Today lots of bloggers are writing about The Girl Effect, and even though I don't usually blog during the week, I didn't want to miss the chance to write about this. I believe in this one, and if we really want to Make the World a Better Place, and get an optimal return on our development investment, this is something we should support.
Here's the idea. If we invest in keeping girls in school, they will have a chance for a better life, not only for themselves, but for their families and for their communities - and if we keep enough girls in school, it will change things for the better for whole countries and eventually for the world. A few years ago, the Nike Foundation funded the creation of the first of the Girl Effect videos, and even though there have been several others since, this one is still my favorite. If we really want to do something to improve life for people in poor countries, one of the most effective strategies - with the best return on investment - is educating girls.
For years - I don't actually remember how many - the Girl Scout troops in our neighborhood have donated money to help keep a girl in school in Cambodia. The concept is a simple one: every month the girl stays in school, her family gets $10. This small amount of money reduces some of the financial pressure on poor families and help keeps the girls in school. The first year we did it, it was the girls who decided to support this particular cause, and the girls have continued it, every year since.
It was in the New York Times today, that because of the pressure on the Federal budget, foreign aid is taking a big hit. Times are tough, and we do need to focus our investments in the areas where they are most effective.
One of those areas is supporting the education of girls.
And the Girl Scouts can't do it alone.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
High Stakes Testing
I remember taking those tests in high school. They weren't given at my high school, so my mother and I would leave early in the morning and drive to the testing site at Alva or Weatherford, with my sharpened number 2 pencils. This was before there were calculators of course; perhaps I took a slide rule, I don't remember. I took both the ACT and SAT just once, and I didn't take a prep course, and I didn't even have one of the phone book-sized preparation books with sample tests that now are piled up around our house. And - as far as I recall - no one asked me for any evidence that I was who I said I was.
Now there's a whole industry around these tests that didn't exist when I was in high school in the early 1970s. There are practice books and preparation courses, and kids take them over and over, trying for better scores. There are subject matter tests and an essay section, with peculiar grading rules that do not actually include getting a lower score for writing things that are factually incorrect. You get graded down for errors of "grammar, usage, and mechanics," but not of fact. (One can imagine why. "Grammar, usage, and mechanics" are not open to debate, really, or litigation. Facts are, so why deal with them?)
Taking it a step further, there is also the commercial enterprise of hiring someone else to take the test for you. It was in the New York Times yesterday, that an Emory sophomore was arrested for taking the SAT in exchange for payment for six Long Island high school students. According to the story, there are - as far as the Educational Testing Service (ETS) is concerned - no consequences for cheating. "When the Educational Testing Service, the company that administers the test, detects irregularities, it simply notifies the affected students that their scores are being withdrawn. Neither colleges nor high schools are ever alerted that cheating was suspected." According to the Nassau County District Attorney, four of the students who have admitted that Samuel Eshaghoff took the test for them are now in college, presumably based on Mr. Eshaghoff's test scores; "the colleges have not been notified by the testing service of their statements." ETS has said that confidentiality laws prevent disclosure.
So let's get this straight. We have a system that doesn't do much to assure that the people taking these high stakes tests are who they say they are, and yet we base college admissions on them, and no one tells the colleges if kids get caught, hiring someone to take the test for them. What kind of a testing system would work this way? One more concerned about not getting sued than doing the right thing. The same kind of system that grades you down on grammatical mistakes, but not on errors of fact.
Facts don't matter, and neither do rules. Whatever it takes.
Now there's a whole industry around these tests that didn't exist when I was in high school in the early 1970s. There are practice books and preparation courses, and kids take them over and over, trying for better scores. There are subject matter tests and an essay section, with peculiar grading rules that do not actually include getting a lower score for writing things that are factually incorrect. You get graded down for errors of "grammar, usage, and mechanics," but not of fact. (One can imagine why. "Grammar, usage, and mechanics" are not open to debate, really, or litigation. Facts are, so why deal with them?)
