Last night I slept... more reasonably, relatively speaking. Daniel showered first, and then I got mine while he went downstairs to play a bit of pool. We then walked to the church, where Meghan met us, having biked there from her place. We caught just barely the tail end of Sunday school, followed by the service, which lasted from 11 AM until just about 2 PM. Seriously, long service. Of course, when it takes a full hour to get around to the welcome/announcements stage, and then when the prayer is lengthy, and the sermon lasts almost a whole hour as well.... Anyway, Rev. Givens preached a powerful message on John 3:1-7 about the necessity of being born again, because "good isn't good enough". Plenty of great gospel music there, of course. After things ended, we didn't stick around for their fellowship meal, since we were on a tighter time schedule. We walked to Subway, discussing the service on the trip. Once there, we had lunch together (mmmm, sub...). Then Meghan had to part ways with us, and Daniel and I returned to the dorm. We grabbed his stuff, and then went down to the prayer chapel, where he performed a couple of his latest musical compositions for me on the piano. One of them was among his best pieces of work, I think. Then we carried his stuff out to his car, exchanged some books (he returned some I'd let him borrow, and I let him borrow two new ones: David deSilva's Bearing Christ's Reproach, and Francis Collins' The Language of God), and read some Chuck Norris fact jokes. Daniel returned with me to the dorm to refill his water bottle and use the restroom once more, and then I went with him back outside to see him off. Naturally, he blared his horn obnoxiously while driving through the parking lot, just for good measure. Now he's on his way back to Pennsylvania, hopefully on a safe journey. I'll miss the guy, but I'll see him again, God willing, when I return home for Christmas break. Now, however, I believe I have little choice but to take a nap to recharge, since I haven't gotten much sleep lately.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
29 October 2011
So this morning Daniel and I woke up - well, he woke up, I was still basically awake because it's difficult to sleep through a snore that makes it sound like I'm sharing the room with a chainsaw - and got showers before going to drop by the rooms of a few select friends here in the dorm. After meeting my friend Jon downstairs and harassing him for a while as he drank his morning espresso, the three of us decided to go to the local cafe, Solomon's Porch, which has some amazing sandwiches with amazing names and descriptions.... like the Wesley Club, described as "near perfection", or the "Fo' Sure Not Kosher", which includes many non-kosher things like bacon... and is served with a kosher dill pickle. I got the Wesley Club, Daniel got the Temple, and Jon got the Hole-iness (served on a bagel). Delicious stuff. After that, I gave Daniel a tour of the library, and we checked out a few extra books relating to our denomination, including a somewhat... quirky... catechetical manual from 1965. Which included a glossary that defined several basic "new words" wrong... like the word 'virgin'. The manual had some hilarious stuff, to be honest. Afterwards, we passed by the John Wesley statue on campus, returned to the dorm to recharge a bit, and then drove to our friend Meghan's house, where we shared some of that catechetical manual's joys with her. There we played with her cats, watched the movie Sherlock Holmes, took some psychological tests, and played a game of Clue, which I somehow won. Also got to know one of Meghan's housemates a bit better. Oh, and we ordered a couple pizzas from Papa John's. Delicious. After finally returning to campus after around 7.5 hours spent with Meghan, we dropped briefly by the girls' dorm to visit our other friend Amanda for a bit before returning here. Now I'm just catching up on a couple Internets while Daniel takes his medicine, and we'll see about getting some sleep soon. Tomorrow, Meghan will be meeting us in town, and we'll be walking a couple minutes to the local black Baptist church, which neither of them have ever visited yet. (I have, and it's an interesting time. First time I went, we all stood in a circle, held hands, and sang Kum-Ba-Yah. Not kidding.) Alas, after church tomorrow, we'll need to catch a quick lunch before sending Daniel back off to snowy Pennsylvania.
Friday, October 28, 2011
28 October 2011
Today's been a reasonably good day, despite its start. I got up quite late - just ten minutes before my morning class began - and so I felt rather... grimy. I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, tossed on some clothing, and went to class. Class was pretty good; we spent lots of time in groups. I also found out that the next speech I'll be delivering for it will be a devotional... on Psalm 58. Which has a lovely line about the righteous "bathing their feet in the blood of the wicked", and exhorts God to break the wicked's teeth. Awesome. After class, I came back here, took down my recycling, and took out a couple bags of trash while clearing off the spare bed and my intolerably messy desk. Then I went to lunch, where I stayed for about 1.5 hours, since my friends began arriving just after I finished eating. When that was all done, I came back here and watched three more episodes of Arrested Development, up through the season 1 finale. After that, I caught up on a few blogs, and then decided that - being quite tired - it'd be prudent to take a nap. I did, and I believe I woke up around 6 PM. It must have been a restful slumber, since it included a dream that, to the best of my recollection, involved gaining access to a 7-dimensional library through the aid of a very powerful silver pocketwatch... I have a rather peculiar dream life, when I can remember it. Anyway, after getting up, I listened to a podcast and then some music as I finished cleaning things up. Took out the last two bags of trash, put away my laundry (finally!), then vacuumed everything and Febreezed the living daylights out of it all. Now the room looks remarkably habitable. That said, I have nothing left for the evening but to await my friend Daniel's arrival after the lengthy and harrowing trip west-southwest from our native land. Given that he has difficulty even finding my house at times, I predict that it could be a few more hours until he makes it. I certainly hope his travels are safe and swift, though. I'm eager to see him.
In the meantime, though, I'm collecting some more genealogical data. A chance Internet search revealed that the Strausstown Roots website has information on the ancestors of my great-great-great-great-grandmother Elisabeth Rauch nee Moyer. This is thrilling, since it was only 17 days ago that I even found out about Elisabeth. To refresh: it turns out that my great-great-great-great-grandfather Jonathan Rauch first married Elisabeth Rauch in 1851. With her, he had two children, William Rauch and my great-great-great-grandmother Priscilla Rauch (later wife of Jacob Mountz). But Elisabeth died in 1854 at the all-too-early age of 25. Sometime in the next few years, Jonathan Rauch married Elisabeth's sister Mary Magdalene Moyer. Together, they had at least four children: Ezra Rauch (b. c. 1857), Monroe Rauch (b. 1860), Samuel Rauch (b. July 1867), and Mary L. Rauch (b. c. 1872). Mary Magdalene Rauch nee Moyer died in 1903, and her husband Jonathan followed suit in 1906, having outlived both of his wives.
Now for the new material. It seems that Elisabeth Moyer was the daughter of Johannes Meyer (1805-1872) and his wife Barbara Meyer nee Wilhelm (1802-1886). Johannes, in turn, was the son of Georg Meyer (1770-1847) and his wife Susanna Meyer nee Peiffer (1773-1833), while Barbara was the daughter of Adam Wilhelm (1754-1834) and his wife Maria Christina Wilhelm nee Gruber (1766-1825). At the moment, I've just been jotting down what's available on Maria Christina Gruber's ancestry. She was the daughter of Adam Gruber (1735-1807) and his wife Catherine Elizabeth Gruber nee Schauer (1744-1790). And here's the part that caught me really off-guard: for the birthplace of Catherine Elizabeth Schauer, the site listed "Northkill Amish Settlement" in Bern Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Amish? Now that caught my attention! Indeed, we're talking the first Amish settlement in the New World here, established just in 1740. But I'm not sure where, if at all, that would fit in. Catherine was the daughter of Johann Adam Schauer (c1718-1762) and (probably?) his wife Anna Elizabeth Schauer nee Koch (c1718-c1775). Catherine was baptized at the local Lutheran church, however, by its pastor Caspar Stoever; Johann Adam was married in the Lutheran church in Stouchsburg in 1748 (3.5 years, I note, after the birth of his daughter Catherine); and it seems that Johann Adam's father Michael Schauer, a German immigrant, was one of those who received the 1744 land warrant for the church's use. This family, then, was Lutheran rather than Amish. Or so I conclude for now. Johann Adam Schauer was himself born in New York to two German immigrant parents who met in America: Michael Schauer (1699-1772) of Massenbach (in Baden-Wurttemberg), and Elizabeth Catharina Lauck (c1696-1784) of "Wallau/Hofheim, Darmstadt, Hessen". So, assuming that this website has the picture roughly right (and I've always found it to be fairly reliable, often citing particular sources), this Michael Schauer would be my... ninth-great-grandfather (that is, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather). And I haven't even finished exploring the wealth of data collected on this website. Looks like I'll have plenty of other folks to research when I'm back home in Pennsylvania this winter!
---------------
And, just as I was finishing up this post, I got a call from Daniel to the effect that he's reached the campus, and so I gave him (again) detailed directions on how to reach the dorm. He should be here in a matter of minutes now.
In the meantime, though, I'm collecting some more genealogical data. A chance Internet search revealed that the Strausstown Roots website has information on the ancestors of my great-great-great-great-grandmother Elisabeth Rauch nee Moyer. This is thrilling, since it was only 17 days ago that I even found out about Elisabeth. To refresh: it turns out that my great-great-great-great-grandfather Jonathan Rauch first married Elisabeth Rauch in 1851. With her, he had two children, William Rauch and my great-great-great-grandmother Priscilla Rauch (later wife of Jacob Mountz). But Elisabeth died in 1854 at the all-too-early age of 25. Sometime in the next few years, Jonathan Rauch married Elisabeth's sister Mary Magdalene Moyer. Together, they had at least four children: Ezra Rauch (b. c. 1857), Monroe Rauch (b. 1860), Samuel Rauch (b. July 1867), and Mary L. Rauch (b. c. 1872). Mary Magdalene Rauch nee Moyer died in 1903, and her husband Jonathan followed suit in 1906, having outlived both of his wives.
Now for the new material. It seems that Elisabeth Moyer was the daughter of Johannes Meyer (1805-1872) and his wife Barbara Meyer nee Wilhelm (1802-1886). Johannes, in turn, was the son of Georg Meyer (1770-1847) and his wife Susanna Meyer nee Peiffer (1773-1833), while Barbara was the daughter of Adam Wilhelm (1754-1834) and his wife Maria Christina Wilhelm nee Gruber (1766-1825). At the moment, I've just been jotting down what's available on Maria Christina Gruber's ancestry. She was the daughter of Adam Gruber (1735-1807) and his wife Catherine Elizabeth Gruber nee Schauer (1744-1790). And here's the part that caught me really off-guard: for the birthplace of Catherine Elizabeth Schauer, the site listed "Northkill Amish Settlement" in Bern Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Amish? Now that caught my attention! Indeed, we're talking the first Amish settlement in the New World here, established just in 1740. But I'm not sure where, if at all, that would fit in. Catherine was the daughter of Johann Adam Schauer (c1718-1762) and (probably?) his wife Anna Elizabeth Schauer nee Koch (c1718-c1775). Catherine was baptized at the local Lutheran church, however, by its pastor Caspar Stoever; Johann Adam was married in the Lutheran church in Stouchsburg in 1748 (3.5 years, I note, after the birth of his daughter Catherine); and it seems that Johann Adam's father Michael Schauer, a German immigrant, was one of those who received the 1744 land warrant for the church's use. This family, then, was Lutheran rather than Amish. Or so I conclude for now. Johann Adam Schauer was himself born in New York to two German immigrant parents who met in America: Michael Schauer (1699-1772) of Massenbach (in Baden-Wurttemberg), and Elizabeth Catharina Lauck (c1696-1784) of "Wallau/Hofheim, Darmstadt, Hessen". So, assuming that this website has the picture roughly right (and I've always found it to be fairly reliable, often citing particular sources), this Michael Schauer would be my... ninth-great-grandfather (that is, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather). And I haven't even finished exploring the wealth of data collected on this website. Looks like I'll have plenty of other folks to research when I'm back home in Pennsylvania this winter!
---------------
And, just as I was finishing up this post, I got a call from Daniel to the effect that he's reached the campus, and so I gave him (again) detailed directions on how to reach the dorm. He should be here in a matter of minutes now.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
27 October 2011
Alright, so, this morning after a productive class on the history of Methodism - we covered the origins of the Free Methodist movement today - I went over to the local United Methodist Church to do an interview with the pastor, who also happens to be one of my professors. We had a good time. After that, I came back here, ate a Ramen-based meal, and took a lengthy nap until, um, evening. Then I watched a few more episodes of Arrested Development, after which I went out to the common area to watch the new Community episode with a few friends. Since one key member of our crew is at a concert tonight, nobody's goinhg to Applebee's, so I picked up some groceries and a dinner from Subway, and now I'm back here Skyping with my mother about paint choices for our new trailer, after which it's back to Arrested Development.
26 October 2011
So the night of the 25th, I had to stay up late finishing a very irritating paper for my Wednesday morning class. Ugh.... the process of writing it felt like having a loose tooth behind my eyeball. I took a break for a couple of hours at one point to hang out with the guys after I made a brief last-minute run to Subway for a late-night snack and then grabbed a Mountain Dew from the vending machine in the laundry room. I did eventually get the paper finished - or, rather, I kept writing words and eventually reached the maximum limit, though I have very little idea of what I actually said. I had one of my best friends read through it (sent it to her via Skype) and affirm that it was indeed a paper.
So today I managed to get through both of my Wednesday classes; the morning class was better than usual, since we had a guest speaker, and the diversity is always exciting. Still, thank God for multitasking. During most classes, it's all that keeps me awake. Between classes, I hung out with a series of friends - being abnormally social for once - and also got things straightened out with the hold that had been on my class registration. It was taken care of automatically, but now I have confirmation of that, so I can register for classes on November 1st. During one part of my afternoon class, I spent some time looking through the course listing and decided on a schedule for the spring semester. I believe I've picked the following four classes for 10-11 credit-hours: "Christian Ethics", "Elementary Greek II", "John Wesley's Theology for Today", and "Introduction to Pastoral Care and Counseling". During the break in my afternoon class, I got in a discussion with the professor for a while. I recommended a useful monograph in the field (which is totally the sort of thing I do): Zeba Antonin Crook's Reconceptualising Conversion: Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. It's really a fantastic book. I purchased a copy when I was in college. Which, considering the price tag, was in retrospect an unwise move. Still, I treasure it and find it highly enlightening. I brought up some points from it to contribute to our class discussion. My conversation with the professor, anyway, meandered to us getting to know one another's academic backgrounds better, and I learned more about what she'd done her dissertation on.
After class, it was definitely time for a prompt nap (compensating for my greatly limited sleep the nigh before), followed by dinner with my friends. After that, I returned here and began watching season 1 of the show Arrested Development. I'm borrowing seasons 1-3 from one of my friends here. I've never seen it before, so this is fun. I'm a bit over halfway through the first season now. And that's pretty much been my night. I anticipate more tomorrow afternoon.
