A Bluestocking Knits

Thursdays are for Genealogy

Sometimes the things you find in your family story just tear at your heart.  My ggg-grandmother is one of those mysteries you sometimes have -- the family today remembered nothing about her, but I later found her as "E.E. Mallory" born around 1824 in Virginia, though she lived most of her life, as far as I can tell, in Missouri.  Her name was in fact Elizabeth, I discovered on the marriage record to my ggg-grandfather Jesse Mallory in December 1855.  She was listed as "Miss Elizebeth E. Dobbins" but upon further research I found that this was the surname of her first husband, who was a Dr. O.N. Dobbins of Andrew Co., Missouri.  Elizabeth had married Dr. Dobbins around 1840, and had four children by the time of the 1850 census -- Ada, Oscar G., Cornelia E., and Delasco Benjamin.  Now, with names like these, you'd think I could find them later on, but I have traced only Cornelia with any certainty -- she married a man called George F. Martin and lived to the age of ninety in Kansas City.

Dr. Dobbins' first name is not given anywhere that I can find -- something embarrassing, perhaps, like Ozymandias, or just Oscar, like his son.  I can't find him in 1840, either, when a thirty-year-old man of some learning at least should be in the records somewhere.  He was said on the 1850 census to have been born in Ohio.  He died intestate in 1852, during a smallpox epidemic in Missouri, leaving his wife with four children under ten years old.  The image at the top is the second page in his probate file in Andrew Co., which file is almost exclusively a list of outstanding debts -- presumably to him, the writing is very poor -- and a sad little inventory of his belongings --

• six Books & 1 Lot Pamphlets [10.50]
• one Trunk, 2.00, 1 Table 2.50, 1 Clock 5.00
• 7 Chairs 4.00, 1 Horse 75.00, Saddle & Bridle 10.00
• 1 Medicine Chest Bottles & Medicine [15.00]
• 1 Stove, 15.00, 1 Gold watch 75.00
• 2 vol. Woods Practice [3.00]
• 3 forceps [3.00]

The "Woods Practice" I think is a set like this --

A Treatise on the Practice of Medicine by George B. Wood (this image is from Civil War Medical Books, which has an article about Wood and his manual, the 1858 edition having been issued by the US Army Hospital Dept. to army medical personnel).

There is no mention of Dr. Dobbins's clothing in the inventory -- I don't know if this was standard practice in the US and it was just given to the widow, or if in this case everything had been burned because of the smallpox.

Apparently the estate representative managed to collect a number of the outstanding accounts in the year following Dobbins's death, but a second list at the end of the file shows those "not collectible", with notes such as "dead" or "claims paid", or (quite a number of times) "gone to Calaforna".  ("William Hale, not known, 5.00 ... Levi Macey, worthless, 17.25")  The total outstanding is over $400, which in 1852 was astronomical -- at least $12,000 today, perhaps as much as $86,000.  I find myself wanting to think that Dr. Dobbins treated so many of these people on account because he was a generous soul ("Mrs. Tribble, 5.00 ... Mrs. Woodcock, 31.25"), but it is also quite possible that he simply didn't keep very good accounts ("Thomas Clemons, proved paid, 24.00 ... Thomas Roberts, shows receipt, 0.50"), which is almost as sad.

There is nothing -- nothing -- in the file about the children.  The unnamed "widow as dower" got $200 cash, and I hope at least the gold watch, as there is no mention of that nor the horse anywhere else in the file, even on the list of who bought the rest of the things.  (Seventy-five dollars! that's a fine watch.)

I must admit that it was a bit of a shock to read, as I was trying to decipher the handwriting, a standard we-do-solemnly-swear that the evaluators were not related or connected to anyone concerned with the estate, etc. etc. etc., "and that we will, to the best of our abilities, view and appraise the slaves and other personal estate to us produced".  But of course, Missouri was a slave state, and although I was relieved to find that Dr. Dobbins owned no slaves, I can't help but remember that Elizabeth's second husband, although he also owned no slaves, was a Confederate sympathizer, and would be killed with a neighbor in 1864, by a group of US militia men who accused the two, probably correctly, but certainly without due process, of aiding Confederate bushwhackers.

"When One is Interested in Everything, Distractions Come Easily...."

Progress on the Faire stockings.  I started these over when after a few inches I admitted to myself that my attempt to use dpns for their "historical accuracy" was more trouble than it was worth -- because although at eight inches apiece my steel 2mm set is long enough for all of these stitches, it is also long enough to poke my hands at regular intervals, get caught in my sleeves, require frequent juggling of stitches to avoid a wobbly line between needles, and just be generally cumbersome -- so I gave in and got out my 20th-century circulars. 