Taking it a step further, there is also the commercial enterprise of hiring someone else to take the test for you. It was in the New York Times yesterday, that an Emory sophomore was arrested for taking the SAT in exchange for payment for six Long Island high school students. According to the story, there are - as far as the Educational Testing Service (ETS) is concerned - no consequences for cheating. "When the Educational Testing Service, the company that administers the test, detects irregularities, it simply notifies the affected students that their scores are being withdrawn. Neither colleges nor high schools are ever alerted that cheating was suspected." According to the Nassau County District Attorney, four of the students who have admitted that Samuel Eshaghoff took the test for them are now in college, presumably based on Mr. Eshaghoff's test scores; "the colleges have not been notified by the testing service of their statements." ETS has said that confidentiality laws prevent disclosure.
So let's get this straight. We have a system that doesn't do much to assure that the people taking these high stakes tests are who they say they are, and yet we base college admissions on them, and no one tells the colleges if kids get caught, hiring someone to take the test for them. What kind of a testing system would work this way? One more concerned about not getting sued than doing the right thing. The same kind of system that grades you down on grammatical mistakes, but not on errors of fact.
Facts don't matter, and neither do rules. Whatever it takes.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Intersecting Histories, or Travel Notes for the Next Trip to Chicago
I recently finished reading Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. The book, published in 2003, is an account - basically nonfiction, with a little novelistic speculation included - of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, intertwined with the story of America's first known serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes. It's a very compelling piece of storytelling. The Chicago World's Fair brought us electric street lighting, the Ferris Wheel, and a certain vision of urban design. The fair itself was called the White City, because the huge, neoclassical buildings that filled Jackson Park were covered with a sort of white stucco. It was a monumental accomplishment to build, and must have been amazing to see.
Most of the buildings built for the fair were designed to be only temporary structures, but two were permanent - the Palace of Fine Arts, which is now the Museum of Science and Industry, and the World's Congress Building near Grant Park, which is now the Art Institute of Chicago. We visited both of them when we were in Chicago this summer - I had no idea that they were built for the World's Fair.
While we were there, I did read a book of Chicago ghost stories, which had a chapter about the murderous Dr. Holmes. Holmes (whose real name was Herman W. Mudgett) built a three story, block-long building at 63rd and Wallace, not far from Jackson Park. There he rented out rooms to an unknown number of people and many of them disappeared. His hotel had rooms that appeared designed for asphixiation, and a crematory and quicklime pits that could destroy bodies were in the basement. Holmes killed many people in Chicago, but didn't come to the attention of law enforcement while he lived there. He was finally arrested in Boston and jailed in Philadelphia for insurance fraud in 1894, and a relentless detective named Geyer found evidence, in a cross-country investigation that extended into Canada, that Holmes had murdered three children. That led to the grisley discoveries in Holmes' vacant hotel in Chicago. Not long after the police found evidence of the crimes committed there, the building burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances. The site was vacant until a Post Office was built there in 1938.
The weekend before last I had a bad cold and didn't feel like doing much so I spent more time that I would have otherwise working on Tom's family history. Both sides of his father's family emigrated from Germany and ended up in the Chicago area during the 19th century. I had been unable until a couple of months ago to find any records from his father's mother's family - we couldn't find anyone named Buesdorf anywhere - but I went back and reviewed the earliest census record that listed his grandparents as a married couple and they were living at 14 Kroll Street with the Bewersdorfs. Once I had the name spelled correctly, I could find records. The earliest record I could find for Tom's great-grandfather Charles Bewersdorf was in an 1894 Chicago city directory that listed him as a carpenter, living at the Kroll Street address. We used Google Maps to look for Kroll Street in modern day Chicago and couldn't find it. We figured it didn't exist any more, that it must have been destroyed in some round of urban renewal.
So last weekend I found a list of street name changes for Chicago, and found that Kroll Street had become Seeley. Because the 1900 Census went from 23rd Street to Kroll, I think Kroll Street is now the 2300 block of South Seeley, in the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago. It was settled by German and Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century, who were replaced by Czech immigrants, who were replaced by Mexican-Americans. This block of South Seeley contains a mixture of multifamily and single family homes, all built in the late 19th century; I don't know which one is the one where the Bewersdorfs lived, but I've seen pictures of the street from Google Maps. One of those houses is - I think - where Charles Bewersdorf, the carpenter, lived in 1894, with his family.