So today I managed to get through both of my Wednesday classes; the morning class was better than usual, since we had a guest speaker, and the diversity is always exciting. Still, thank God for multitasking. During most classes, it's all that keeps me awake. Between classes, I hung out with a series of friends - being abnormally social for once - and also got things straightened out with the hold that had been on my class registration. It was taken care of automatically, but now I have confirmation of that, so I can register for classes on November 1st. During one part of my afternoon class, I spent some time looking through the course listing and decided on a schedule for the spring semester. I believe I've picked the following four classes for 10-11 credit-hours: "Christian Ethics", "Elementary Greek II", "John Wesley's Theology for Today", and "Introduction to Pastoral Care and Counseling". During the break in my afternoon class, I got in a discussion with the professor for a while. I recommended a useful monograph in the field (which is totally the sort of thing I do): Zeba Antonin Crook's Reconceptualising Conversion: Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. It's really a fantastic book. I purchased a copy when I was in college. Which, considering the price tag, was in retrospect an unwise move. Still, I treasure it and find it highly enlightening. I brought up some points from it to contribute to our class discussion. My conversation with the professor, anyway, meandered to us getting to know one another's academic backgrounds better, and I learned more about what she'd done her dissertation on.
After class, it was definitely time for a prompt nap (compensating for my greatly limited sleep the nigh before), followed by dinner with my friends. After that, I returned here and began watching season 1 of the show Arrested Development. I'm borrowing seasons 1-3 from one of my friends here. I've never seen it before, so this is fun. I'm a bit over halfway through the first season now. And that's pretty much been my night. I anticipate more tomorrow afternoon.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Lately
Lately I've been a bit busy in ways I can't really remember, so I won't go into much detail. Especially since my computer is being a total [*expletive*] lately, and it takes forever to type anything... or do anything, really...... and it's [*expletive*] ticking me off. A LOT. Last week I presented a group project in my exegesis class, and it went well. We got an A. This past Friday I delivered a speech on envy for a speaking class. The feedback I got afterwards was really quite positive, moreso than I expected and probably quite a bit more than I merited.
Let's see.... I've been resuming a friendly Facebook discussion on the kalam cosmological argument with a group of atheists and agnostics who are fellow members of the Mormon Expression Podcast Community. It's been interesting and a bit time-consuming, since I'm the sole defender of my case there, so I'm rather outnumbered. Not that I'm really complaining about it; I knew that's what I was in for. I'm also getting back into blogging at Study and Faith, and so for the past day I've been preparing a bunch of posts for release at given intervals - mostly selections from 19th-century LDS periodicals. That should ensure, so long as I steadily keep it up, that new posts keep appearing on a regular basis up through January or February of next year, even if I do nothing else - though of course I fully intend to. Then today I had to do a bunch of extremely irritating crud for one of my seminary's spiritual formation programs (a bunch of highly unproductive questions, mainly, and frankly one of the institution's great deficiencies is in actually giving everyone the tools to understand how the program works). Now I'm relaxing by downloading some mid-20th century topographical maps...
Monday, October 17, 2011
15-16 October 2011
So, just a few highlights. First, Saturday night, my neighbor picked up a bottle of generic store-brand cough syrup for me at my behest while he was at the store. Despite not having a particular flavor, it's not so bad. And it seems to have been helping, because I've felt a lot better today, relatively speaking. Today I finally recovered most of my voice. It's still a bit weak, but it'll do for now. I can communicate with people and not have them wonder what's wrong with me. (Okay, that's probably a lie. People always wonder what's wrong with me.) Somewhere in here I also finished Henderson's A Model for Making Disciples.
Now, also Saturday, I think, I got some genealogical help. You may recall that I've been wrestling with some conundrums about my ancestral Stick and Nagle families. Well, there's this wonderful site called FindAGrave.com, which catalogues graves in cemeteries all over, and the online memorials often have images of the tombstones and other goodies. Quite helpful. For ones that don't yet have pictures, users can click a button to request one - and then a message is sent to volunteers in the area, and eventually one may swing by the cemetery in question, snap the requested pictures, and upload them. Well, I've submitted a number of requests, and a wonderful fellow named Bruce fulfilled five (or six?) of them the other day! So now, for instance, I can view the memorials of Joseph Stick (grave photo not provided yet) and Catherine Nagle, and also Catherine's parents Adam Nagle and Catherine Wiest, and also Joseph's parents Henry Stick and Rosanna Dissinger. (I'd been hoping to stumble across confirmation that Rosanna was indeed a Dissinger, so this supplies it.) Just as helpful, you'll see that the memorials for Joseph Stick, his son Henry G. Stick, and Joseph's sister Rose D. Wike nee Stick now include obituaries. (I already had an obituary for Joseph's father Henry, but now I have an alternative from a closer newspaper that includes slight bits of extra information, which is good.)
So how does this help me? First, the obituaries for Joseph and Henry G. Stick both mention Adam Stick, and the identification seems plausible, since mine did indeed live in Lancaster County early in life and Sinking Spring later on. I'll have to correlate the dates of the obituaries with everything else I know to see how precise the match is. But second, I note that although this Joseph Stick is buried in the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, his parents Henry and Rosanna are buried in the Schaefferstown Cemetery - along with Adam Stick's mother Catherine Nagle Stick, listed as the wife of Joseph Stick on her grave marker. That seems awfully suggestive to me. The case is admittedly still at the circumstantial level. I have no solid proof that the Joseph Stick born to Henry and Rosanna is the same Joseph Stick who married Catherine Nagle and fathered my great-great-grandfather Adam Stick. But the evidence has mounted fairly high, and I'm leaning strongly in that direction. One thing that will help is visiting the Schaefferstown Cemetery to visit these graves in person and find out how close Catherine is to Henry and Rosanna. If she's adjacent, that'd be a good enough clincher for me. Though I'll still feel better if I can find Catherine's obituary someday.
Anyway, having stayed up until 5 AM on Saturday night, I woke up around 11 AM on Sunday morning. I had decided not to go to church and risk infecting the elderly folks there whose immune systems might be too susceptible to whatever I've got. So after a shower and a much-needed shave, I eventually succeeded in getting ready, and I set out. I drove to where I thought the clinic was, which turned out to actually be a Wal-Mart. I asked around for directions to the Jessamine Medical and Diagnostic Center, and I got some conflicting reports, one of which said it was "just over there" across a little street, pointing roughly to the south. I got into my car and put on my GPS, which took me insane paths for miles and just generally screwed with me. After backtracking quite a ways, I pulled into a church parking lot, which is where I figured out that my GPS was trying to take me back to school. Seems I forgot to hit the "Route To" button after "Follow". Blasted GPS.... So then I set it right and retraced my path... Still had some confusion at the end, and pulled off into what ended up eventually leading me to the back parking lot of the clinic. Ugh. That was so unnecessarily irritating.
So then I went to the counter, gave them my information, and it took a while to get things initially squared away. I paid my co-pay up front and sat down, and it wasn't so terribly long until a nurse took me back to the room. (I had brought a book, Donald Fairnbairn's Grace and Christology in the Early Church, so the wait wasn't bad.) Checked my height (and I came in about a half-inch shorter than I like to think of myself, ugh), my weight (seems I've lost some already, yay!), temperature, blood pressure, etc. They took a throat swab, which was - given my extremely powerful gag reflex - mercifully quick and unobtrusive. The doctor came in after a bit, checked breathing and some of the other usual doctor-y things, and after hearing about my symptoms and checking me out, she said that the swab confirmed I do not have strep throat, and that a number of things have been going around lately. She figures what I have may be viral, but since I live in a dorm where contagions can pass pretty easily, she wrote me a prescription for azithromycin anyway. Then I was free to go, and I'll go fill my prescription tomorrow when the town pharmacy is open.
So I left there and drove back here with a bit of GPS assistance. Actually, I drove straight to Subway and purchased a footlong steak-and-cheese sub on a monterrey cheddar loaf with pepperjack cheese, chipotle southwest sauce, a bit of hot sauce, grated parmesan cheese, and oregano. Before I left, I noticed my friend Elizabeth in the corner studying, so I stopped to chat with her for a while. I'm actually not sure how long that lasted, but I had to microwave my sub when I drove back to the dorm. It was delicious, though I shouldn't have been so timid about the hot sauce and my throat. I could've handled more for sure.
So, let's see. Well, I've been listening to Metallica a lot since I got back... oh, I downloaded a free program called Evernote, which should be pretty useful. It lets you save notes, images, all sorts of things to notebooks, and you can access your stuff from any device that has Evernote downloaded on it, which can include smartphones. So now, if I ever get a smartphone someday, I'll download the Evernote app for it, and then - thanks to some uploading I did once I got the program - I will have access to some of my raw genealogical records on the go. I heard about Evernote while reading some genealogy tips articles. Hmm... I took a nap from around 7-10 PM. Odd, yes, I know. But if I go to bed now in an hour, that'll still be a move in the direction of straightening out my sleep schedule. Also, downloaded a couple more old books that were mentioned in the footnotes of Frederick Norwood's The Story of American Methodism. Someday when I don't have an academic library to rely on anymore, I will still have plenty of reading to do....
In the meantime, while I'm yet up in the wee hours of the 17th, I've downloaded a book from 1911 dedicated to the history of the Ninety-third Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. That, of course, is the unit in which Henry Stick - probably my great-great-great-great-grandfather - served, as a member of Company A. So we'll see if this book has any mention of him. It still floors me that Henry Stick volunteered for service, when he only moved to America when he was sixteen years old (est. 1851). I want to understand him better.
EDIT: Found precisely one mention of him by name in the book, in the list of all the men who served in Company A. He was, as is to be expected, a private. I was surprised that he was only mustered into the service in this unit on 25 August 1864. That's a lot later than I expected. Under the remarks section, it adds: "Dis. by G. O., June 20, 1865; died since the war; buried in Mt. Leb. Cemetery." (I checked, and "dis. by G. O." means "discharged by general order". Shame I don't know which General Order yet.) I suppose my next task will be to get a bearing for everything that the company did between 25 August 1864 and 20 June 1865. I have learned so far that Company A was known as the "Perseverance Company No. 1" on account of having been initially formed in 1861 by members of the Perseverance Fire Company. Note to self: also utilize George Uhler's Camps and Campaigns of the 93d Regiment, Penna Vols. Page 40 includes the line, "Stick, Henry, August 25, '64; dis June 20, '65".
EDIT II: Alright, so after briefly skimming through some history of the regiment, I can suggest that it's at least feasible that Henry Stick participated in battles in two campaigns: (1) in Sheridan's Valley Campaign, Henry may have fought in the Battle of Opequon [19 September 1864] and in the Battle of Fisher's Hill [22 September 1864]; and (2) in the Siege of Petersburg, Henry may have fought in the Battle of Fort Stedman [25 March 1865]. Those are just my preliminary guesses.
Now, also Saturday, I think, I got some genealogical help. You may recall that I've been wrestling with some conundrums about my ancestral Stick and Nagle families. Well, there's this wonderful site called FindAGrave.com, which catalogues graves in cemeteries all over, and the online memorials often have images of the tombstones and other goodies. Quite helpful. For ones that don't yet have pictures, users can click a button to request one - and then a message is sent to volunteers in the area, and eventually one may swing by the cemetery in question, snap the requested pictures, and upload them. Well, I've submitted a number of requests, and a wonderful fellow named Bruce fulfilled five (or six?) of them the other day! So now, for instance, I can view the memorials of Joseph Stick (grave photo not provided yet) and Catherine Nagle, and also Catherine's parents Adam Nagle and Catherine Wiest, and also Joseph's parents Henry Stick and Rosanna Dissinger. (I'd been hoping to stumble across confirmation that Rosanna was indeed a Dissinger, so this supplies it.) Just as helpful, you'll see that the memorials for Joseph Stick, his son Henry G. Stick, and Joseph's sister Rose D. Wike nee Stick now include obituaries. (I already had an obituary for Joseph's father Henry, but now I have an alternative from a closer newspaper that includes slight bits of extra information, which is good.)
So how does this help me? First, the obituaries for Joseph and Henry G. Stick both mention Adam Stick, and the identification seems plausible, since mine did indeed live in Lancaster County early in life and Sinking Spring later on. I'll have to correlate the dates of the obituaries with everything else I know to see how precise the match is. But second, I note that although this Joseph Stick is buried in the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, his parents Henry and Rosanna are buried in the Schaefferstown Cemetery - along with Adam Stick's mother Catherine Nagle Stick, listed as the wife of Joseph Stick on her grave marker. That seems awfully suggestive to me. The case is admittedly still at the circumstantial level. I have no solid proof that the Joseph Stick born to Henry and Rosanna is the same Joseph Stick who married Catherine Nagle and fathered my great-great-grandfather Adam Stick. But the evidence has mounted fairly high, and I'm leaning strongly in that direction. One thing that will help is visiting the Schaefferstown Cemetery to visit these graves in person and find out how close Catherine is to Henry and Rosanna. If she's adjacent, that'd be a good enough clincher for me. Though I'll still feel better if I can find Catherine's obituary someday.
Anyway, having stayed up until 5 AM on Saturday night, I woke up around 11 AM on Sunday morning. I had decided not to go to church and risk infecting the elderly folks there whose immune systems might be too susceptible to whatever I've got. So after a shower and a much-needed shave, I eventually succeeded in getting ready, and I set out. I drove to where I thought the clinic was, which turned out to actually be a Wal-Mart. I asked around for directions to the Jessamine Medical and Diagnostic Center, and I got some conflicting reports, one of which said it was "just over there" across a little street, pointing roughly to the south. I got into my car and put on my GPS, which took me insane paths for miles and just generally screwed with me. After backtracking quite a ways, I pulled into a church parking lot, which is where I figured out that my GPS was trying to take me back to school. Seems I forgot to hit the "Route To" button after "Follow". Blasted GPS.... So then I set it right and retraced my path... Still had some confusion at the end, and pulled off into what ended up eventually leading me to the back parking lot of the clinic. Ugh. That was so unnecessarily irritating.
So then I went to the counter, gave them my information, and it took a while to get things initially squared away. I paid my co-pay up front and sat down, and it wasn't so terribly long until a nurse took me back to the room. (I had brought a book, Donald Fairnbairn's Grace and Christology in the Early Church, so the wait wasn't bad.) Checked my height (and I came in about a half-inch shorter than I like to think of myself, ugh), my weight (seems I've lost some already, yay!), temperature, blood pressure, etc. They took a throat swab, which was - given my extremely powerful gag reflex - mercifully quick and unobtrusive. The doctor came in after a bit, checked breathing and some of the other usual doctor-y things, and after hearing about my symptoms and checking me out, she said that the swab confirmed I do not have strep throat, and that a number of things have been going around lately. She figures what I have may be viral, but since I live in a dorm where contagions can pass pretty easily, she wrote me a prescription for azithromycin anyway. Then I was free to go, and I'll go fill my prescription tomorrow when the town pharmacy is open.