I consoled myself by making this button for my historical-knitting projects this year, since apparently I have a weakness for blog buttons and Girl Scout patches.  On the bright side, the circulars increased my knitting speed by as much as 75%!

I found this on my pincushion the other day -- Julia, I suspect.  A cynical child, but with much more sensitivity than she lets on.

I had a bit of a lost weekend, when I discovered last Friday afternoon that FamilySearch has the Pennsylvania probate records microfilm available online.  It took me a bit of time to figure out the indexing system, and I'm still baffled by the page numbers that run not in a single sequence but a series of them with no apparent reason or -- more importantly -- no note at the beginning of the book to tell the searcher where each sequence starts and stops.  ("So is that the first page 1501, or the fourth??")  But, yeah, I looked up and it was Sunday.  I did not, alas, break down a single brick wall, of which I have a number in Pennsylvania, but I found some interesting things.

Here is a dry-fitting of the kitchen dresser for No.16.  The top section is not glued to the bottom yet, as I haven't done the drawers.  To be honest, I think I'm just going to glue the drawer fronts in place, and not fiddle with working drawers -- I can certainly understand the appeal of working drawers, and I'm not ruling them out in future, it's just that I found myself vexingly klutzy gluing the rest of this thing together, and I would rather just have a pleasing finished piece, and I only want to put stuff on the shelves anyway!  David has been in Shanghai for three weeks, so instruction has perforce been by e-mail, which isn't terribly convenient.

I got a very generous gift card from my in-laws for Christmas, and still had enough on it last week to buy these on Ebay --

The candle-stand and fire-screen came in a single lot, minimum bid $3.99.  I was the only bidder, as it happened, but I still hate Ebay auctions.  I can understand the thrill some people get from it, but it's just not for me: my heart started pounding anxiously even as I was only logging in.  (The first auction I lost, I discovered that they send you an e-mail afterwards with the subject line "Got Away!" and the pictures of what you didn't get, like "what a loser you are!")  The Connecticut table was a "buy it now" and although at $13.99 wasn't as triumphal a bargain, it was a much less stressful purchase!

(How can the 1980s be "vintage"?  This is not possible.)

I made a pair of "portraits" -- not for anything, really, just to figure out how it works.  I found images of a husband-and-wife pair from some online auction house, reduced them to about the right size and layered a cutting circle on top to save myself some fiddling, printed, and stuck them on to these purchased charms.  Perhaps I didn't wait long enough for the glue to dry after this photo -- they seemed stuck to the metal fairly well, but although Mister's "glass" went on perfectly, the one for Mrs. slipped a little and of course the picture stuck to the adhesive on the underside, so that now there is a noticeable sliver of silver showing near her hands.  If I can find another set of the charms, I might take the trouble to do them again, as I've got rather fond of the faces -- unknown sitters, unfortunately.

The D.E. Stevenson list is reading Listening Valley, a story that begins in the early 1930s and follows Tonia, a shy girl with a sparkling older sister and indifferent parents, through the next fifteen years or so of her life.  It is not really a major part of the story, but Tonia has some undiagnosed problem with her hands, making her "butter-fingered", by which her parents are uninterestedly mystified but her sister and Nannie make generous allowance for her clumsiness.  A number of Stevenson characters in other books are seen knitting, but I suppose that this problem with her hands would mean that Tonia doesn't knit herself, but surely Nannie would make this jumper for her, because the quiet and withdrawn Tonia wouldn't have chosen zigzags down the front for herself but Nannie would think they add a little sparkle to her cheeks.  This late-thirties tuppenny Stitchcraft pattern leaflet is a scan from the British Library collection, generously available free from The Sunny Stitcher.

Talking of Yahoo lists, I joined the Petitpointers list the other day, which as you might tell from the name, is for needlepointers in smaller gauges.  The carpet above is my first from Frank Cooper's book Oriental Carpets in Miniature, which I got for a song from a used-book seller.  This is the Shirvan 1 -- even though I am reducing it a bit from Cooper's 18-gauge canvas to 22, it's still going to be easily twice the size of any miniature carpet I've done before, but the picture is really lovely, so I'm looking forward to it.  These are Paternayan wools, wh. I haven't used in an age.