It was interesting thinking, as I read the book, that some of Tom's ancestors were in Chicago while these events were taking place. Charles was a carpenter - was he one of the thousands of workmen who helped build the White City? Did they attend the fair on Chicago Day? Thankfully, they probably never stayed at Holmes' World's Fair Hotel.
In 1907 Charles bought property in Melrose Park, and by the 1910 Census, that's where he lived, along with his wife Wilhelmina. But I still wonder about 14 Kroll Street. Maybe the next time we are in Chicago we can try to find it. And I might just have to go visit that Post Office, too.
Most of the buildings built for the fair were designed to be only temporary structures, but two were permanent - the Palace of Fine Arts, which is now the Museum of Science and Industry, and the World's Congress Building near Grant Park, which is now the Art Institute of Chicago. We visited both of them when we were in Chicago this summer - I had no idea that they were built for the World's Fair.
While we were there, I did read a book of Chicago ghost stories, which had a chapter about the murderous Dr. Holmes. Holmes (whose real name was Herman W. Mudgett) built a three story, block-long building at 63rd and Wallace, not far from Jackson Park. There he rented out rooms to an unknown number of people and many of them disappeared. His hotel had rooms that appeared designed for asphixiation, and a crematory and quicklime pits that could destroy bodies were in the basement. Holmes killed many people in Chicago, but didn't come to the attention of law enforcement while he lived there. He was finally arrested in Boston and jailed in Philadelphia for insurance fraud in 1894, and a relentless detective named Geyer found evidence, in a cross-country investigation that extended into Canada, that Holmes had murdered three children. That led to the grisley discoveries in Holmes' vacant hotel in Chicago. Not long after the police found evidence of the crimes committed there, the building burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances. The site was vacant until a Post Office was built there in 1938.
The weekend before last I had a bad cold and didn't feel like doing much so I spent more time that I would have otherwise working on Tom's family history. Both sides of his father's family emigrated from Germany and ended up in the Chicago area during the 19th century. I had been unable until a couple of months ago to find any records from his father's mother's family - we couldn't find anyone named Buesdorf anywhere - but I went back and reviewed the earliest census record that listed his grandparents as a married couple and they were living at 14 Kroll Street with the Bewersdorfs. Once I had the name spelled correctly, I could find records. The earliest record I could find for Tom's great-grandfather Charles Bewersdorf was in an 1894 Chicago city directory that listed him as a carpenter, living at the Kroll Street address. We used Google Maps to look for Kroll Street in modern day Chicago and couldn't find it. We figured it didn't exist any more, that it must have been destroyed in some round of urban renewal.
So last weekend I found a list of street name changes for Chicago, and found that Kroll Street had become Seeley. Because the 1900 Census went from 23rd Street to Kroll, I think Kroll Street is now the 2300 block of South Seeley, in the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago. It was settled by German and Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century, who were replaced by Czech immigrants, who were replaced by Mexican-Americans. This block of South Seeley contains a mixture of multifamily and single family homes, all built in the late 19th century; I don't know which one is the one where the Bewersdorfs lived, but I've seen pictures of the street from Google Maps. One of those houses is - I think - where Charles Bewersdorf, the carpenter, lived in 1894, with his family.
It was interesting thinking, as I read the book, that some of Tom's ancestors were in Chicago while these events were taking place. Charles was a carpenter - was he one of the thousands of workmen who helped build the White City? Did they attend the fair on Chicago Day? Thankfully, they probably never stayed at Holmes' World's Fair Hotel.
In 1907 Charles bought property in Melrose Park, and by the 1910 Census, that's where he lived, along with his wife Wilhelmina. But I still wonder about 14 Kroll Street. Maybe the next time we are in Chicago we can try to find it. And I might just have to go visit that Post Office, too.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Signs and Omens
It's not that I'm superstitious - I'm not, except in the hard-wired, limbic system-kind of way that almost all of us are - but the economy's still bad, the Government may shut down on September 30, and a satellite is going to hit the earth sometime today, so it's hard not to assign meaning to what may be chance observations.
Of course, sometimes when something usual happens, it does mean something. Last weekend I was running an errand and noticed that the "check engine" light was on. We took it in to the shop Monday morning and I asked while they were at it that they check the brakes. The "check engine" light was on because the gas cap was loose, as it turned out, but the brakes needed major work. So, at least if the satellite crashes into the road ahead of me, I might be able to stop.