So I left there and drove back here with a bit of GPS assistance. Actually, I drove straight to Subway and purchased a footlong steak-and-cheese sub on a monterrey cheddar loaf with pepperjack cheese, chipotle southwest sauce, a bit of hot sauce, grated parmesan cheese, and oregano. Before I left, I noticed my friend Elizabeth in the corner studying, so I stopped to chat with her for a while. I'm actually not sure how long that lasted, but I had to microwave my sub when I drove back to the dorm. It was delicious, though I shouldn't have been so timid about the hot sauce and my throat. I could've handled more for sure.
So, let's see. Well, I've been listening to Metallica a lot since I got back... oh, I downloaded a free program called Evernote, which should be pretty useful. It lets you save notes, images, all sorts of things to notebooks, and you can access your stuff from any device that has Evernote downloaded on it, which can include smartphones. So now, if I ever get a smartphone someday, I'll download the Evernote app for it, and then - thanks to some uploading I did once I got the program - I will have access to some of my raw genealogical records on the go. I heard about Evernote while reading some genealogy tips articles. Hmm... I took a nap from around 7-10 PM. Odd, yes, I know. But if I go to bed now in an hour, that'll still be a move in the direction of straightening out my sleep schedule. Also, downloaded a couple more old books that were mentioned in the footnotes of Frederick Norwood's The Story of American Methodism. Someday when I don't have an academic library to rely on anymore, I will still have plenty of reading to do....
In the meantime, while I'm yet up in the wee hours of the 17th, I've downloaded a book from 1911 dedicated to the history of the Ninety-third Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. That, of course, is the unit in which Henry Stick - probably my great-great-great-great-grandfather - served, as a member of Company A. So we'll see if this book has any mention of him. It still floors me that Henry Stick volunteered for service, when he only moved to America when he was sixteen years old (est. 1851). I want to understand him better.
EDIT: Found precisely one mention of him by name in the book, in the list of all the men who served in Company A. He was, as is to be expected, a private. I was surprised that he was only mustered into the service in this unit on 25 August 1864. That's a lot later than I expected. Under the remarks section, it adds: "Dis. by G. O., June 20, 1865; died since the war; buried in Mt. Leb. Cemetery." (I checked, and "dis. by G. O." means "discharged by general order". Shame I don't know which General Order yet.) I suppose my next task will be to get a bearing for everything that the company did between 25 August 1864 and 20 June 1865. I have learned so far that Company A was known as the "Perseverance Company No. 1" on account of having been initially formed in 1861 by members of the Perseverance Fire Company. Note to self: also utilize George Uhler's Camps and Campaigns of the 93d Regiment, Penna Vols. Page 40 includes the line, "Stick, Henry, August 25, '64; dis June 20, '65".
EDIT II: Alright, so after briefly skimming through some history of the regiment, I can suggest that it's at least feasible that Henry Stick participated in battles in two campaigns: (1) in Sheridan's Valley Campaign, Henry may have fought in the Battle of Opequon [19 September 1864] and in the Battle of Fisher's Hill [22 September 1864]; and (2) in the Siege of Petersburg, Henry may have fought in the Battle of Fort Stedman [25 March 1865]. Those are just my preliminary guesses.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
13-15 October 2011
Ugh, the past couple days have been miserable. Not long after I made my last post, I did get to work on my assignments. I've had a very large project, and ideally I wanted to get things to my group by Friday at 5:00 PM as they were hoping. (Of course, frankly, that was unreasonable of them. Even if I'd sent it this evening, it'd hardly take too long for them to integrate everything, and it's due Monday afternoon.) Well, it took longer than I thought. I stayed up until around 6:00 AM Friday morning hard at work. (But right before I got to work, I went to the Lexington Clinic website and submitted a request for an appointment. They advertise that they'll call you back within a business day to set things up.) After that, I decided to get a bit of sleep, which maybe ended up lasting four hours at best. Then I was up and resumed work. I didn't eat lunch. Nor had I eaten any dinner the preceding night. My work continued until late Friday evening. Shortly before 6, I needed to go to the library. I arrived... a couple minutes after it closed. Blast. So then, feeling reasonably well for my condition, I walked over to Subway to grab some nourishment. Then I returned here and hammered away at the last touches of my paper (using the lone lexicon that I do actually own, thank God) until it was done at 6:41 PM. After that, I rewarded myself by letting myself eat the sub I'd purchased. It was my usual buffalo chicken, minus the spare hot sauce because I wasn't sure my throat would appreciate that. And despite my loss of some taste capacity, it was phenomenal. Maybe even seemed better than usual.
Anyway, my work was not done. I'd been taking notes on an assortment of books to make sure I had done my due diligence. I finished that after a few more hours. Between Thursday night and Friday night, I had produced 57 solid pages of notes on hundreds of pages of material that I had read. It was pretty brutal. So at 9:52 PM, I sent my bibliographic data to the group member responsible for organizing that. But I wasn't done. Over the next half-hour, I had to condense the important findings on my topic itself (Melchizedek) down to five PowerPoint slides. I mainly based it on the first book I'd read (Horton's Melchizedek Tradition), but with plenty of counterpoints and alternatives from the other material. Unfortunately I had neither the space nor the competence to include anything about Melchizedek in Hebrews, which is even more controverted. So I submitted that at 10:37 PM... and my part was at last done.
Anyway, the rest of my night I did my best to relax, though I got some unpleasant news about someone close to me who had betrayed me rather severely. Won't get into the details here, for her sake. I was ultimately up until around 1 or 2 AM, catching up on some fun things on the Internet I'd missed during my intense study session.
So then I got to sleep for a while, but this morning has not been well. (Oh, have I mentioned that I never heard back about that doctor appointment? Yeah, kind of need that.) I'm not sure whether I can blame diarrhea on my illness, but there were a few hours there that were nonstop... activity. My throat has been killin' me since last night. Apparently any seeming recovery yesterday was just the calm before the storm. I sound absolutely horrible. When I finally resumed my rest around 10 AM, I figured I'd sleep 'til maybe noon. Wrong. Try 4:15 PM. Whatever I've got is really beating me up. I'm still fatigued, I have a headache, and I feel other things wrong with me that I can't even identify. Ugh. Thankfully tomorrow's Sunday, which is a walk-in day at the clinic, my neighbor assures me. After church (if I go and risk exposing those poor people to whatever I've got), I can drive over to the Nicholasville branch of the clinic and see about getting taken care of.
Anyway, my work was not done. I'd been taking notes on an assortment of books to make sure I had done my due diligence. I finished that after a few more hours. Between Thursday night and Friday night, I had produced 57 solid pages of notes on hundreds of pages of material that I had read. It was pretty brutal. So at 9:52 PM, I sent my bibliographic data to the group member responsible for organizing that. But I wasn't done. Over the next half-hour, I had to condense the important findings on my topic itself (Melchizedek) down to five PowerPoint slides. I mainly based it on the first book I'd read (Horton's Melchizedek Tradition), but with plenty of counterpoints and alternatives from the other material. Unfortunately I had neither the space nor the competence to include anything about Melchizedek in Hebrews, which is even more controverted. So I submitted that at 10:37 PM... and my part was at last done.
Anyway, the rest of my night I did my best to relax, though I got some unpleasant news about someone close to me who had betrayed me rather severely. Won't get into the details here, for her sake. I was ultimately up until around 1 or 2 AM, catching up on some fun things on the Internet I'd missed during my intense study session.
So then I got to sleep for a while, but this morning has not been well. (Oh, have I mentioned that I never heard back about that doctor appointment? Yeah, kind of need that.) I'm not sure whether I can blame diarrhea on my illness, but there were a few hours there that were nonstop... activity. My throat has been killin' me since last night. Apparently any seeming recovery yesterday was just the calm before the storm. I sound absolutely horrible. When I finally resumed my rest around 10 AM, I figured I'd sleep 'til maybe noon. Wrong. Try 4:15 PM. Whatever I've got is really beating me up. I'm still fatigued, I have a headache, and I feel other things wrong with me that I can't even identify. Ugh. Thankfully tomorrow's Sunday, which is a walk-in day at the clinic, my neighbor assures me. After church (if I go and risk exposing those poor people to whatever I've got), I can drive over to the Nicholasville branch of the clinic and see about getting taken care of.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
12-13 October 2011
The night before last, I just couldn't sleep. Was up tossing and turning all night. When morning came, I regretfully rose and went to class, which I really didn't get anything from, though my small group was good. I'm pretty sure I went to sleep for a bit right after that, and then got up again for lunch and my second class. We spent the last whole half of that class in groups, which surprised me, and after the class my project group decided (without really clearing things to see if it'd be alright with all of us) that we had to suddenly have a mandatory meeting for the next 45 minutes. That was supremely dull and irritating, especially since they're rushing me (quite unnecessarily, in my opinion) with my section of the assignment by setting arbitrary (and all-too-early) deadlines for things - especially since, unlike all of them, I've done hundreds of pages of reading as research. So of course I might take, say, a couple hours past their chosen deadline for my bit, thank you very much.
I think I went back to sleep after that, then got up for a late supper. One of my friends stayed around to keep me company, which was greatly kind of her, and we talked for a while. I tried helping her troubleshoot her phone's refusal to access her voicemail, but to no avail. I hope she gets that worked out soon. Then I came back here, got some reading done (?), and began to realize that I'm probably getting sick. Of course, I'd been having some pains and a very sore throat for at least that whole day, perhaps the previous one as well, but I just figured for the most part that it was just one of those things.
Anyway, with my headache and fatigue, I couldn't very well get much substantive work done, so I wanted to watch something on Hulu. But nothing on Hulu would load. So then I updated my Java, and then tried updating Adobe Flash Player. But Adobe Flash Player can't update with any browsers open, so I closed it... but it still gave the same objection. So I tried to reopen Firefox, and it said that it was still open and needed to be closed before I could open it. Bleh. So after restarting my computer a few times, I went on Internet Explorer and looked it up. Seems this isn't a totally uncommon Firefox issue, and the way to deal with it is to open the Task Manager, look at the Processes tab, and manually shut down the still-active Firefox process, which for some reason remains up even though the program has terminated. Weird. So after that I was able to update Adobe Flash Player, which then allowed me to watch House (season 8, episode 1) on Hulu. It was great. Shame they tend to introduce new settings in some first episodes, but then shift things back so quickly. There's a lot more they could milk that new concept for.
So then, while talking to a few people via Skype, I did a bit more genealogical work. I found an old 1909 county directory - like an old phone book, minus phones - that was very helpful, but I'll need to look up the abbreviations. For instance, one line for one of my ancestors is "Mowrey Robert V sr, lab, res w s Walnut 3 n Miller". Now that one's not so tough to crack as some others, thankfully. The thing that makes this more useful than the census records is that the census seldom took down precise addresses; it grouped things according to streets and kept a running tally of the order houses were visited in. But if I were to combine this directory's data with some census data, I could perhaps get a sense of how the census-taker moved...
Anyway, before bed I caught up on a few blogs - mainly political and economic ones - and then watched a few YouTube videos before I finally tried to get some sleep. I eventually got a bit, I suppose. This morning I got up, took a half-hearted shower, got a chapter finished in David Anderson's The King-Priest of Psalm 110 in Hebrews, and stumbled to class through the rain. Class took a while to really get going, since the professor was having some technical difficulties (even more than usual, I mean), but we finished the lecture just in the nick of time at the end. Then I returned here and caught up a bit on sleep. Got up, got a quick lunch. The food selection was excellent. Sesame chicken, curly fries, patty melts.... One of the best lunches they've provided. Shame that my sense of taste and my appetite are both quite dulled by this sickness. I'm pretty sure God got a chuckle out of that. Still managed to compel myself to eat most of it, save the bulk of the chicken, which tends to be a tad hard here. Then I returned to my room through the rain. Now here, I'm listening to a shorter episode of the Genealogy Gems podcast while my computer continues downloading episodes of the EconTalk podcast I discovered last night and while I finish up this blog entry. Then I'll make sure to do my daily entrance into Ancestry.com's current sweepstakes, check out what the new free database of the day is, and get some more sleep before I have to get up and... ugh... get to work.
I think I went back to sleep after that, then got up for a late supper. One of my friends stayed around to keep me company, which was greatly kind of her, and we talked for a while. I tried helping her troubleshoot her phone's refusal to access her voicemail, but to no avail. I hope she gets that worked out soon. Then I came back here, got some reading done (?), and began to realize that I'm probably getting sick. Of course, I'd been having some pains and a very sore throat for at least that whole day, perhaps the previous one as well, but I just figured for the most part that it was just one of those things.
Anyway, with my headache and fatigue, I couldn't very well get much substantive work done, so I wanted to watch something on Hulu. But nothing on Hulu would load. So then I updated my Java, and then tried updating Adobe Flash Player. But Adobe Flash Player can't update with any browsers open, so I closed it... but it still gave the same objection. So I tried to reopen Firefox, and it said that it was still open and needed to be closed before I could open it. Bleh. So after restarting my computer a few times, I went on Internet Explorer and looked it up. Seems this isn't a totally uncommon Firefox issue, and the way to deal with it is to open the Task Manager, look at the Processes tab, and manually shut down the still-active Firefox process, which for some reason remains up even though the program has terminated. Weird. So after that I was able to update Adobe Flash Player, which then allowed me to watch House (season 8, episode 1) on Hulu. It was great. Shame they tend to introduce new settings in some first episodes, but then shift things back so quickly. There's a lot more they could milk that new concept for.
So then, while talking to a few people via Skype, I did a bit more genealogical work. I found an old 1909 county directory - like an old phone book, minus phones - that was very helpful, but I'll need to look up the abbreviations. For instance, one line for one of my ancestors is "Mowrey Robert V sr, lab, res w s Walnut 3 n Miller". Now that one's not so tough to crack as some others, thankfully. The thing that makes this more useful than the census records is that the census seldom took down precise addresses; it grouped things according to streets and kept a running tally of the order houses were visited in. But if I were to combine this directory's data with some census data, I could perhaps get a sense of how the census-taker moved...
