Advent Calendar- A Photo from the Christmas Grab Bag

This is the only photo of my maternal grandparents kissing.

We caught them under the mistletoe!

My grandparents were married on Valentine's Day, 14 February 1925 and were

married for 57 years.

1976, Hamilton, Massachusetts

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Advent Calendar-  A Photo from the Christmas Grab Bag", Nutfield Genealogy, posted December 9, 2010, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/12/advent-calendar-photo-from-grab-bag.html

Not so Wordless Wednesday- Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain

My husband and his grandparents in Miraflores de la Sierra with afternoon refreshments under the big Alamo tree in 1968

My husband, around 1970 in Miraflores

When my husband was little he used to spend the summers in Spain with his grandparents. They would leave Madrid in August and vacation in a small resort town called Miraflores de la Sierra. He has many fond memories of swimming, visiting with cousins, and playing in the streets and plazas. The central plaza hasn't changed in hundreds of years, and it still has the town hall and ancient church. Near the plaza mayor is another small plaza with shops, pubs, and restaurants. This is where the gigantic Alamo Tree (poplar) stood, and families would relax in the shade. The annual fiestas take place around August 15th every year, complete with a bullring and other typical activities. http://www.mirafloresdelasierra.net/ The website for the village of Miraflores de la Sierra

 

The whole family meets in Miraflores, 2003

The entire extended family in the summer of 2010 at Miraflores de la Sierra



In 2010 this is all that is left of the Alamo. It had been cut down a few years earlier.

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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Not so Wordless Wednesday- Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain", Nutfield Genealogy, posted December 8, 2010, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/12/not-so-wordless-wednesday-miraflores-de.html: accessed [access date]). 

Pearl Harbor

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on 7 December 1941, a day President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed "a date which shall live in infamy." We were there this past summer, where my husband took these photographs. Under the photos are some memories of that day by my mother, aunt and uncle.

In 2003 my daughter interviewed several relatives about the bombing of Pearl Harbor for a class assignment. Here are her transcribed notes of those interviews:

My daughter lead the interview: "Where were you when you heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and what was your reaction?"

Phyllis (age 67 years at the time of the interview): I remember that day because I was six years old and the only thing I remember about it really is my mother crying because my brother was..., I had five brothers and the oldest one was sixteen I think at the time... and she knew that he was going to have to go to war. That really upset my mother.

Shirley (age 76 years at the time at the time of the interview): I remember that. I was standing in the kitchen, ironing, I was ironing a blouse, getting ready to go to church. I heard the news, and I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t absorb what it actually meant to me. It really didn’t all sink in until later, but then I heard Kate Smith coming on and singing “God Bless America.” And standing there crying my eyes out as I ironed, because it was so touching. I was beginning to realize what it was going to mean to the country.

Robert (age 77 years at the time of this interview, he has since passed away): I was listening to a football game at my house on 7 Dearborn Avenue. I was about your age, in high school. And my reaction was “Japan? Attacking us? We’ll have them wiped out by Christmas time.”

Shirley: At the time.... I’m a nurse. And I was taking care of a lady whose father was the ambassador to Japan. At the time of the war, before, and during the war. And Ambassador Grew, his name was, from Manchester (MA), and he was... She showed me lots of papers and things that he had written about what he claims in writing. And they showed me a copy of the letter, the family owns. That he had told the president, that Japan was about to do something, he didn’t know that Pearl Harbor was actually going to happen, but it was going to be Pearl Harbor. But he knew because of his position, and contacts, that there was about to be some sort of a war with Japan, and he was ignored completely. When he went and had an interview, I saw the letter that he wrote to the president, Roosevelt, and told him what was happening, and what steps he thought should be taken. Because, perhaps, president Roosevelt was old and ill at the time, he wasn’t using good judgment and he never furthered that information on. And then Pearl Harbor happened.

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Tombstone Tuesday- Montgomerys in Derry, New Hampshire

These are some of the Scots Irish Presbyterian settlers named MONTGOMERY of Nutfield (Londonderry, now Derry), New Hampshire buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry, New Hampshire. Both of today's stones are double, huband and wife, gravestones.

ERECTED

IN MEMORY OF

Mr. Robert

Montgomery

who departed this

life July ye 15th

1773. AE 80

Years

LIKEWISE

In Memory of

Mrs. Rebecah

Montgomery

wife of Mr. Robert

Montgomery who

departed this Life

March ye 20th 1799

SACRED

to the memory

of Lieut. Hugh

Montgomery who

died Jan 4 1800

AET. 60

SACRED

to the

memory of

Mrs. Peggy Montgomery

wife of Lieut.

Hugh Montgomery

who died June

ye 5th 1791

aged 38 yrs 5

months and 5 days

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Advent Calendar- Is that You, Santa Claus?



1974, My Dad as Santa

Holden, Massachusetts

2001  Hubby and I as Santa and Mrs. Claus
Londonderry, New Hampshire

Even our cat, Sandy, does Santa
Sandy Claus, 2003

Our daughter with the Londonderry Lancers
2003 Derry Christmas Parade

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

A New Clue! For Madness Monday

William Lee (1826 - 1906)
Boston Publisher

Last month as I was reading some of my favorite blogs I made a potentially great discovery.  One blog I read every week is Past is Present, written by the staff at the American Antiquarian Society.  This is a large archive and library located in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Not by coincidence, I am a big fan of this library because it was where I started my genealogical research 30 years ago.  This private library collects documents on American history up through the Civil War period, and it has an amazing collection of newspapers, family manuscripts, ephemera, broadsides, pamplets and books.