Sometime in the last week or two I saw a bluebird in the backyard. I've been a backyard birdwatcher for a couple of years now and I've never seen a bluebird in the yard before. In fact, I've never seen a bluebird at all. I've been watching, but I haven't seen it back.
Tuesday night I was heading out to pick up Iain from Boy Scouts and heard fireworks. Driving down Cumberland, I saw them - explosions of red and gold, unexpectedly in the sky, visible between the trees. Later that night, a really loud party, somewhere nearby, followed by the flashing blue lights of a police car; after that it was quiet.
It's raining this morning, the sort of slow steady rain that soaks into the ground. It rained on Tuesday, and yesterday afternoon was raining when I came home from work and has been raining since then, I think. But on Wednesday, September 21 - the International Day of Peace - the paper pinwheels the Girl Scouts made at their last meeting were out on the lawn at Haygood, as a tangible expression of hope for something better.
They are made from plastic drinking straws, paper, beads, and a bit of pipe cleaner, and are not very substantial. I had assumed that they wouldn't really work as pinwheels, and the best we could hope for was a day that didn't rain, so I would not be retrieving bits of soggy paper from the Haygood lawn Wednesday night. But yesterday I got an email from one of the parents of a girl in the troop who said they had looked great, spinning in the breeze that day.
When we picked them up Wednesday night, Iain left one of them - the one I had made as a sample to show the girls - on the dashboard of the car. It had "International Peace Day" written in blue and green crayon in concentric squares on both sides of the paper wings. Yesterday when I got to work I decided to bring it into my office. If I held it just right, there was enough air movement just from walking for it to turn, and when there was a breeze, it spun.
I don't know that it means anything, but it did make me smile.
Of course, sometimes when something usual happens, it does mean something. Last weekend I was running an errand and noticed that the "check engine" light was on. We took it in to the shop Monday morning and I asked while they were at it that they check the brakes. The "check engine" light was on because the gas cap was loose, as it turned out, but the brakes needed major work. So, at least if the satellite crashes into the road ahead of me, I might be able to stop.
Sometime in the last week or two I saw a bluebird in the backyard. I've been a backyard birdwatcher for a couple of years now and I've never seen a bluebird in the yard before. In fact, I've never seen a bluebird at all. I've been watching, but I haven't seen it back.
Tuesday night I was heading out to pick up Iain from Boy Scouts and heard fireworks. Driving down Cumberland, I saw them - explosions of red and gold, unexpectedly in the sky, visible between the trees. Later that night, a really loud party, somewhere nearby, followed by the flashing blue lights of a police car; after that it was quiet.
It's raining this morning, the sort of slow steady rain that soaks into the ground. It rained on Tuesday, and yesterday afternoon was raining when I came home from work and has been raining since then, I think. But on Wednesday, September 21 - the International Day of Peace - the paper pinwheels the Girl Scouts made at their last meeting were out on the lawn at Haygood, as a tangible expression of hope for something better.
They are made from plastic drinking straws, paper, beads, and a bit of pipe cleaner, and are not very substantial. I had assumed that they wouldn't really work as pinwheels, and the best we could hope for was a day that didn't rain, so I would not be retrieving bits of soggy paper from the Haygood lawn Wednesday night. But yesterday I got an email from one of the parents of a girl in the troop who said they had looked great, spinning in the breeze that day.
When we picked them up Wednesday night, Iain left one of them - the one I had made as a sample to show the girls - on the dashboard of the car. It had "International Peace Day" written in blue and green crayon in concentric squares on both sides of the paper wings. Yesterday when I got to work I decided to bring it into my office. If I held it just right, there was enough air movement just from walking for it to turn, and when there was a breeze, it spun.
I don't know that it means anything, but it did make me smile.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday Night at the Movies
So this week at work all the movie buzz has been about Contagion, the movie that just came out about a killer virus that threatens Life on Earth as We Know It (I haven't seen the movie yet so I'm not completely sure about that part, but I do know that Kate Winslett, playing a CDC doctor, dies heroically, so it must be really bad, if they kill off one of the stars.) I'm looking forward to seeing it - I've heard it's compelling and scary and good story-telling as well as the subject of some extremely cool but creepy marketing.