I'm also taking another FutureLearn course, entitled "Literature and Mental Health".  Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne are teaming up to explore "how poems, plays and novels can help us understand and cope with deep emotional strain".  I enjoyed immensely Bate's "Shakespeare and His World" course -- he's an engaging and level-headed instructor -- and there are already lots of interesting discussions going on in the comments, plus with this first-run course the instructors are commenting and responding to comments as well, which makes it even more appealing.  There was a sort of attempt at the beginning to maintain an air of academic neutrality about the subject, but of course anyone who reads a lot will already feel, fairly strongly I suspect, that literature is a balm in times of stress or depression, so the outcome is already a foregone conclusion.  I didn't know beforehand that the professors would be talking to such luminaries as Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry, among numerous others, so that's a bonus!  I had to rush through another course, finishing six weeks' worth in less than three, in order to clear my slate for the Mental Health one, but I'm glad I did, as it is rather intense and deeply thoughtful at times, even in the first week.

 

Adlestrop

Yes. I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

-- Edward Thomas, 1917

Welsh Women Knitting

(Welsh Quilts)

Photographs of Welsh women in national dress were wildly popular in the late 19th century, partly as tourist souvenirs, and partly I think as a record of rapidly-disappearing country life.  One of the three most common occupations for the subject -- the other two being going to market and having tea -- was knitting.  I happened across one of these images this morning as I was searching for my ancestors in Breconshire, and quickly found myself utterly absorbed in the genre.

"Mrs Edwards knitting in Welsh national dress, c. 1875" (Gathering the Jewels/Casglu'r Tlysau).  Mrs. Edwards, bless her, appears to have cataracts.

(feitoamao)

It was not unusual for Welsh countrywomen to have bare forearms, so as not to get their sleeves dirty as they went about their daily work.  They would then wear separate half-sleeves for Sunday and best.

Photographed by John Thomas. (WalesOnline)  This woman, and some others I've seen, has attached the ball of yarn to her apron with a spare needle.  I can't quite tell if she has ringlets or if her goffered bonnet is dyed black for mourning.

(Victoria's Rusty Knickers [sic])  The source identifies this as a "Welsh Lady knitting a Scarf," but I think it's more likely a sock.  Curiously, I've seen a number of sources say that Welsh countrywomen knitted "socks and scarves" for sale, but all of the images I've seen are pretty obviously socks or stockings.

 

(Annie Cholewa)

 

These last three photographs also appear in a Flickr group entitled "Welsh Fashions" consisting almost entirely of late 19th-century photographs of Welsh women, a very great many of whom are knitting. Notice how many of them are wearing exactly the same betgwn, petticoat, and apron?!  Yes, apparently the clothes were provided by the photographer.  There is some debate about how widespread, even how "traditional" the so-called traditional Welsh dress really was, though most people now seem to agree that it was usually worn for Sundays and best, not everyday.

There was a resurgence of interest all over Europe, it seems, in the 19th century, in national dress, and in some places (Norway, for one) the lack of local interest in it -- because the country women would rather wear more fashionable clothing like their city cousins' -- led to varying degrees of outright invention.  That said, some of the photographs here don't look staged, and even though I know it is at least in part, I really love this one --

 

"A woman knitting in Welsh national dress, c. 1875," photographed by John Thomas (Gathering the Jewels/Casglu'r Tlysau).

Thursdays are for Genealogy

I was watching an old episode of Louis Henry Gates's PBS series "Finding Your Roots" last night, and after having been intrigued yet again by the pie charts he provides to each of his guests, thought I'd make something similar for myself.  I haven't done the DNA testing because barring unforseen circumstances (i.e., a parent not being the actual biological parent), I already know where most of my ancestors came from.  (Not all, though -- Addison A. Long, I'm talking to you!) 

Here is a fairly simple way to figure out the percentages of your heritage:

Multiply the number of foreign-born ...

... parents by 50.

... grandparents by 25.

... great-grandparents by 12.5.

... gg-grandparents by 6.25.

... ggg-grandparents by 3.125.

... gggg-grandparents by 1.5625.

... ggggg-grandparents by 0.78125.

Theoretically, you can go further back than this, simply by halving the multiplier, but obviously the percentages are going to get microscopically small very quickly. (Note again that this is not your genetic profile, but the much-more fluid cultural heritage; DNA is actually a random mix from each of your parents, and in turn a random mix from their parents, and so on, so that there is actually a 1 in 64 chance that you inherited no DNA at all from your gg-grandparent instead of the 1/16th you would expect from simple math.  It can get complicated.  Gates's charts are DNA-based percentages.)