Anyway, before bed I caught up on a few blogs - mainly political and economic ones - and then watched a few YouTube videos before I finally tried to get some sleep. I eventually got a bit, I suppose. This morning I got up, took a half-hearted shower, got a chapter finished in David Anderson's The King-Priest of Psalm 110 in Hebrews, and stumbled to class through the rain. Class took a while to really get going, since the professor was having some technical difficulties (even more than usual, I mean), but we finished the lecture just in the nick of time at the end. Then I returned here and caught up a bit on sleep. Got up, got a quick lunch. The food selection was excellent. Sesame chicken, curly fries, patty melts.... One of the best lunches they've provided. Shame that my sense of taste and my appetite are both quite dulled by this sickness. I'm pretty sure God got a chuckle out of that. Still managed to compel myself to eat most of it, save the bulk of the chicken, which tends to be a tad hard here. Then I returned to my room through the rain. Now here, I'm listening to a shorter episode of the Genealogy Gems podcast while my computer continues downloading episodes of the EconTalk podcast I discovered last night and while I finish up this blog entry. Then I'll make sure to do my daily entrance into Ancestry.com's current sweepstakes, check out what the new free database of the day is, and get some more sleep before I have to get up and... ugh... get to work.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Newspaper Archive Goodies
Today's selection from the newspaper archive is a real hoot. It comes from the 27 July 1912 issue of The Reading Eagle, page 2:
CHOIR SHOWS MORE THAN VOCAL MERIT
As a Result of Tight Skirts Lower Part of Church Loft Will Be ScreenedDes Moines, Ia., July 27. - Good-looking young women singers, those with short, tight skirts, drop stitch silk hose and low shoes, and who sit in the choir loft of the Forest Avenue Baptist Church, are to be screened from the stare of the curious male members of the congregation. The choir is 15 feet above the main floor and the display of female hosiery has not only increased male attendance, but has interfered with services.
"Because of the shortness and tightness of the skirts worn by the young women and the display of hosiery which is evident in the choir loft, I move that a 20-inch curtain be hung from a brass rod around the choir loft," said Mrs. George F. Reinking, President, at a meeting of the Ladies' Aid Society, whose members were shocked when they learned the true state of affairs. The motion was carried unanimously.
A bald-headed deacon, father of a large family, venerated for his years and his piety, but who could not keep his gaze from the choir loft, no matter how eloquent the sermons, was directly responsible for the action.
Charles Wesley on Psalm 42:2
Here's a brief poetical treatment of Psalm 42:2 by Charles Wesley:
I thirst for a life-giving God,
A God that on Calvary died;
A fountain of water and blood
Which gush'd from Immanuel's side.
I gasp for the stream of thy love,
The Spirit of rapture unknown:
And then to re-drink it above,
Eternally fresh from the throne.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
11 October 2011
Alright, so, brief update on my earlier post. Considering that I'm not quite feeling my best right now, I've been making some decent progress on work. I've read about twenty or so pages of Luke Timothy Johnson's commentary on Hebrews; I've started D. Michael Henderson's A Model for Making Disciples: John Wesley's Class Meeting and gotten eighty pages into it; and I've read about twenty pages of Harold Attridge's commentary on Hebrews, with ten more pages to go before I'll technically be where I absolutely must be by, well, tomorrow. (Yes, yes, I'm behind.) I've also been listening to some podcasts - right now, very old episodes of Shawn McCraney's Heart of the Matter TV call-in show. Makes for decent background that I typically don't have to think too hard about.
So at the moment I'm taking a break and intermittently chatting with some people on Skype. I also decided to try to chase down a little genealogical issue. As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my prior post, I've had a great deal of trouble finding anything about Jonathan Rauch's wife. So I decided to try using another useful website called Find-A-Grave. Knowing from Jonathan Rauch's obituary that he was buried in Rehrersburg, I brought up a list of the cemeteries in Berks County and searched through for any located in Rehrersburg. When I got those up, I searched each of them for the surname Rauch. Lo and behold, success! Apparently he is buried in Trinity United Church of Christ Cemetery in Rehrersburg. Although no pictures are up yet, I can read a transcription of his tombstone at his online memorial. And then, wonderfully, there's the same deal for his wife. If this is a faithful transcription, it offers both her date of birth and her date of death. (I then promptly checked the newspaper archives to hunt down her obituary... but alas, the online archives are utterly missing the last couple months of 1906! Woe, woe!)
Interestingly, there's a third person there, another woman born a Moyer who married a man named... Jonathan Rauch. (Elisabeth's inscription is fully in German, and the person who posted it seems to have misinterpreted at least one clause, but I can read all but all of it, and my favorite online German dictionary is there to help with any unfamiliar terms.) An earlier wife of my Jonathan Rauch, perhaps? Maybe even a relative of Jonathan's second wife? She married her Jonathan Rauch in 1851 and had two children, a son and a daughter, before dying in 1854 - sadly early. Now, my Jonathan Rauch did indeed have one son and one daughter between 1851 and 1854. But wait! My ancestor Priscilla Rauch was that daughter, born in 1853. So.... if this Elisabeth Rauch nee Moyer were my Jonathan Rauch's first wife, would she be the biological mother of my Priscilla Rauch? Would Elisabeth Moyer then be my ancestor? Now that I think of it, a 1900 census states that Jonathan Rauch and Mary Magdalene Moyer were married for 44 years, placing their estimated date of married sometime around 1856. That is definitely several years after the birth of Jonathan's two children, isn't it? This is all coming to me right as I'm writing this post, and that excites and confuses me! You know, now that I review the documentation I've collected, I have clear evidence that Priscilla is Jonathan's daughter, and clear evidence that Mary Magdalene is Jonathan's wife, but nothing that every comes out and says that Mary Magdalene is Priscilla's mother. This hypothesis matches the evidence perhaps better than my original assumption, and so I think I'll tweak my family tree to fit it until and unless I find any indications otherwise. (Naturally, finding some of the relevant obituaries could potentially do!)
I had originally just assumed... well, I mean, in 1900, Mary has had seven children, all of whom remain living. Only two are still living with them. But then again... I mean, by then, Mary has been married for 44 years. What makes me think that she couldn't have had seven children in addition to Jonathan's previous two for a total of nine? But, on the other hand, in Jonathan's 1906 obituary, precisely seven surviving children are named: George, Samuel, Ezra, William, Monroe, Mary, and Priscilla. Interestingly, though, the newspaper account of his funeral just a few days later lists six surviving children; it omits Ezra, presumably through oversight. (Samuel died in late 1934, and his obituary states that he is survived by Monroe and Mary.)
Ahhh, but wait a second... the Mary mentioned in the obituaries is the wife of George Ritzman. Now, George Ritzman's three-year-old daughters Sadie and Edna are living with the Rauch family in 1900, and so is Mary... but she is listed as single and retains her maiden name. So my question might be, where is George Ritzman in 1900? I seem to have found a George Ritzman (b. March 1866) in the same township, as a widowed boarder living with a local minister. I've also found him in 1910 and 1920 censuses in the same township (Marion), and I think also in 1870 and 1880 in Tulpehocken Township (adjacent to Marion Township on the north). Perhaps at some point I'll have to do as I do sometimes: collect all relevant references to the Ritzman family into a single, simple document, and just try to process my way through it from a few various angles.
In the meantime, through the power of Google, I find a site that offers specifics about George Ritzman. He was born, they say, on 30 March 1866 (certainly a match) in Rehrersburg (which is in Tulpehocken Township) to Jonathan Ritzman and Anna Elizabeth Ritzman nee Lengel; he married Ella Marie Keener, who died 26 September 1899 - and thus was a widow at the time of the 1900 census. But, issue: Sadie and Edna Ritzman, the granddaughters of Jonathan Rauch, were twins born February 1897. Yet the only child attributed here to George Ritzman is one born 4 July 1897. Certainly they could not all be born of the same woman... but perhaps that wasn't an issue to George? (Hey, now there's a good reason to end up living with a minister afterwards!)
But, I think my break has lasted long enough. So I'll read the rest of my assigned reading for the night and then go to sleep, hopefully dreaming out a solution to this puzzle.
So at the moment I'm taking a break and intermittently chatting with some people on Skype. I also decided to try to chase down a little genealogical issue. As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my prior post, I've had a great deal of trouble finding anything about Jonathan Rauch's wife. So I decided to try using another useful website called Find-A-Grave. Knowing from Jonathan Rauch's obituary that he was buried in Rehrersburg, I brought up a list of the cemeteries in Berks County and searched through for any located in Rehrersburg. When I got those up, I searched each of them for the surname Rauch. Lo and behold, success! Apparently he is buried in Trinity United Church of Christ Cemetery in Rehrersburg. Although no pictures are up yet, I can read a transcription of his tombstone at his online memorial. And then, wonderfully, there's the same deal for his wife. If this is a faithful transcription, it offers both her date of birth and her date of death. (I then promptly checked the newspaper archives to hunt down her obituary... but alas, the online archives are utterly missing the last couple months of 1906! Woe, woe!)
Interestingly, there's a third person there, another woman born a Moyer who married a man named... Jonathan Rauch. (Elisabeth's inscription is fully in German, and the person who posted it seems to have misinterpreted at least one clause, but I can read all but all of it, and my favorite online German dictionary is there to help with any unfamiliar terms.) An earlier wife of my Jonathan Rauch, perhaps? Maybe even a relative of Jonathan's second wife? She married her Jonathan Rauch in 1851 and had two children, a son and a daughter, before dying in 1854 - sadly early. Now, my Jonathan Rauch did indeed have one son and one daughter between 1851 and 1854. But wait! My ancestor Priscilla Rauch was that daughter, born in 1853. So.... if this Elisabeth Rauch nee Moyer were my Jonathan Rauch's first wife, would she be the biological mother of my Priscilla Rauch? Would Elisabeth Moyer then be my ancestor? Now that I think of it, a 1900 census states that Jonathan Rauch and Mary Magdalene Moyer were married for 44 years, placing their estimated date of married sometime around 1856. That is definitely several years after the birth of Jonathan's two children, isn't it? This is all coming to me right as I'm writing this post, and that excites and confuses me! You know, now that I review the documentation I've collected, I have clear evidence that Priscilla is Jonathan's daughter, and clear evidence that Mary Magdalene is Jonathan's wife, but nothing that every comes out and says that Mary Magdalene is Priscilla's mother. This hypothesis matches the evidence perhaps better than my original assumption, and so I think I'll tweak my family tree to fit it until and unless I find any indications otherwise. (Naturally, finding some of the relevant obituaries could potentially do!)
I had originally just assumed... well, I mean, in 1900, Mary has had seven children, all of whom remain living. Only two are still living with them. But then again... I mean, by then, Mary has been married for 44 years. What makes me think that she couldn't have had seven children in addition to Jonathan's previous two for a total of nine? But, on the other hand, in Jonathan's 1906 obituary, precisely seven surviving children are named: George, Samuel, Ezra, William, Monroe, Mary, and Priscilla. Interestingly, though, the newspaper account of his funeral just a few days later lists six surviving children; it omits Ezra, presumably through oversight. (Samuel died in late 1934, and his obituary states that he is survived by Monroe and Mary.)
Ahhh, but wait a second... the Mary mentioned in the obituaries is the wife of George Ritzman. Now, George Ritzman's three-year-old daughters Sadie and Edna are living with the Rauch family in 1900, and so is Mary... but she is listed as single and retains her maiden name. So my question might be, where is George Ritzman in 1900? I seem to have found a George Ritzman (b. March 1866) in the same township, as a widowed boarder living with a local minister. I've also found him in 1910 and 1920 censuses in the same township (Marion), and I think also in 1870 and 1880 in Tulpehocken Township (adjacent to Marion Township on the north). Perhaps at some point I'll have to do as I do sometimes: collect all relevant references to the Ritzman family into a single, simple document, and just try to process my way through it from a few various angles.
In the meantime, through the power of Google, I find a site that offers specifics about George Ritzman. He was born, they say, on 30 March 1866 (certainly a match) in Rehrersburg (which is in Tulpehocken Township) to Jonathan Ritzman and Anna Elizabeth Ritzman nee Lengel; he married Ella Marie Keener, who died 26 September 1899 - and thus was a widow at the time of the 1900 census. But, issue: Sadie and Edna Ritzman, the granddaughters of Jonathan Rauch, were twins born February 1897. Yet the only child attributed here to George Ritzman is one born 4 July 1897. Certainly they could not all be born of the same woman... but perhaps that wasn't an issue to George? (Hey, now there's a good reason to end up living with a minister afterwards!)
But, I think my break has lasted long enough. So I'll read the rest of my assigned reading for the night and then go to sleep, hopefully dreaming out a solution to this puzzle.
10-11 October 2011
Okay, so, yesterday (or, at least, what I recollect of it) was interesting. First of all, I got some very exciting mail. I've been corresponding with one of my distant cousins about the family of my great-great-great-grandfather, Frederick Adams (b. 21 December 1833; d. 3 April 1890), who I believe was the son of John Adam (b. 7 January 1788; d. 13 November 1848) and Barbara Adam nee Heiser (b. 18 April 1790; d. 17 February 1870). (The fact that Frederick's family is buried right next to John and Barbara certainly doesn't hurt in drawing the inference. I still can scarcely believe I've visited John Adam's grave.) The cousin I've mentioned is descended from one of John Adams' brothers.
Anyway, she sent me a packet of copied documents pertaining to the family. And wow! What a treasure trove! First of all, it includes a number of handwritten documents pertaining to John Adam's estate. In addition, my relative sent two pages of Fraktur. Fraktur is a style of Pennsylfaanish Deitsch illumined folk art, in which a sort of old German calligraphy is used for a variety of sorts of documents. Apparently someone in the family has copies of two Fraktur sheets by John Adam's brother Jacob - not necessarily done by Jacob's own hand, but at least dictated by him, and containing a brief account (in German, naturally) of his family origins and a list of his children. And now I have beautiful copies of both pages, and wow they are gorgeous.
Also included in the packet were photocopies from microfilm of pages from an assortment of parish registers, all of which contain entries relevant to the Adam(s) family. Some of those registers were from a local church in my hometown. Others, however, were from the Adams' ancestral hometown in Germany: Schlaitdorf. It's extremely difficult to make out the writing in these pages, unfortunately. Old handwriting can always be a challenge to decipher, especially when the font is small, the page is somewhat dark, and the language happens to be German (and at times Latin)! And there's a lot of it.... Now, with the sort of basic vocabulary range involved in these things, I probably have enough German and Latin under my belt to get the gist of it all if I had a perfectly clear transcription. And I'm very set on the idea of getting a good transcription to include in the appendix of my Ahnentafel. I may have to consult with a few of my German-speaking friends to see if any of them have the eyesight and handwriting-deciphering capacity to lend some assistance.
I'll be honest, I'm not wholly sure what I spent yesterday doing. It's even worse because I foolishly stayed up until 5:00 AM! It's not like I was getting any of my work done, either. Noooo, that would have been far too wise. Instead, I think I was searching through newspaper archives again to gather some additional scattered documentation. Part of it was spurred on by my discovery of where someone had posted online a copy of my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob H. Long's obituary while searching for more information about my great-great-grandmother Sarah's first husband Henry Frey. My great-great-grandfather John Christian Rhode was her second husband, just as she was his second wife.