But that's not actually what kept me awake last night, even though I was really tired when I finally got to bed. Last night Tom and I watched a movie that we'd had for a while from Netflix, "The Lives of Others." I don't remember why I ordered it - we are always looking for German movies for our German-speaking family members (that would be everyone but me) - but I'm glad I did, and that we watched it before mailing it back.
This 2006 film is about life under surveillance in the former East Germany. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's a compelling story of life under pressure in a country that tried to control what people could read and write. The fonts of every known typewriter in East Germany were identifiable by State Security, and if documents were found with content that wasn't to their liking, there were people whose job it was to identify the typewriter that was used to type it. A untraceable typewriter smuggled from the West plays an important part in the story.
In 1984, when the movie takes place, writing was done on paper with typewriters, making writing an act of great risk in countries totalitarian societies. Of course writing is still risky - journalists and novelists and playwrights and poets and scholars and bloggers still risk imprisonment or worse in many countries around the world. But it's harder and harder to control words - they control the newspapers, you post to the web. They control state television, you post to YouTube. They control the internet, you use a cell phone. Probably the role of social media in the uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa has been overblown, but I am sure that the nearly unrestrained flow of information across borders has contributed to the astonishing events that have taken place this year.
I hope it is not to long before I see a wonderfully compelling movie about how things used to be under an oppressive regime in Yemen or Syria, and I'll look back and say I remember that, I remember when it was like that. Until then, there are still brave people who are putting their lives at risk for a better future for themselves, their children, their country by marching, by writing, by uploading cell phone videos, by fighting well-equipped armies with almost nothing. The best hope for a peaceful future for the region and the world is a rapid transition to democracy. We have a chance, this time, to be on the right side of history.
But that's not actually what kept me awake last night, even though I was really tired when I finally got to bed. Last night Tom and I watched a movie that we'd had for a while from Netflix, "The Lives of Others." I don't remember why I ordered it - we are always looking for German movies for our German-speaking family members (that would be everyone but me) - but I'm glad I did, and that we watched it before mailing it back.
This 2006 film is about life under surveillance in the former East Germany. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's a compelling story of life under pressure in a country that tried to control what people could read and write. The fonts of every known typewriter in East Germany were identifiable by State Security, and if documents were found with content that wasn't to their liking, there were people whose job it was to identify the typewriter that was used to type it. A untraceable typewriter smuggled from the West plays an important part in the story.
In 1984, when the movie takes place, writing was done on paper with typewriters, making writing an act of great risk in countries totalitarian societies. Of course writing is still risky - journalists and novelists and playwrights and poets and scholars and bloggers still risk imprisonment or worse in many countries around the world. But it's harder and harder to control words - they control the newspapers, you post to the web. They control state television, you post to YouTube. They control the internet, you use a cell phone. Probably the role of social media in the uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa has been overblown, but I am sure that the nearly unrestrained flow of information across borders has contributed to the astonishing events that have taken place this year.
I hope it is not to long before I see a wonderfully compelling movie about how things used to be under an oppressive regime in Yemen or Syria, and I'll look back and say I remember that, I remember when it was like that. Until then, there are still brave people who are putting their lives at risk for a better future for themselves, their children, their country by marching, by writing, by uploading cell phone videos, by fighting well-equipped armies with almost nothing. The best hope for a peaceful future for the region and the world is a rapid transition to democracy. We have a chance, this time, to be on the right side of history.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Off to College
Caroline left for college on Wednesday. There was lots of last minute stuff left to do, those last couple of days, but Tom and Sarah drove her to Athens on Wednesday and got her moved into the dorm. A big step for her, and for us.
During the last few days before she left, I was thinking about when I went off to college. The first roommate who only lasted a few days before she decided she wanted to go back home (I don't think it was anything I did). The freedom from attending class, all day long every day, yet the classes were so much better and covered so much more, compared with my high school classes. New friends, almost all from the honors dorm or my honors classes, some of whom I've kept in touch with and I still consider myself close to, even if we aren't as good about keeping in touch as we intend to be. Some classes I still remember (admittedly, not that many) and a professor and his wife who are still friends.