Here is an example using my mom, whose pie chart is at the top of this post -- her family has that amazing American characteristic of immigration ranging from pre-Revolution to fairly recent.  I use only the immigrant ancestors for these calculations; obviously, the parents of a German-born ancestor will probably (but not always, of course) be German-born.  Both of my mom's parents were American-born, so I skip that step, and that of her grandparents, who were also all American-born.  Two of her great-grandparents were German-born, and one was a Scot.  Two of her gg-grandparents were German-born.  One of her ggg-grandparents was Swiss.  Five of her gggg-grandparents were German.  Two of her ggggg-grandparents were Moravian, seven were German, and three were Swiss.  (This last is one of the places where the figures are a bit misleading, partly because I'm using only immigrant ancestors to do the calculations, and partly because the term "Moravian" can refer to people from Moravia or to the religious group, or in Mom's case both.  Her ancestors who came from Moravia -- and also happened to be some of the early members of the Moravian Church -- were her 5th-great-grandparents, so their percentage in the chart below is very small, but her father was culturally almost completely Moravian (since most of his German and Swiss ancestors were also part of the church) -- so Mom's Moravian heritage is 1.5625% or as much as 50%, depending on how you look at it!)

Now I do the math ...

Then I add the like percentages together, all of the Germans, all of the Swiss, and so on.  This gives me German = 50.78125%, Scottish = 12.5% Swiss = 5.46875%, and Moravian = 1.5625%.  The "other" is probably German or Swiss,  and English.

Word has a pie-chart maker, so all I have to do is plug in the numbers and decide which color scheme I want.  The chart maker rounds up the numbers to the nearest whole, and apparently also adjusts them so that the total is 100%.

My dad's ancestry is noticeably different, as his immigrant ancestors were almost all much more recent, six out of his eight great-grandparents.  Here is his pie chart -- I list Germans and Bavarians separately because it amuses me, Bavarians being famously nationalistic --

Tuesdays are for Genealogy

A pair of knitted stockings (strumpor), dated apparently before 1876, when they were acquired by Nordiska Museet in Stockholm.  This particular pair are from Orsa parish, in what was then known as Kopparberg, now called Dalarna.  Quite a few generations of David's family were from this parish.  Very plain, serviceable stockings, with what may be a variation on the round heel, though little or no gusset, it looks like.

October is Family History Month --

Because not all Danish church-books are as beautiful as this one --

I have been making a list of words helpful to me as I transcribe records, and in honor of Family History Month, I am posting it here in case it might be useful to others.

This list began with those found at FamilySearch and Statens Arkiver, and continued with Norman Madsen's very helpful dictionary and Rudy's List of Archaic Medical Terms. My list differs in including abbreviations and phrases found in register entries.

Since my concentration is almost exclusively on Thisted amt (county), I have also included place names, with old and modern spellings, culled from various sources such as FamilySearch and the work of others.

I have split up the list into three sections, so that it is a little easier to manage. The parts of the alphabet can be found, each on a separate page, here:

A-G

H-P

R-Ø

Held og lykke -- good luck!

Thursdays are for Genealogy: "But being a Dissenter I have some scruples respecting the form of Baptism appointed"

Here is a lovely little treasure waiting for someone!  I happened across it while I was looking for something else, as so often happens, and it isn't my family, worse luck, but I post it here just because.

"Sir
I am obligd to you for the Note you sent me respecting
the Christening of my Daughter and the entry of her into
the register of the Church but being a Dissenter I have
some scruples respecting the form of Baptism appointed
in the establishment but am greatly obligd to Mr
Humphry for his kindness in send the Note
I am your Obedient Servt
Willm Cawley
Cumins May 6th 1811"

You don't often find such personal things in parish registers, really, usually being only the bare facts of birth, marriage, and burial -- and here is a letter written in his own hand, with a personal detail that you might not otherwise know at all.  And a very civil letter it is, too.

This is the register for Snitterfield in Warwickshire, from 1775-1812.  The note is pasted into what was apparently a random blank page, as it is some distance from the record of William Cawley's daughter's baptism.  Francis Homfray (most likely this one) was the curate of Snitterfield; he wrote the entries on the page below, and his distinctive script appears elsewhere in the register from around 1809 on; he signed his name at the end of some years.  Cummins or Comyns was apparently the name of a farm in Snitterfield, as there was a family there (by the name of Badger) in 1841).

Here, near the bottom of the left-hand page, in the baptisms for 1810, is "Sarah, daughter of William Cawley by Sarah his wife was baptized April 22".  What a treat, to have not only the birth record, but a note in the father's hand!

(As it turns out, Sarah Cawley was living as a servant in the household of "Lionel Howe, 25, Confectioner" in 1841, in Leamington.)