Incidentally, I think I've made progress in figuring out who the first wife was (likely Emma Helen Snellings of Virginia, who apparently died in 1888), and it seems that there was perhaps a daughter I didn't know about. Where it started to give me a headache was when I heard that seemingly the daughter (Mary) of John and Emma married a son (Jacob) of Henry and Sarah... I mean, awkward though that might potentially have made family life, there aren't any untoward genetic consequences or anything. It just means that my grandfather Dick (who, well, lived up to the moniker) and his double half-cousin Elmer would, statistically speaking, both trace a quarter of their genetic make-up to John's DNA, a quarter to Sarah's DNA, and then the other half to other individuals - Emma and Henry for Elmer, and William Clayton Raihl and Kate Raihl nee Adams for Dick. That's actually no different than any ordinary first cousins, I think. I could be wrong about that. I was never that great with this particular sort of calculation.
Anyway, I stayed up finding a couple of extra sources from the newspaper archives. Some articles were of questionable relevance but I copied them over anyway. One that is interesting is a list of attendees at a Schaefferstown woman's 58th birthday party. My great-great-grandparents Adam and Mary (Mountz) Stick are among the attendees, along with my great-greatuncle Richard Stick. So, too, is Mary's father, I believe. In addition, we find Adam Stick's first cousin Adam Nagle (b. 1893), along with Adam Nagle's wife and son. Regarding Adam Nagle's family, I've seen a number of brief snippets in the newspaper indicating a close friendship with the Billman family, so that's something worth investigating further. Also, my great-great-grandmother Mary had a niece named Emma Speiss (nee Mountz), and I found an article mentioning the celebration of the 37th wedding anniversary of Clarence W. Speiss and Emma Mountz. I hadn't had her husband's name before, so that was a pleasant find. It also mentions their two children. Given that the article is from 1963 and that Emma only died five years ago, it's totally possible that those children are still alive today. I'd love to find out.
Also last night, I took up a related project. See, I've been collecting a lot of obituaries and funeral descriptions, and also a few articles about weddings. So I went through all of them and excerpted the bit about the event that included time, location, and who officiated. (That wasn't found for all of them, but it was for some.) The result showed a few instances where the same minister appears more than once. So then I went and attempted to look up more information on those ministers and their churches.
For instance, Rev. Hiram Gibble officiated at the funeral of my great-great-grandmother Kate Raihl nee Adams in 1904 and then my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob H. Long in 1908. I investigated Hiram Gibble and found that he was a bishop of the White Oak district of the Church of the Brethren and was indeed, as Kate's obituary indicated, stationed in Manheim, Pennsylvania. He was appointed bishop just over three months before Kate died. The Church of the Brethren is a group descended from Alexander Mack's Schwarzenau Brethren. Jacob Long may have been one of Bishop Gibble's parishioners, since his obituary describes him as a member of the "German Baptist Church", another old name for that group. Various newspaper articles indicate that Gibble could preach in both German and English.
Now, I'm not sure why Gibble was at Kate's funeral. He wasn't the only minister officiating; so was Rev. James A. Heitler of Rothsville, which is also where the services were held. As I investigated Rev. Heitler, he was certainly an interesting fellow. He was apparently a successful businessman from Lebanon County who moved to Rothsville in the 1880s. He was a cigarmaker, a furniture manufacturer, a photographer, an undertaker, and eventually decided to become the minister of the United Zion Church in Rothsville. What a busy bloke!
Anyway, the two articles about Kate's death variously describe the site of her funeral service as "United Zion church at Rothsville" or "Zion Children Church, at Rothsville". (It initially seems like an odd discrepancy, no? Keep reading.) Finding information about this congregation seems to be difficult, but it seems plausible that it was part of a somewhat obscure denomination called the United Zion Church, which is a splinter group of the River Brethren, a revivalist group with Mennonite origins and 'Dunker' (German Baptist Brethren) influences. The splinter group, led by renegade River Brethren bishop Matthias Brinser, was originally known as United Zion's Children. Could Kate have been a member of either the United Zion Church or the German Baptist Brethren? I'm intrigued by either possibility!
Next came the case of "Rev. W. S. Brendle", who in 1925 officiated at the funeral of my great-great-grandmother Catherine Elizabeth Root (nee Mowrey)'s sister-in-law Jennie Mowrey nee Ziegler. Jennie was "a member of the Reformed Church at this place [i.e., Denver]", though the services were held at "Ream's Memorial Lutheran Church". "Rev. W. S. Brendle, of Denver" also officiated at the funeral of my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Mountz (Adam Stick's father-in-law) in 1926. The obituary didn't mention Jacob's denominational affiliation.
A fairly quick search showed that, within the Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) and later within the Evangelical and Reformed Church (which resulted from the 1934 merger of most of the RCUS and the Evangelical Synod of North America [ESNA]), Winfield Scott Brendle was the pastor of the four churches in the Reamstown charge, including St. John's Reformed Church in Denver - but in 1931, he was also listed as the pastor of St. John's Reformed Church in Sinking Spring, which explains why he would have been at Jacob Mountz's funeral. Incidentally, the Evangelical and Reformed Church later in 1957 would merge with another denomination (the Congregational Christian Churches) to form the United Church of Christ. So if W. S. Brendle were still in ministry at that time, he likely would have been a UCC pastor from then on.
Fourth, I took a look at one "Rev. O. E. Pflueger", who officiated in 1907 at the funeral of Jacob Mountz's father Isaac and in 1909 at the funeral of Jacob Mountz's wife Priscilla. Both services were conducted at "Zion's Church". Isaac's obituary classifies him as "a member of the Lutheran congregation of Zion's Church". I don't have Priscilla's obituary per se - just an article reporting on the funeral - but her father Jonathan Rauch's obituary identifies him as "a member of Zion's Lutheran Church". And, sure enough, I learned that O. E. Pflueger was the pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania.
The final case I looked at last night was of "Rev. Rollin T. Reiner". Now, in 1961, Rev. Reiner officiated at the funeral of my great-great-grandfather Adam Stick, who was "a member of the United Church of Christ". (I wonder what group Adam Stick was with before the UCC formed? After all, the UCC was just four years old by then. Might he have been part of the Evangelical and Reformed Church?) But in 1991 - yes, that's right, thirty years later - one "Rev. Rollin T. Reiner" officiated at the wedding of Adam Stick's great-granddaughter Melissa Adams nee Daubert, my mother's first cousin. Thirty years later, and still dealing with the same family! But that wedding occurred at "West Lawn United Methodist Church" in West Lawn, Pennsylvania.
So what did I find? Well, back in 1951, Rollin T. Reiner was a pastor of the West Lawn congregation of the Evangelical United Brethren. The EUB was formed in 1946 by a merger of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ (New Constitution) and the Evangelical Church, which itself was a re-merger of the Evangelical Association and most of the United Evangelical Church. (Incidentally, those members of the United Evangelical Church that did not re-merge in 1922 became my denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church.)
So anyway, in 1951, Reiner was an Evangelical United Brethren pastor, which he also would still have been at the time he officiated at Adam Stick's funeral. But in 1968, the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged with the Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church, and from then on Rollin T. Reiner was pastor of the West Lawn United Methodist Church. Rev. Reiner's EUB background also explains why I found him listed in 2003 as a trustee emeritus of Albright College, an Evangelical Association school that later became an EUB school and is now affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Reiner had also at some point acquired a Doctor of Divinity degree.
So then I went to bed, and probably got about two hours of sleep, which I believe included some rather disturbing nightmares, the fundamental gist of which is thankfully now beyond me, but which certainly involved grave mortal dangers. In class this morning we received back our tests from last week. I indeed did well, having made only two errors. One was on a question that, as I admitted then, I could have gone either way with. The other was a simple transcription error: I meant to write 'F', but I for some reason put an extra line at the bottom and made it an 'E'. How silly. Shame I didn't catch that when I was skimming back through it to triple-check. So anyway, while mine was only the fourth-highest grade in the class, it'll do.
The rest of the lecture was informative and I took notes in my notebook while multitasking by resuming last night's search through newspaper archives. I started out by transcribing a very lengthy article (which I'd found last night but deferred for the sake of sleep) about a terrible factory fire in Womelsdorf in 1939 that left several families homeless. The article indicates that my great-great-greataunt Lillie Reinhold nee Mountz's house was externally scorched by the conflagration. Right before class ended, I successfully located the obituary of my great-great-great-great-grandmother, "Mrs. Isaac Mountz (nee Rebecca Matthew)", who died 17 October 1899 and whose obituary appeared in the next day's Reading Eagle. Success! I was quite glad to locate that.
Now, I had planned to return to my room right after class and resume sleep, but instead I ended up staying in my classroom for the next 1.5 hours to continue churning away at searching through the archives. Most of the things I actually found and chose to transcribe were fairly peripheral, like obituaries or articles mentioning the spouses of distant uncles, but I did finally locate the death notice and then the obituary of my great-great-great-great-grandfather Jonathan Rauch, who fought in the Civil War. I'd already had the newspaper account of his funeral, but it took a while to pin down his obituary.
I still haven't found anything for his wife, because all I know is that she died "about three years" before he did. I now know his death occurred on 30 October 1906 (previously I'd just had it around early November 1906), but that still doesn't get me any closer than "probably sometime in 1903" for his wife's death. And that is waaaaay too much material to search through. So I gave up for the morning, went and grabbed a rather swift lunch, and then came back here and slept for a couple hours until, somewhat refreshed, I rose and got a (somewhat minimal) amount of real classwork done, which I hope to increase tonight. Now after a belated supper and some time spent conversing with a friend I haven't seen for a while outside of her dorm, I'm back to my room to complete this post and get to work, to whatever degree of capacity my growing headache and fatigue will permit tonight...
Anyway, she sent me a packet of copied documents pertaining to the family. And wow! What a treasure trove! First of all, it includes a number of handwritten documents pertaining to John Adam's estate. In addition, my relative sent two pages of Fraktur. Fraktur is a style of Pennsylfaanish Deitsch illumined folk art, in which a sort of old German calligraphy is used for a variety of sorts of documents. Apparently someone in the family has copies of two Fraktur sheets by John Adam's brother Jacob - not necessarily done by Jacob's own hand, but at least dictated by him, and containing a brief account (in German, naturally) of his family origins and a list of his children. And now I have beautiful copies of both pages, and wow they are gorgeous.
Also included in the packet were photocopies from microfilm of pages from an assortment of parish registers, all of which contain entries relevant to the Adam(s) family. Some of those registers were from a local church in my hometown. Others, however, were from the Adams' ancestral hometown in Germany: Schlaitdorf. It's extremely difficult to make out the writing in these pages, unfortunately. Old handwriting can always be a challenge to decipher, especially when the font is small, the page is somewhat dark, and the language happens to be German (and at times Latin)! And there's a lot of it.... Now, with the sort of basic vocabulary range involved in these things, I probably have enough German and Latin under my belt to get the gist of it all if I had a perfectly clear transcription. And I'm very set on the idea of getting a good transcription to include in the appendix of my Ahnentafel. I may have to consult with a few of my German-speaking friends to see if any of them have the eyesight and handwriting-deciphering capacity to lend some assistance.
I'll be honest, I'm not wholly sure what I spent yesterday doing. It's even worse because I foolishly stayed up until 5:00 AM! It's not like I was getting any of my work done, either. Noooo, that would have been far too wise. Instead, I think I was searching through newspaper archives again to gather some additional scattered documentation. Part of it was spurred on by my discovery of where someone had posted online a copy of my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob H. Long's obituary while searching for more information about my great-great-grandmother Sarah's first husband Henry Frey. My great-great-grandfather John Christian Rhode was her second husband, just as she was his second wife.
Incidentally, I think I've made progress in figuring out who the first wife was (likely Emma Helen Snellings of Virginia, who apparently died in 1888), and it seems that there was perhaps a daughter I didn't know about. Where it started to give me a headache was when I heard that seemingly the daughter (Mary) of John and Emma married a son (Jacob) of Henry and Sarah... I mean, awkward though that might potentially have made family life, there aren't any untoward genetic consequences or anything. It just means that my grandfather Dick (who, well, lived up to the moniker) and his double half-cousin Elmer would, statistically speaking, both trace a quarter of their genetic make-up to John's DNA, a quarter to Sarah's DNA, and then the other half to other individuals - Emma and Henry for Elmer, and William Clayton Raihl and Kate Raihl nee Adams for Dick. That's actually no different than any ordinary first cousins, I think. I could be wrong about that. I was never that great with this particular sort of calculation.
Anyway, I stayed up finding a couple of extra sources from the newspaper archives. Some articles were of questionable relevance but I copied them over anyway. One that is interesting is a list of attendees at a Schaefferstown woman's 58th birthday party. My great-great-grandparents Adam and Mary (Mountz) Stick are among the attendees, along with my great-greatuncle Richard Stick. So, too, is Mary's father, I believe. In addition, we find Adam Stick's first cousin Adam Nagle (b. 1893), along with Adam Nagle's wife and son. Regarding Adam Nagle's family, I've seen a number of brief snippets in the newspaper indicating a close friendship with the Billman family, so that's something worth investigating further. Also, my great-great-grandmother Mary had a niece named Emma Speiss (nee Mountz), and I found an article mentioning the celebration of the 37th wedding anniversary of Clarence W. Speiss and Emma Mountz. I hadn't had her husband's name before, so that was a pleasant find. It also mentions their two children. Given that the article is from 1963 and that Emma only died five years ago, it's totally possible that those children are still alive today. I'd love to find out.
Also last night, I took up a related project. See, I've been collecting a lot of obituaries and funeral descriptions, and also a few articles about weddings. So I went through all of them and excerpted the bit about the event that included time, location, and who officiated. (That wasn't found for all of them, but it was for some.) The result showed a few instances where the same minister appears more than once. So then I went and attempted to look up more information on those ministers and their churches.
For instance, Rev. Hiram Gibble officiated at the funeral of my great-great-grandmother Kate Raihl nee Adams in 1904 and then my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob H. Long in 1908. I investigated Hiram Gibble and found that he was a bishop of the White Oak district of the Church of the Brethren and was indeed, as Kate's obituary indicated, stationed in Manheim, Pennsylvania. He was appointed bishop just over three months before Kate died. The Church of the Brethren is a group descended from Alexander Mack's Schwarzenau Brethren. Jacob Long may have been one of Bishop Gibble's parishioners, since his obituary describes him as a member of the "German Baptist Church", another old name for that group. Various newspaper articles indicate that Gibble could preach in both German and English.