In those days - in a different era - you had to pay for out-of-town phone calls and my raised-during-the-Depression-era parents didn't make long distance calls unless there was some news to convey that wouldn't wait for a letter. So we didn't talk much on the phone, but they wrote me letters, and I wrote them back. Presumably I exercised some sort of judgment and didn't tell them the stuff they really didn't need to know. But that was it - that's how we kept in touch.
Since Caroline left, we haven't heard much from her, but Sarah gets text messages (they are sisters, and that's how sisters now talk, apparently) and I see the updates to her Facebook friends. The only communication I've gotten that was more than a brief answer to a question by Facebook message was when she wanted me to order a couple of items from Amazon.
And that's okay. She's gone away to college and her parents are no longer supposed to be deeply entangled in the everyday minutiae of her life. We could be in touch almost all the time, but we shouldn't; still, I can see totally how new technology has totally enabled helicopter parenting at a whole new level.
I'm trying hard to not be that parent.
During the last few days before she left, I was thinking about when I went off to college. The first roommate who only lasted a few days before she decided she wanted to go back home (I don't think it was anything I did). The freedom from attending class, all day long every day, yet the classes were so much better and covered so much more, compared with my high school classes. New friends, almost all from the honors dorm or my honors classes, some of whom I've kept in touch with and I still consider myself close to, even if we aren't as good about keeping in touch as we intend to be. Some classes I still remember (admittedly, not that many) and a professor and his wife who are still friends.
In those days - in a different era - you had to pay for out-of-town phone calls and my raised-during-the-Depression-era parents didn't make long distance calls unless there was some news to convey that wouldn't wait for a letter. So we didn't talk much on the phone, but they wrote me letters, and I wrote them back. Presumably I exercised some sort of judgment and didn't tell them the stuff they really didn't need to know. But that was it - that's how we kept in touch.
Since Caroline left, we haven't heard much from her, but Sarah gets text messages (they are sisters, and that's how sisters now talk, apparently) and I see the updates to her Facebook friends. The only communication I've gotten that was more than a brief answer to a question by Facebook message was when she wanted me to order a couple of items from Amazon.
And that's okay. She's gone away to college and her parents are no longer supposed to be deeply entangled in the everyday minutiae of her life. We could be in touch almost all the time, but we shouldn't; still, I can see totally how new technology has totally enabled helicopter parenting at a whole new level.
I'm trying hard to not be that parent.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Family Reunion
Last weekend, Tom and Iain and I went to Dallas, North Carolina, for the Rhyne Family Reunion. It was interesting and I'm glad I went - a room full of people at a Lutheran church in Dallas, most of whom I am very distantly related to, but none of whom I've ever met before. There has been an enormous amount of work done over the years by a lot of different people, so it's not so hard for most Rhyne descendants to figure out where they fit into the family tree (although there are way too many Jacob Rhynes, and there is some confusion about which one's which, for a few of them). We put colored dots on our name tags on Saturday, to indicate which branch of the Rhyne family we are from - Iain and I had an orange dots, as a descendants of Johan Philip Rhyne, my great-great-great-great-grandfather. (Some people had multiple dots, since there was lots of intertwining of branches of family trees in the past.) There were photos taken for each group of descendants; Johan Philip had a medium-sized group, but I think for some of them there was no one there at all. There were photos of the oldest person there (age 99) and of the kids who were there.
I lived in North Carolina for three years, during the 1980s. I had no idea, at the time, that if I were to look far enough back, I had ancestors who came there when it was still a British colony. (There are other North Carolina connections too - the Smiths weren't far from Gaston/Lincoln County, and I have wondered if there might be some intertwining in my own family tree.)
I remember, years ago, having breakfast in a hotel dining room with a coworker who told me about her family's reunions. Every year there was a big event attended by the entire extended family. It sounded like fun to me, although I feel like I'm doing well to keep in touch with my cousins by email. My children have said - incorrectly - that "they have no relatives" since their grandparents have all died and neither Tom nor I have surviving siblings, or any nieces or nephews. Before the Rhyne reunion, Sarah asked if we would come home with T-shirts. I said I didn't think so. (For the record, we didn't; it was a no-T-shirt reunion, although I suppose it's not too late to make one if we want one.)
