenton or the Tennont McGalliards have with each other and how either relate to the Greenwich branch, the writer does not know. It is his judgement, however, that by a little research, connection night easily be established.
But a concluding word – – – Those interested in this sketch, could well join in the word of Holy Writ, “Yea, we have a goodly heritage”. A heritage of faith in God, a heritage of loyalty to community and of love of country. John McGalliard came here from Ireland, and there is a tradition that he had previously resided in Scotland. His helpmeet was also reared on the other side. Early influences around him, and the creation in him by the grace of God, turned him toward the Gospel ministry as a life calling. He settled in this country among churchmen. In as brief as possible, let me sense conditions here in those old days. Here at Greenwich were the Padgetts and the Fithians and the Shepards and the Ewings and the Maskells, in the day when John McGalliard and Hannah Reeves arrived. We know something of the intimate, even private lives of at least some of those early folk. Here were Maskell Ewing and Mary Padget, typical young people of the community, they married away back there and became the antecedents of a large and far reaching family line. Before their marriage, in their teens, those young people were “Converted and gave their hearts to God under the powerful Gospel preaching of the celebrated George Whitfield, who frequently visited Greenwich and preached, not in the church, for there was not room there for the throngs that came in that revival time, but in the open air in front of the meeting house. Maskell Ewing became an elder of the church, and served in that capacity for a period of forty years. Of the lives of the said Maskell and Mary, his beloved wife, who were no more than just average people of the community, we have this record that “Their soul’s delight was in the Word of God, and they regarded the divine Savior, as the only foundation of a sinner’s hope”.
I mention this incident of the preaching of Whitefield, which is known to have reached great throngs of people in those early Greenwich days, as evidence of the kind of life John McGalliard and his good wife found when they arrived here from abroad. A man rained abroad for the ministry, settling in a community a thrill with the Christian faith, and naturally becoming the head of the Grammar school, which in those times was practically a living branch of the Christian church, settling indeed where strong Christian faith and desire for the higher, better things, were woven in the warp and woof of the thinking and the living of the people. John McGalliard, with the background he had and settling here in such a midst ?, it takes no more imagination to sense that over into his sons and daughter, and thence on to later progeny, there flowed from his godly life a great sanctifying influence.
Local influences have not a little to do with trends of social and religious connection. Denominational relationships are easily affected by the exigencies of changed location and by the forming of family groups. Even through all of those in their family line we hastily run down, may there not be traced the stream of Christian faith and Christian devotion from generation to generation. John McGalliard came trained for
the Gospel ministry. He practiced his calling in the Greenwich Grammar school. Records of strong faith, deep piety and loyalty to the body of Christ have not been lacking down the years. At Roadstown and Shiloh churches the McGalliard numbers high among church folk, down through history. Dr. Benjamin McGalliard, a lineal descendent, served in the years just prior to his death as a ruling elder in the First church of Trenton. A next generation descendant is a ruling elder in the West Church of Bridgeton, another is the wife and helpmeet of the Rev.. Isaac Compton in Vermont, another is the wife of the Superintendent of National Missions in the Synod of New Jersey.
A good foundation, laid in faith of the kind that stands the tests. Such seems to have been the antecedent strength and background of this family passing today in review. But how about us here to carry on today? What of tomorrow and us? There are the great tests to meet. How should we make good? We can if we will. Hence let us honor the goodly heritage we have. And as there has been set this bit of stone to memorialize our great ancestor, shall we not dedicate anew those lives given us to live her, to be all that God would have them, in the meeting of His holy purposes.
Our ancestors belong to us by affectionate retrospect. Yes, we have a goodly heritage. In the great Book we are enjoined to “remember the days of old and consider the years of many generations”. God make today, with its simple historical memorial event a great day, even a new day to rejoice in those blessings that have come by the channels of the faith of our fathers, and are sealed to us by the Holy Spirit, through the faith of our own hearts!
We come unto our father’s God
Their Rock is our salvation,
The eternal Arms their dear abode
We make our habitation.
We bring Thee, Lord, the praises they bought.
We seek Thee as thy saints have sought,
In every generation.
Blessed be God, for the Glorious Gospel of His grace, vouchsafed to us.
For all the saints who from their labors rest,
Who Thee, by faith, before the world confessed.
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest!
And grant us Lord like precious faith
With those who went before.
That we may keep our garments white
Until the conflict’s o’er.
Nor faint nor fail nor turn aside
Until the day is done
And we shall see Thee, face to face
And hear Thee say, well done!
Paper read at unveiling of Memorial Tablet at Greenwich, N.J., July 11, 1935, by Joseph Lyons Ewing.