Now, I'm not sure why Gibble was at Kate's funeral. He wasn't the only minister officiating; so was Rev. James A. Heitler of Rothsville, which is also where the services were held. As I investigated Rev. Heitler, he was certainly an interesting fellow. He was apparently a successful businessman from Lebanon County who moved to Rothsville in the 1880s. He was a cigarmaker, a furniture manufacturer, a photographer, an undertaker, and eventually decided to become the minister of the United Zion Church in Rothsville. What a busy bloke!
Anyway, the two articles about Kate's death variously describe the site of her funeral service as "United Zion church at Rothsville" or "Zion Children Church, at Rothsville". (It initially seems like an odd discrepancy, no? Keep reading.) Finding information about this congregation seems to be difficult, but it seems plausible that it was part of a somewhat obscure denomination called the United Zion Church, which is a splinter group of the River Brethren, a revivalist group with Mennonite origins and 'Dunker' (German Baptist Brethren) influences. The splinter group, led by renegade River Brethren bishop Matthias Brinser, was originally known as United Zion's Children. Could Kate have been a member of either the United Zion Church or the German Baptist Brethren? I'm intrigued by either possibility!
Next came the case of "Rev. W. S. Brendle", who in 1925 officiated at the funeral of my great-great-grandmother Catherine Elizabeth Root (nee Mowrey)'s sister-in-law Jennie Mowrey nee Ziegler. Jennie was "a member of the Reformed Church at this place [i.e., Denver]", though the services were held at "Ream's Memorial Lutheran Church". "Rev. W. S. Brendle, of Denver" also officiated at the funeral of my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Mountz (Adam Stick's father-in-law) in 1926. The obituary didn't mention Jacob's denominational affiliation.
A fairly quick search showed that, within the Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) and later within the Evangelical and Reformed Church (which resulted from the 1934 merger of most of the RCUS and the Evangelical Synod of North America [ESNA]), Winfield Scott Brendle was the pastor of the four churches in the Reamstown charge, including St. John's Reformed Church in Denver - but in 1931, he was also listed as the pastor of St. John's Reformed Church in Sinking Spring, which explains why he would have been at Jacob Mountz's funeral. Incidentally, the Evangelical and Reformed Church later in 1957 would merge with another denomination (the Congregational Christian Churches) to form the United Church of Christ. So if W. S. Brendle were still in ministry at that time, he likely would have been a UCC pastor from then on.
Fourth, I took a look at one "Rev. O. E. Pflueger", who officiated in 1907 at the funeral of Jacob Mountz's father Isaac and in 1909 at the funeral of Jacob Mountz's wife Priscilla. Both services were conducted at "Zion's Church". Isaac's obituary classifies him as "a member of the Lutheran congregation of Zion's Church". I don't have Priscilla's obituary per se - just an article reporting on the funeral - but her father Jonathan Rauch's obituary identifies him as "a member of Zion's Lutheran Church". And, sure enough, I learned that O. E. Pflueger was the pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania.
The final case I looked at last night was of "Rev. Rollin T. Reiner". Now, in 1961, Rev. Reiner officiated at the funeral of my great-great-grandfather Adam Stick, who was "a member of the United Church of Christ". (I wonder what group Adam Stick was with before the UCC formed? After all, the UCC was just four years old by then. Might he have been part of the Evangelical and Reformed Church?) But in 1991 - yes, that's right, thirty years later - one "Rev. Rollin T. Reiner" officiated at the wedding of Adam Stick's great-granddaughter Melissa Adams nee Daubert, my mother's first cousin. Thirty years later, and still dealing with the same family! But that wedding occurred at "West Lawn United Methodist Church" in West Lawn, Pennsylvania.
So what did I find? Well, back in 1951, Rollin T. Reiner was a pastor of the West Lawn congregation of the Evangelical United Brethren. The EUB was formed in 1946 by a merger of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ (New Constitution) and the Evangelical Church, which itself was a re-merger of the Evangelical Association and most of the United Evangelical Church. (Incidentally, those members of the United Evangelical Church that did not re-merge in 1922 became my denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church.)
So anyway, in 1951, Reiner was an Evangelical United Brethren pastor, which he also would still have been at the time he officiated at Adam Stick's funeral. But in 1968, the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged with the Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church, and from then on Rollin T. Reiner was pastor of the West Lawn United Methodist Church. Rev. Reiner's EUB background also explains why I found him listed in 2003 as a trustee emeritus of Albright College, an Evangelical Association school that later became an EUB school and is now affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Reiner had also at some point acquired a Doctor of Divinity degree.
So then I went to bed, and probably got about two hours of sleep, which I believe included some rather disturbing nightmares, the fundamental gist of which is thankfully now beyond me, but which certainly involved grave mortal dangers. In class this morning we received back our tests from last week. I indeed did well, having made only two errors. One was on a question that, as I admitted then, I could have gone either way with. The other was a simple transcription error: I meant to write 'F', but I for some reason put an extra line at the bottom and made it an 'E'. How silly. Shame I didn't catch that when I was skimming back through it to triple-check. So anyway, while mine was only the fourth-highest grade in the class, it'll do.
The rest of the lecture was informative and I took notes in my notebook while multitasking by resuming last night's search through newspaper archives. I started out by transcribing a very lengthy article (which I'd found last night but deferred for the sake of sleep) about a terrible factory fire in Womelsdorf in 1939 that left several families homeless. The article indicates that my great-great-greataunt Lillie Reinhold nee Mountz's house was externally scorched by the conflagration. Right before class ended, I successfully located the obituary of my great-great-great-great-grandmother, "Mrs. Isaac Mountz (nee Rebecca Matthew)", who died 17 October 1899 and whose obituary appeared in the next day's Reading Eagle. Success! I was quite glad to locate that.
Now, I had planned to return to my room right after class and resume sleep, but instead I ended up staying in my classroom for the next 1.5 hours to continue churning away at searching through the archives. Most of the things I actually found and chose to transcribe were fairly peripheral, like obituaries or articles mentioning the spouses of distant uncles, but I did finally locate the death notice and then the obituary of my great-great-great-great-grandfather Jonathan Rauch, who fought in the Civil War. I'd already had the newspaper account of his funeral, but it took a while to pin down his obituary.
I still haven't found anything for his wife, because all I know is that she died "about three years" before he did. I now know his death occurred on 30 October 1906 (previously I'd just had it around early November 1906), but that still doesn't get me any closer than "probably sometime in 1903" for his wife's death. And that is waaaaay too much material to search through. So I gave up for the morning, went and grabbed a rather swift lunch, and then came back here and slept for a couple hours until, somewhat refreshed, I rose and got a (somewhat minimal) amount of real classwork done, which I hope to increase tonight. Now after a belated supper and some time spent conversing with a friend I haven't seen for a while outside of her dorm, I'm back to my room to complete this post and get to work, to whatever degree of capacity my growing headache and fatigue will permit tonight...
Monday, October 10, 2011
Newspaper Archive Goodies
Today's archive selection comes from the 26 July 1912 issue of The Reading Eagle, page 9:
80-YEAR-OLD MAN WON BY DELECTABLE PIES
Married Widow of 46 Because She Is Good CookNew York, July 26. - Andrew Cole, lumber dealer, 47 Fifty-seventh street, who has passed four score years, was married to Mrs. Anna Schultz, a widow, 46 years old, who has been his housekeeper for two years.
Mr. Cole, who is a graduate of medicine, but does not practice, says the widow won his heart through her good cooking. Her bread was like that his mother used to make, and she made excellent pies and could roast beef or chicken to a turn.
"My father lived to be 90 and my grandfather was 100 when he died and I am in the best of health," said the wealthy octogenarian.
"In order to live long a person should not drink intoxicating liquors, should smoke but two cigars a day, if he must smoke, eat little meat, but plenty of cereals and vegetables."
9 October 2011
I didn't sleep so well last night. Aside from some apparent concerns that required me to depart the comfort of my bed every now and then, I was awakened yet again around 5:30 AM... by the fire alarm. What fun. So I tossed on some clothing quickly, grabbed my wallet, keys, and phone, and stumbled outside with everyone else (I was far from the last one out). We had to wait out there for a while until the fire department arrived and went inside to investigate. I overheard that there might have been a bit of a snafu with the boiler. That's hardly new. The boiler went absolutely berserk last year. But this time the issue was fairly minor, I guess. At least, that's what I surmise. Eventually I got back inside and returned to bed. Now, I heard my alarm go off. Sort of. I really did. However, my body refused to do anything so drastic as, well, get up. I wanted to. Honestly, I did. But after that night, it just didn't happen. At least not until around 1:20 PM...
After that, I got a very relaxing shower, daydreaming all the while, and a much-needed shave. Then it was time to begin the lengthy process of getting my laundry accomplished, which ultimately took the bulk of the day. After I put the first load in, I went and got my daily meal from Subway. Since they're doing the any-regular-footlong-sub-for-$5 deal this month ("Anytober"), I decided to go with a steak sub on an Italian herbs and cheese loaf, with pepperjack cheese, marinara, hot sauce, grated parmesan cheese, and oregano. It was utterly delightful. Heh, the hot sauce gave it more of a kick than I'd figured.
Anyway, during the day I helped a few close friends through some issues, and I was also highly distracted by Ancestry.com's decision to make World War I draft registration cards the new free collection for the day. I've lost track of how many I downloaded for my family today. Then I went back to the family of one of my best friends and downloaded draft registration cards and 1920 census records, and sent all of those over to her, along with descriptions of what's on each. She was delighted, I think. Believe it or not, that all took the bulk of the day. I have not gotten a single thing done with respect to, well, these annoying 'classes' I'm supposedly in. So before I go to sleep, I am putting my foot down and compelling myself to do at least the meagrest token gesture of studenthood. Gah...
First, however, I'm catching up on some of the blogs I subscribe to, a few of which include regular political columns. I'm particularly interested in reading their appraisals of this whole ridiculous 'Occupy Wall Street' fiasco (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, here; and then this is older and not directly related but still pertinent). Oh, and thanks to Dr. Edward Feser, I went and downloaded Thomas Harper's 1866 Peace Through the Truth: Or, Essays on Subject's Connected with Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon, and then I went on to download a series of other 1866 responses to Pusey's Eirenicon. It took a while before I actually found a copy of E. B. Pusey's 1865 Eirenicon itself. That should make a good few weeks of reading someday in the future.
Now, to read a few more blogs, then work through Hebrews 6-7, and then finally get to bed like I should've done long ago...
After that, I got a very relaxing shower, daydreaming all the while, and a much-needed shave. Then it was time to begin the lengthy process of getting my laundry accomplished, which ultimately took the bulk of the day. After I put the first load in, I went and got my daily meal from Subway. Since they're doing the any-regular-footlong-sub-for-$5 deal this month ("Anytober"), I decided to go with a steak sub on an Italian herbs and cheese loaf, with pepperjack cheese, marinara, hot sauce, grated parmesan cheese, and oregano. It was utterly delightful. Heh, the hot sauce gave it more of a kick than I'd figured.
Anyway, during the day I helped a few close friends through some issues, and I was also highly distracted by Ancestry.com's decision to make World War I draft registration cards the new free collection for the day. I've lost track of how many I downloaded for my family today. Then I went back to the family of one of my best friends and downloaded draft registration cards and 1920 census records, and sent all of those over to her, along with descriptions of what's on each. She was delighted, I think. Believe it or not, that all took the bulk of the day. I have not gotten a single thing done with respect to, well, these annoying 'classes' I'm supposedly in. So before I go to sleep, I am putting my foot down and compelling myself to do at least the meagrest token gesture of studenthood. Gah...
First, however, I'm catching up on some of the blogs I subscribe to, a few of which include regular political columns. I'm particularly interested in reading their appraisals of this whole ridiculous 'Occupy Wall Street' fiasco (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, here; and then this is older and not directly related but still pertinent). Oh, and thanks to Dr. Edward Feser, I went and downloaded Thomas Harper's 1866 Peace Through the Truth: Or, Essays on Subject's Connected with Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon, and then I went on to download a series of other 1866 responses to Pusey's Eirenicon. It took a while before I actually found a copy of E. B. Pusey's 1865 Eirenicon itself. That should make a good few weeks of reading someday in the future.
Now, to read a few more blogs, then work through Hebrews 6-7, and then finally get to bed like I should've done long ago...
Saturday, October 8, 2011
8 October 2011 and the Roots
Having stayed up late last night having a 5.5-hour Skype conversation with someone, I woke up early this afternoon. What I did then is somewhat of a mystery to me now. Actually, the general course of my day somewhat baffles me. I got very little done, I know that. Listened to some music, then some podcasts. Got a superb sub from Subway. My favorite: a footlong buffalo chicken sub on flatbread with pepperjack cheese, chipotle southwest sauce, extra hot sauce, grated parmesan cheese, and oregano. Magnifico! I also remember that this evening, I found myself doing still more genealogical work. In terms of firmly documented things, I didn't make much progress, but I do think I made some probable advances.
I'm not totally, 100% certain that the individuals in some records are to be identified with the individuals in others, but I'm prepared to consider it quite likely and give my best interpretation of the data so far. We begin with my probable great-great-great-great-grandparents. There was a Pennsylvanian man named Daniel Root, who according to his tombstone in West Cocalico Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was born 10 December 1818 and died 17 June 1888 at the age of 67. He had a wife named Maria (or "Polly") Root whose maiden name was Mumma. The same cemetery holds her tombstone, though it's entirely in German. It lists one "Maria, ehefrau von Daniel Root, geborne Mumma", born 16 September 1816 and died 12 August 1872 at the age of 55. According to the information I found at another website, they had at least four sons: John M. Root (b. 11 March 1842; d. 27 July 1896); Jacob M. Root (b. 6 February 1845; d. 20 January 1921); Henry M. Root (b. 4 September 1848; d. 6 September 1895); and Daniel M. Root (b. 2 May 1855; d. 12 October 1919).
Anyway, the 1870 census for West Cocalico Township shows one Daniel Root, an illiterate 51-year-old stone mason, living with a 55-year-old woman named "Polley Root" and a 9-year-old girl named "Elizabeth Root". It's a shame the 1870 census doesn't specify clearly the relationships between household members, but it seems plausible that this is the family whose graves were mentioned above. The same census shows, elsewhere in the same township, the family of a 76-year-old farmer named Samuel Burkholder. Aside from his obvious relatives, living with him is a 22-year-old domestic servant named Henry Root, possibly the son of Daniel Root.