The part that interests me about all this is less how far I can trace things back (the farther back you get, the less you know about the people), but the stories. My grandmother, born in Indian Territory, was the oldest of 6 children; at age 14, she drove the family's second covered wagon into Greer County (now Oklahoma, but I think it was part of Texas then). Her father Joel is said to have been a handsome man with curly black hair and a mustache; he lived with his family in many different places and moved around a lot. Was he always looking for opportunities or getting away from something? A child is buried in Arkansas; the family briefly moved to Oregon, but then they returned to Oklahoma; he died in Texas. He's named after his father's nephew who died at the siege of Port Hudson during the Civil War. There are towns that flourished and then faded away, as agriculture and transportation changed.
When Gaston County was split off from Lincoln County, Dallas became the county seat, and was a thriving town in the mid-nineteenth century. But the railroad didn't go through Dallas (at least according to Wikipedia, the county commissioners refused to appropriate funds to build bridges across the creeks because they thought the trains would awaken people at night and frighten the livestock) and in 1911 the county seat was moved to Gastonia. We visited Moses Rhyne's store, built in 1850, and the old Hoffman hotel, that is now the Gaston County Museum.
There was a guest speaker at the reunion, who talked about her grandmother making quilts, and all the memories that were in those quilts - bits of cloth from clothing she remembered - and how she now makes quilts for her own family, sewing into them names and dates. I wish I had done a better job of capturing somehow the stories my parents told me, and that I had asked more questions, and that I had written down the answers. But absent that, there are still stories to learn. This time, I do need to write them down.
I lived in North Carolina for three years, during the 1980s. I had no idea, at the time, that if I were to look far enough back, I had ancestors who came there when it was still a British colony. (There are other North Carolina connections too - the Smiths weren't far from Gaston/Lincoln County, and I have wondered if there might be some intertwining in my own family tree.)
I remember, years ago, having breakfast in a hotel dining room with a coworker who told me about her family's reunions. Every year there was a big event attended by the entire extended family. It sounded like fun to me, although I feel like I'm doing well to keep in touch with my cousins by email. My children have said - incorrectly - that "they have no relatives" since their grandparents have all died and neither Tom nor I have surviving siblings, or any nieces or nephews. Before the Rhyne reunion, Sarah asked if we would come home with T-shirts. I said I didn't think so. (For the record, we didn't; it was a no-T-shirt reunion, although I suppose it's not too late to make one if we want one.)
The part that interests me about all this is less how far I can trace things back (the farther back you get, the less you know about the people), but the stories. My grandmother, born in Indian Territory, was the oldest of 6 children; at age 14, she drove the family's second covered wagon into Greer County (now Oklahoma, but I think it was part of Texas then). Her father Joel is said to have been a handsome man with curly black hair and a mustache; he lived with his family in many different places and moved around a lot. Was he always looking for opportunities or getting away from something? A child is buried in Arkansas; the family briefly moved to Oregon, but then they returned to Oklahoma; he died in Texas. He's named after his father's nephew who died at the siege of Port Hudson during the Civil War. There are towns that flourished and then faded away, as agriculture and transportation changed.
When Gaston County was split off from Lincoln County, Dallas became the county seat, and was a thriving town in the mid-nineteenth century. But the railroad didn't go through Dallas (at least according to Wikipedia, the county commissioners refused to appropriate funds to build bridges across the creeks because they thought the trains would awaken people at night and frighten the livestock) and in 1911 the county seat was moved to Gastonia. We visited Moses Rhyne's store, built in 1850, and the old Hoffman hotel, that is now the Gaston County Museum.
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| The former Hoffman hotel, now the Gaston County Museum |
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| The Moses Rhyne store, now an antique shop |
There was a guest speaker at the reunion, who talked about her grandmother making quilts, and all the memories that were in those quilts - bits of cloth from clothing she remembered - and how she now makes quilts for her own family, sewing into them names and dates. I wish I had done a better job of capturing somehow the stories my parents told me, and that I had asked more questions, and that I had written down the answers. But absent that, there are still stories to learn. This time, I do need to write them down.
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