Now, of course, according to the tombstones mentioned above, Maria/Polly Root died in 1872. Thus, in the 1880 census for West Cocalico Township, there exists a household headed by a 61-year-old stone mason named Daniel Root, but now he has a new wife: Kate Root, age 44. There is also a 10-year-old daughter named Louisa Root. Elsewhere in the same township, I find a household headed by 31-year-old Henry Root, whom I presume to be both the former servant of the Burkholders and the son of Daniel Root. This Henry Root is a stone cutter, and he lives with his wife Susanna, 29; his son Daniel, 6; his daughter Katie, 4; and his son Henry, 1.
According to a tombstone from one of the local cemeteries, Henry M. Root was born 4 September 1848 and died 6 September 1895 at the early age of 47. It is thus no surprise that he does not appear in the 1900 census. The 1900 census for East Earl Township, also in Lancaster County, does however show a household lead by illiterate 51-year-old widow Susan G. Root. The 1900 census states that she was born December 1848 in Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania-born parents, and that she has had five children, all of whom were then yet living. Three of those children are living with her. The oldest is Katie C. Root, 24, born July 1875. This is plausibly the same Katie Root mentioned in the 1880 census. The older children are younger: Mamie C. Root, 18, born October 1881; and Lizzie C. Root, 13, born August 1886. They, of course, could not have appeared in the 1880 census.
The 1900 census for Leacock Township, yet again in Lancaster County, also shows a 26-year-old farm laborer named Daniel C. Root, born April 1874 - again a reasonably suitable match for the Daniel Root who in 1880 was the 6-year-old son of Henry M. Root, himself plausibly the son of yet another Daniel Root. This younger Daniel Root has been married for four years to "Elizabeth C. Root", a 22-year-old woman born in July 1877. Both of her children are living with them: Robert V. Root, 3, born October 1896; and Henry C. Root, born April 1900 and so just one month old at the time of the census.
By 1910, the family seems to have relocated considerably for some reason, because they appear in the census for Mansfield, Burlington County, New Jersey. There, the census lists Daniel C. Root, 34; his wife "Catherin E. Root", 31; his son Robert V. Root, 13; his son Henry M. Root, 9; and his daughter Margie H. Root, 4. All of the above are said to have been born in Pennsylvania, as were their parents.
Now, according to a tombstone in a local Lancaster County cemetery, a Daniel C. Root was born 26 April 1874 and died 6 September 1915, at least according to the transcription I found in Withers Monuments. This is corroborated by the records of local funeral director H. M. Mellinger, which mention the burial of a Daniel Root on 9 September 1915. I can't help but wonder why Daniel C. Root died in his forties - as did his father before him. Whatever the case, though living in New Jersey in 1910, he was buried in Denver, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1915.
The family must have relocated back there around that time. In September 1918, Daniel's son Henry M. Root, now 18 years old, gave "#5 Lanc[aster Avenue]" in Denver as his address in his World War I draft registration card. His nearest living relative is his mother, Catherine Elizabeth Root, of Denver. Henry also gives his precise birthdate as 21 April 1900. According to the draft registration card, he's a man of medium build and medium height with brown hair and gray eyes, which matches fairly well with the pictures I have of him, including some pictures from his youth - perhaps even before he ever filled out this form. He worked as a laborer at E. W. Woolman, which was a milk pasteurizing plant in Philadelphia.
On 8 March 1925, a newspaper from neighboring Berks County made mention of a marriage license being given to "Harry M. Root, boxmaker, son of Catharine and the late Daniel C. Root, of Denver, and Catharine P. Stick, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Adam Stick, of Intervilla". Less than a year after that, Henry's grandmother Susan passed away. Her tombstone states that she was born 24 December 1850 and died 20 February 1926 at the age of 75.
The 1930 census for West Lawn, Berks County, Pennsylvania, shows that Henry M. Root by then had moved there to 104 Perkasie Avenue. He is listed as a 29-year-old carpenter who married at the age of 24. His wife, Catherine P. Root, is 25 and married when she was 20. They live with two children: Marion L. Root, 4 years and 7 months old; and Joyce M. Root, 2 months old.
But in 1943, the paper reports the addition of a third daughter "born to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Root, of 466 Penn Ave., Sinking Spring"; the brief birth notice mentions that "Mrs. Root was formerly Catherine Stick". Needless to say, this daughter is much younger than the others! Indeed, less than seven years after her birth, the second daughter is preparing to get married. A June 1950 newspaper article reports on the "surprise pre-nuptial shower" that was "held in honor of Joyce Mae Root". The list of attendees includes not only Joyce Root, but also "Mrs. Henry Root", "Margaret Root" (the youngest daughter), and a few other members of the family, including Henry Root's sister-in-law "Mrs. Margaret Seidel". No mention is made of the oldest daughter.
Then in March 1952, Henry's mother finally dies; the obituary appearing on 18 March 1852 reports that "Catherine Elizabeth (Mowrey), 74, widow of Daniel C. Root, died yesterday", and that she was "a daughter of the late Robert and Mary (Kilhefner) Mowrey". She was survived by her brothers Horatio Mowrey and Jacob Mowrey, as well as by three children: "Henry, of Sinking Spring; James, of Lancaster; and Mamie, with whom she resided".
A 1954 newspaper mentions the youngest daughter as a "daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Root, 44 Penn Ave., Sinking Spring"; the article concerns her trip to Florida. A 1966 newspaper goes on to report on the same daughter's marriage, describing the bride as a "daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry M. Root, 2234 Penn Ave., West Lawn".
Finally, a newspaper from 3 September 1977 includes the obituary of "Henry M. Root, 77", who was born "in Intercourse, Lancaster County", and was "a son of the late Daniel and Elizabeth (Mowery) Root". He is mentioned as a member of St. John's Lutheran Church in Sinking Spring, Berks County, and a former carpenter who retired in 1969. Surviving yet are his brother James, his widow "Catherine P. (Stick) Root", and "three daughters: Marian L., wife of Richard Rhodes, Rothsville; Joyce M., wife of Ralph Daubert, Laureldale; and Margaret E., wife of Robert Schade, Fairfield, Ohio". The little pamphlet distributed at his funeral lists "Henry M. Root" as born "April 21, 1900" and deceased "August 31, 1977", which coheres with the similar data provided by the Social Security Death Index. Several years later, an 1981 newspaper features the obituary of "Catherine P. Root, 76, of 605 Emerson Ave., Laureldale, widow of Henry M. Root", who was born in Womelsdorf, Berks County, as "a daughter of Adam and Mary (Mountz) Stick". The three children mentioned in her husband's obituary are mentioned again here as still surviving, and mention is also made of Henry M. Root's death on "Aug. 31, 1977". The pamphlet distributed at her funeral, naming her as "Catherine P. Root nee Stick", gives her birthdate as "August 24, 1904" and her death date as "August 14, 1981" - also a match for her entry in the Social Security Death Index. Their joint tombstone features the same general data, but only lists "Henry M. [Root]" as living "1900 - 1977" and "Catherine P. [Root nee] Stick" as living "1904 - 1981".
Henry Root's brother "James F. Root" died in 1989; his obituary has him born in "Wilmington, Del.", as "a son of the late Daniel and Elizabeth Mowrey Root". In 1999, an obituary appears for "Joyce M. Daubert, 69", who was born in "Spring Township" as "a daughter of the late Henry M. and Catherine P. (Stick) Root". Then in 2004, an obituary appears for "Marian L. Rhodes, 78", who was born in "West Lawn" as "the daughter of the late Henry M. and Kathryn P. Stick Root".
That, essentially, is the gist of the documents I've collected pertaining to my Root ancestry; the final obituary was that of my grandmother. I'll have to give a more detailed elaboration of the Mowrey ancestry at some point. Now, given the wealth of documents, Henry M. Root isn't terribly much of a mystery. Neither is his mother. The same is not quite so true of Henry's father Daniel C. Root. Not having ever found an obituary for Daniel, I don't technically know what his parents' names were. And so it is only circumstantial evidence that leads me to identify my great-great-grandfather Daniel C. Root with the child Daniel Root in the 1880 census. That is an unfortunate small leap I must make. I mean, sure, it seems quite reasonable to me. The name matches, and it's hardly an extremely common name. The age matches perfectly. He lives in the same general area. Recall: my great-great-grandfather (Daniel C. Root, born April 1874) definitely lived in Leacock Township in 1900, while it is suggested that he is to be identified with a Daniel Root (b. c. 1874) living in West Cocalico Township in 1880. The two locations are roughly 14 miles apart. In addition, note that the siblings of this Daniel Root also bear the same middle initial. I have found the suggestion that Daniel's mother Susan's maiden name was Conrad, which would be a likely candidate for the "C" - thus, Daniel Conrad Root.
So possibly, I've traced my Root lineage back six generations before myself, to the elder Daniel Root (1818-1888). I still need to locate a number of obituaries for members of this family. Furthermore, I haven't yet found any of these people in the 1850 or 1860 census records, which is perhaps a bit peculiar. What's more, I now seem to have several surnames to research: Root, Conrad, Mumma. I haven't identified any solid connections with other bearers of that surname from my area... but from the ones who are listed in the 1903 book Biographical Annals of Lancaster County, it seems that the Conrad family may have had a German Reformed background, whereas the Mumma family may have been Mennonite. On the other hand, I have found a 2 April 1888 article reporting the deaths of Rev. Clayton Mumma and his brother-in-law Rev. John Conrad, both affiliated with the "Ancient church of God" that appears to have been on River Street in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania. (The pair were struck by a train... which tends to happen if you walk on railroad tracks and manage to not hear the whistle of warning, I suppose.) Rev. John Conrad, interestingly, was from Schoeneck, which is in West Cocalico Township; his age at death leads me to estimate that he was born around 1842; theoretically, he could have been Susan Root nee Conrad's older brother or cousin. But I have no evidence of that whatsoever at this point, only speculation.
Anyway, I'll conclude this post with one of those early-twentieth-century pictures I have of the younger Henry M. Root:
Friday, October 7, 2011
Ah, Dreams
I love the fantastically outrageous and nonsensical dreams that I get during midday naps. In this past one, so far as I can recall, it started out with a genealogical investigation into the past of a war buddy (why did I have one of those at all?) which determined that as a newborn he was black (son of an African-American father and Euro-American mother), but was adopted by a pair of racists who gave the infant cosmetic surgery to make him white, and so he never knew about his real heritage until now. What the heck is up with that? (I think this bit ended with him either inheriting something, winning a prize, or returning home, and I'm pretty sure he was depressed, but I really hope it wasn't because of the race thing. That's just wrong, subconscious.) In the next scenario - one I have no idea how to connect with this first, if that even matters - I believe I must have been involved in some weird time travel experiment, because I'm pretty sure I was dating my great-great-great-grandmother Catherine Nagle... who for some reason in the dream was British? And I took her with me to a party hosted by my extremely dear friend, the Queen of England. It was... a golf party? I don't quite understand that. So I formally introduced the two of them (while the Queen was on a throne... by the sink... with a grand spiral staircase on the other side of the sink? why?), and Catherine was somewhat overawed to meet the Queen. The Queen remarked about how that's normal for other people, to which I responded in a faux-English accent, "Only if they're citizens of the Empire", to which the Queen laughed hysterically. (Apparently dream-queens have low standards for humor.) About that time the Queen's daughter (or daughter-in-law; this was fuzzy even in the dream) appeared and remarked (also in a delightful English accent) that her grandfather was a Rhode, and had had very large testicles. Evidently at this point my dream failed to remember the precise intricacies of my family tree, because the young woman with me suddenly proclaimed, "Hey, our Rhodeses have big balls too!" The Queen was taken aback by the vulgarity (though ultimately charmed by the woman's frankness), and I whispered to [Catherine?] that although I was thinking the same thing, she ought to know better than to use such language in the presence of the Queen.
Around there is where I woke up. Obviously I can detect the influence of my genealogical obsession, and the unfortunate impact of a ridiculously stupid song I heard at karaoke last night, but the rest just seems like... brain potpourri. Weirdest dreams during naps...
Around there is where I woke up. Obviously I can detect the influence of my genealogical obsession, and the unfortunate impact of a ridiculously stupid song I heard at karaoke last night, but the rest just seems like... brain potpourri. Weirdest dreams during naps...
Charles Wesley on Psalm 36:7-9
The following two stanzas by Charles Wesley beautifully capture Psalm 36:7-9.
Thy love sustains the world it made;
Thy love preserves both man and beast;
Beneath thy wing's almighty shade
The sons of men securely rest;
And those who haunt the hallow'd place
Shall banquet on thy richest grace.
Their souls shall drink the crystal stream
Which ever issues from thy throne:
Fountain of joy and bliss supreme,
Eternal life and thou are one;
To us, to all, so freely given,
The light of life, the heaven of heaven!
Charles Wesley on Psalm 29
Found a few great stanzas from Charles Wesley's poetical rendering of Psalm 29, which is among my favorite psalms:
The glorious God majestic speaks;
From the dark cloud his terror breaks,
And waving sheets of lightning shine.
The impetuous hurricane of sound
Rives the strong oaks, and shakes the ground:
For thunder is the Voice Divine.
Jehovah's voice the cedar rends,
And all the pride of Lebanon bends,
And strips and tears the scatter'd trees;
The hinds affrighted calve, and die,
While mix'd with flames the thunders fly,
And rock the howling wilderness.
Creation hears his voice, and quakes;
Sea, earth, and hell, and heaven he shakes,
Firm on his everlasting throne!
But all who in his temple praise,
And love and thank him for his grace,
Shall never, never be cast down.
Charles Wesley on Psalm 19:1
Lately I've gotten my hands on a digital copy of Charles Wesley's rendering of the Psalms into English poetry, so expect to see a lot of bits of that here. Today I want to share his gorgeous paraphrase of Psalm 19:1.
Our souls the book of nature draws
To adore the First Eternal Cause:
The heavens articulately shine,
And speak their Architect Divine;
And all their orbs proclaim aloud
The wisdom and the power of God.
Snethen on Freedom in Christ
Nicholas Snethen was an early Methodist preacher, and served as Francis Asbury's personal secretary. The following quotes are from an 1828 sermon by Snethen on Galatians 5:1.
Jesus Christ does not free us from himself. Our religious dependance is all transferred to himself. When we receive him as our Saviour, he frees us from all other saviours....
The christian's motto is Christ and liberty. But great and glorious as is this external liberty, the liberty wherewith Christ makes the heart free, is still more glorious. He sets the soul at liberty, by his victorious love, from the yoke and bondage of sin, and guilt, and fear. The pardon of sin, justification by faith, the spirit of adoption, bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God, are parts of Christian liberty. Christ makes us free to love, free to rejoice, free to believe, and free to hope. He sets our feet in a large place, to run in the way of his commandments. Where Christ is, there is the spirit of God, and where the spirit of God is, there is liberty....
To the inconstant, fickle tribe of converts, now become so numerous, do we not well to cry out, stand fast, be not again entangled. But to those who are entangled with the grievous yoke of bondage, the guilty and tormenting fear of the wrath to come, who grieve and mourn over the plague of their own hearts, who labor and are heavy laden with sin, we cry, "behold the Lamb!" - "Come to the living waters, come." Take the yoke of Christ upon you, and learn of him. Is it for liberty you pant? - Christ will open the prison doors, and set at liberty those who are bound. He will preach unto you the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of jubilee of our God.
6-7 October 2011
Yesterday morning's test went quite smoothly. I finished in under fifteen minutes, and it only took so long because I wanted to double- and triple-check my answers. There were a few I wasn't wholly sure of, but I think that even if I were to get all of those wrong, I'd still be happy with the resulting grade. Returning to my room, I wanted to catch up on some sleep... but the construction workers using jackhammers right outside my room somewhat thwarted that plan. Eventually I did catch a bit of rest during one of their breaks.
Most of yesterday is a bit of a blur now. I did receive news that my family back home will be moving. We saw an appealing double-wide trailer on the market and decided to go for it, using some money from a retirement fund. I did the calculations, and between now and the time that we'd otherwise be able to access the money in question, the most cost-effective course of action is to move into the trailer (despite the $28,000 price tag) and from here on out pay a much lower rent for the lot than we have been paying for our house. It's strange, though, because this means that the last time I left home, I was really bidding that house goodbye for good. By the time I return for Christmas break, I'll have an entirely different situation, a new and unfamiliar home. And that just feels somewhat odd. But, hey, it'll also be the first time in my life that I've had a fireplace, so that should be cool.
Last night, after watching the latest episode of Community with some of the other guys in the second-floor dorm lounge (as is one of our regular Thursday evening traditions), I started to work on a paper for my Friday morning class. In the midst of it, I decided to go out to Applebee's with the crew and get some boneless wings and beer. Not quite as much as I had last week (apparently by the time I returned, I was admiring the texture of the walls...). So then after a good evening of listening to a few of my friends do karaoke (and I may give it a shot next week), I returned and spent a while finishing up that paper. I think I got it done around 2:00 AM. Shortly after that was the point when I realized that there was no such assignment, and I had just somehow made it up. Ah, pointlessness!
This morning, went to class and sat through the professor's admittedly engaging (if at times polarizing and imbalanced) advice for crafting speeches. I've got one to deliver on the 21st, and after talking with my group, I'm feeling a bit more confident about it. The ideas are beginning to slowly come together in my head. I suppose the primary source of my nervousness is that, despite the bare handful of sermons I've delivered and the theatrical performances I've done in both Europe and North America, I think I have considerably less experience with public speaking than most of my classmates. So we'll see how this goes! Fortunately, the professor has assured us that he'll mostly be grading us on our content, and I'm pretty sure that if I apply myself, I can handle that.
Now after lunch with some of my friends, I've gotten a couple chapters read in Frederick Norwood's The Story of American Methodism, and I've spent a while downloading some old Methodist books from one of my favorite websites, the Internet Archive. Whenever I see an older book mentioned in the footnotes of my textbook, I go see if it's available to download. That done, I believe after a couple posted quotes here, it'll be time for an afternoon nap.
Most of yesterday is a bit of a blur now. I did receive news that my family back home will be moving. We saw an appealing double-wide trailer on the market and decided to go for it, using some money from a retirement fund. I did the calculations, and between now and the time that we'd otherwise be able to access the money in question, the most cost-effective course of action is to move into the trailer (despite the $28,000 price tag) and from here on out pay a much lower rent for the lot than we have been paying for our house. It's strange, though, because this means that the last time I left home, I was really bidding that house goodbye for good. By the time I return for Christmas break, I'll have an entirely different situation, a new and unfamiliar home. And that just feels somewhat odd. But, hey, it'll also be the first time in my life that I've had a fireplace, so that should be cool.
Last night, after watching the latest episode of Community with some of the other guys in the second-floor dorm lounge (as is one of our regular Thursday evening traditions), I started to work on a paper for my Friday morning class. In the midst of it, I decided to go out to Applebee's with the crew and get some boneless wings and beer. Not quite as much as I had last week (apparently by the time I returned, I was admiring the texture of the walls...). So then after a good evening of listening to a few of my friends do karaoke (and I may give it a shot next week), I returned and spent a while finishing up that paper. I think I got it done around 2:00 AM. Shortly after that was the point when I realized that there was no such assignment, and I had just somehow made it up. Ah, pointlessness!
This morning, went to class and sat through the professor's admittedly engaging (if at times polarizing and imbalanced) advice for crafting speeches. I've got one to deliver on the 21st, and after talking with my group, I'm feeling a bit more confident about it. The ideas are beginning to slowly come together in my head. I suppose the primary source of my nervousness is that, despite the bare handful of sermons I've delivered and the theatrical performances I've done in both Europe and North America, I think I have considerably less experience with public speaking than most of my classmates. So we'll see how this goes! Fortunately, the professor has assured us that he'll mostly be grading us on our content, and I'm pretty sure that if I apply myself, I can handle that.
Now after lunch with some of my friends, I've gotten a couple chapters read in Frederick Norwood's The Story of American Methodism, and I've spent a while downloading some old Methodist books from one of my favorite websites, the Internet Archive. Whenever I see an older book mentioned in the footnotes of my textbook, I go see if it's available to download. That done, I believe after a couple posted quotes here, it'll be time for an afternoon nap.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
5 October 2011
Alright, time for another update from me. Last night was certainly interesting. By far the most frustrating element of the night for me was the difficulty we had finding each other. My GPS apparently has a very inaccurate sense of how addresses are numbered around there. So I kept putting in the address of my destination, or a place near my destination, and it would take me to... trees. Just the middle of nowhere! (Not that I can usually find places once I arrive in the area... I suck at that.) So I pulled into a shopping center and waited for a while to see if my date would call me, since I'd forgotten to copy her number into my phone. I finally did realize that, because of a text she had sent me previously, I did have her number, so I called her and let her know where I was. It took her ages to actually find the area, and that only because I eventually let her know about the restaurant next door to the shopping center. Of course, after she pulled in, neither of us knew where the other was. I even walked around the parking lot and literally spent a while standing behind her truck staring at it, but she didn't take notice, figured I wasn't really around there, and eventually pulled out. When I confirmed via text that it had been her, she returned. It was about 1.5 hours after we'd intended to meet. Oy, what an evening! We both had quite the set of irksome misadventures. Over the rest of the details of the evening I must pass over in silence, but I can say that I look forward to the opportunity to see her again.
So, moving on to today! Not having gotten much sleep, and falling considerably behind on work (or, at least, that's how it feels to me; in reality I may be just on par with everyone else, which feels behind for me), I had difficulty with my morning class. (Doesn't help that the lectures proceed at such a slow pace and meander so much that I literally feel uncomfortable as a result and anxious to move on to the next part.) During the small group time, I did briefly exert some influence to make sure we were all up to speed on one aspect of our group project, and I directed us to a few specific questions in the workbook to keep discussion moving along. So I figure I did my part enough there to compensate for my relative lack of attention in class (or for the fact that I did the past week's worth of workbook answers during the first few minutes of the class!)
After class, a brief nap until noon; I really needed to recuperate. It was disturbed somewhat by my neighbor, who popped into my room to leave a note informing me that he'd mopped our bathroom floor. Then came lunch - not as good as usual, but enough to keep me going - and then my subsequent class. I'd be lying if I said that my attention during class were primarily on, well, class. I cannot force myself to care about literary structure that much, let alone providing reasons for construing these passages as a distinct pericope from those passages. I have yet to see a significant return on that level of structural treatment in terms of grasping the content of the text - which, alas, we spent relatively little time on, and that only after our mid-class break and not before it.
I confess, it was at the beginning of class that I discovered that Ancestry.com's free-access collection of the day is the 1920 United States Census. And that is one that I actually find truly useful, unlike the ones they've freed up over the past few days. So during class, in addition to taking sufficient notes on the class discussion (hey, I still do make at least a halfhearted effort, even when I'd rather not), I went through the appendix to my Ahnentafel and found all the 1920 census pages that I'd cited without having the original document image at hand for the full details, and I searched for and downloaded all of those. That took a while, and then I went on a little hunt for a few ancestors whom I hadn't found in the 1920 census. I've been searching for Jacob Mountz, who died in 1926 in Sinking Spring, Berks County, Pennsylvania, and who in 1910 lived in Womelsdorf, Berks County, Pennsylvania. No luck. Can't find him anywhere. Rats!
By the end of class, I was so exhausted and drained that I could barely stay awake. I spent the last few minutes using some notes in my notebook to study for a test I have in another class tomorrow morning. Immediately after class, I returned to my room and went to sleep. Woke up again at 5:30 PM. Apparently my sleep was deep enough, because I have vague recollections of a dream. A dream in which I was doing genealogical research, and ended up getting into a discussion with an elderly Mormon woman. Apparently neither of my research interests (genealogy and Mormonism) is willing to leave me alone while I sleep...
Got up and went to supper. Most of my friends had to leave right after I got there, so I just ate with my neighbor and asked him some questions about his grandparents and great-grandparents. Got some very long stories in return. Never knew he was a quarter Swedish, great-grandson of a pair of Swedish immigrants. We walked back to the dorm together as he regaled me with a story about a massive chicken roast on his uncle's farm when he was a kid. Then on Google Earth, I looked up his hometown and got a variety of stories, including about his Yugoslavian next-door neighbors (who apparently are quite comfortable with urination on lawns) and about the adjacent Methodist church that was sold to a New Age group for a while before they (the New Agers) packed up and left and an Apostolic Holiness church moved in. (When they found out about all the seances and pagan worship that had occurred there under the previous tenants, the pastor's face apparently went white, and they promptly performed plenty of exorcisms, blessings, and a prayer walk.) During the New Age phase, apparently some days a group of middle-aged women would set up lawnchairs in the church backyard (adjacent to my friend's backyard), get nude, and hold ceremonies while 'moonclad'. Sounds like an eventful neighborhood!
After my neighbor introduced me to some streaming comedy radio on iTunes, he departed and I resumed some genealogical projects. I've been reading through the entire 1920 census of certain relevant towns and finding some potentially useful pages here and there (though mostly not so much). Right now I'm working on the extensive census records for my hometown. I've also been on Skype with a number of friends this evening.
I suppose that about catches things up! Before bed, I should definitely make certain to review the PowerPoint slides from the lectures for my Tuesday-and-Thursday class. Must be prepared for tomorrow's test! (Though, given the format, it shouldn't be too much of a challenge... I hope.)
So, moving on to today! Not having gotten much sleep, and falling considerably behind on work (or, at least, that's how it feels to me; in reality I may be just on par with everyone else, which feels behind for me), I had difficulty with my morning class. (Doesn't help that the lectures proceed at such a slow pace and meander so much that I literally feel uncomfortable as a result and anxious to move on to the next part.) During the small group time, I did briefly exert some influence to make sure we were all up to speed on one aspect of our group project, and I directed us to a few specific questions in the workbook to keep discussion moving along. So I figure I did my part enough there to compensate for my relative lack of attention in class (or for the fact that I did the past week's worth of workbook answers during the first few minutes of the class!)
After class, a brief nap until noon; I really needed to recuperate. It was disturbed somewhat by my neighbor, who popped into my room to leave a note informing me that he'd mopped our bathroom floor. Then came lunch - not as good as usual, but enough to keep me going - and then my subsequent class. I'd be lying if I said that my attention during class were primarily on, well, class. I cannot force myself to care about literary structure that much, let alone providing reasons for construing these passages as a distinct pericope from those passages. I have yet to see a significant return on that level of structural treatment in terms of grasping the content of the text - which, alas, we spent relatively little time on, and that only after our mid-class break and not before it.
I confess, it was at the beginning of class that I discovered that Ancestry.com's free-access collection of the day is the 1920 United States Census. And that is one that I actually find truly useful, unlike the ones they've freed up over the past few days. So during class, in addition to taking sufficient notes on the class discussion (hey, I still do make at least a halfhearted effort, even when I'd rather not), I went through the appendix to my Ahnentafel and found all the 1920 census pages that I'd cited without having the original document image at hand for the full details, and I searched for and downloaded all of those. That took a while, and then I went on a little hunt for a few ancestors whom I hadn't found in the 1920 census. I've been searching for Jacob Mountz, who died in 1926 in Sinking Spring, Berks County, Pennsylvania, and who in 1910 lived in Womelsdorf, Berks County, Pennsylvania. No luck. Can't find him anywhere. Rats!
By the end of class, I was so exhausted and drained that I could barely stay awake. I spent the last few minutes using some notes in my notebook to study for a test I have in another class tomorrow morning. Immediately after class, I returned to my room and went to sleep. Woke up again at 5:30 PM. Apparently my sleep was deep enough, because I have vague recollections of a dream. A dream in which I was doing genealogical research, and ended up getting into a discussion with an elderly Mormon woman. Apparently neither of my research interests (genealogy and Mormonism) is willing to leave me alone while I sleep...
Got up and went to supper. Most of my friends had to leave right after I got there, so I just ate with my neighbor and asked him some questions about his grandparents and great-grandparents. Got some very long stories in return. Never knew he was a quarter Swedish, great-grandson of a pair of Swedish immigrants. We walked back to the dorm together as he regaled me with a story about a massive chicken roast on his uncle's farm when he was a kid. Then on Google Earth, I looked up his hometown and got a variety of stories, including about his Yugoslavian next-door neighbors (who apparently are quite comfortable with urination on lawns) and about the adjacent Methodist church that was sold to a New Age group for a while before they (the New Agers) packed up and left and an Apostolic Holiness church moved in. (When they found out about all the seances and pagan worship that had occurred there under the previous tenants, the pastor's face apparently went white, and they promptly performed plenty of exorcisms, blessings, and a prayer walk.) During the New Age phase, apparently some days a group of middle-aged women would set up lawnchairs in the church backyard (adjacent to my friend's backyard), get nude, and hold ceremonies while 'moonclad'. Sounds like an eventful neighborhood!
After my neighbor introduced me to some streaming comedy radio on iTunes, he departed and I resumed some genealogical projects. I've been reading through the entire 1920 census of certain relevant towns and finding some potentially useful pages here and there (though mostly not so much). Right now I'm working on the extensive census records for my hometown. I've also been on Skype with a number of friends this evening.
I suppose that about catches things up! Before bed, I should definitely make certain to review the PowerPoint slides from the lectures for my Tuesday-and-Thursday class. Must be prepared for tomorrow's test! (Though, given the format, it shouldn't be too much of a challenge... I hope.)
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