On November 12th the AAS posted a blog story "Lee and Shepard and the Great Fire".  It seems that this Boston publishing house donated their business correspondence to the AAS.  I almost fell off my chair because William Lee of the Lee and Shepard publishers was my first cousin several generations removed.  His mother, Laura Williams Jones Lee, was a sister to not only my ancestor but to Mary Jones Dominis, Queen Lili'uokalani's mother-in-law.  In researching the Jones sisters, I read several letters to and from William Lee concerning his business in Boston, and his publishing of the Queen's autobiography.  When the Queen came to Boston, she took up residence near the Lee's home in Brookline.  It was one of these letters that broke my brickwall about the Jones connection.  Here was a collecton of more letters!

Queen Lili'uokalani's stay in Boston was my clue to this side of the family tree.  My great grandmother and her relatives remembered "Auntie Lydia" coming to Boston, and passed this story along to succeeding generations.  I was intrigued by the story, and wanted to know how we possibly could be related to anyone in Hawaii.  In researching her story over the years I not only found out how she married my distant cousin, but broke through a few brick walls on my 4 x great grandmother's family.  You can read more about this by clicking HAWAII or DOMINIS in the right hand column of this blog to see posts on this research.

I quickly wrote an email query to the AAS, asking them if any of the correspondence in the 12 boxes of material from Lee and Shepard contained business letters concerning Lili'uokalani and other Dominis or Jones family members.  I was hoping for more breakthrough letters on the family.  After a while I received an answer:

"After looking through our card index for the Lee and Shepard Papers, I did not see any of your family names listed as correspondents to the firm. Unfortunately this was expected, however, because our collection is comprised of business correspondence only, therefore there aren't any personal or family letters within the collection. So sorry to disappoint, but I wish you the best of luck with your research!"

Well, no luck with the AAS collection, but it got me to thinking that perhaps William Lee donated his personal papers somewhere.  He was a famous publisher, and met some fascinating people of his time.  He published not only Queen Lili'uokalani, but works by Horace Mann, Rev. Charles Beecher, and popular children's authors. He must have donated his personal papers somewhere.  I know he was a letter writer, many of his letters to Mary and John Dominis are in the Hawaii State Archives and at the Bishop Museum.   William Lee survived his partner, Charles Shepard, and he retired in 1898.  The business was sold to Lothrop Publishing Company in 1904, and became Lothrop, Lee and Shepard.   William Lee died in Hampton, New Hampshire in 1906.

Here is the second email I received from AAS: "In terms of searching out where other William Lee collections may be, there are two databases that may help you in your search. Archive Grid and Archive Finder are two databases that search other repositories' collections. AAS unfortunately does not have subscriptions to either of these databases, but many public and university libraries do. I would recommend taking a look at your local libraries' electronic resources to see if these databases are available."   Today is Monday, and I plan on asking at my public library about these databases.  I might need to find a university library (UNH?) but at least now I have a place to start.  The search is on for William Lee's papers!

For more information:
click at http://pastispresent.org/2010/good-sources/lee-shepard-and-the-great-fire/ for the AAS blog post which inspired this blog post!

The engraving of William Lee, above, was taken from the magazine The Bay State Monthly, Volume 2, No. 6, page 309, March 1885.

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "A New Clue!  For Madness Monday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted December 6, 2010, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-clue-for-madness-monday.html: accessed [access date]).

Baseball and Genealogy Research

Red Sox outfielder, Dom DiMaggio (brother to the more famous Joe DiMaggio), and current San Francisco Giant closer Brian Wilson both resided in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Brian Wilson, “The Bearded One” is well known recently for his popularity during the 2010 World Series. As a teenager Brian played baseball for the local American Legion team in Londonderry. Newspapers and online resources such as sports blogs are the easiest way to research famous baseball players from your own hometown.

George Edward “Duffy” Lewis is buried in the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Londonderry. He played for the Red Sox, Yankees and Senators from 1910 to 1921. He died in Salem, New Hampshire on 17 June 1979. This was a big story back in 2000 when John Clayton, reporter for the Manchester Union Leader newspaper, wrote two articles about Duffy and mentioned how his grave was unmarked. Money was raised from readers for a nice marker, engraved with his wife’s name, too. The Union Leader is available on microfilm in the Manchester public library.

This got me to thinking about researching baseball in the family. Sure, there were lots of members of the family, male and female, who played on school, youth, town and local teams. I remembered that in my own family tree James Ebenezer Ferrin (1848–1935) was an early organizer of baseball teams in Essex County, Massachusetts. He did a lot to make the game popular in Massachusetts. He was also famous around town for witnessing General Lee surrender at Appomattox, and was the last surviving veteran of the Civil War in Peabody, Massachusetts. This information came from a few lines I read in the book Capt. Jonathan Farren of Amesbury and some of his Descendants published in 1941.

I knew that David Lambert of the New England Historic Genealogical Society was a big baseball fan, so I asked him about researching early baseball. I was interested in finding out more information on James Ebenezer Ferrin. He recommended the website http://www.retrosheet.org/ or an inquiry to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

James E. Ferrin was not listed at the http://www.retrosheet.org/ website. The Baseball Hall of Fame was very accommodating, and answered several email inquiries, but had no information on early baseball in Essex County, Massachusetts. They suggested several Massachusetts baseball researchers who specialized in the time period, and to look in newspaper articles in the 1860s and 1870, right after the Civil War, when baseball was becoming popular. So far I haven’t found much, but then again, I haven’t found any other information at all on James Ferrin – no marriage, no descendants, end of the line? I’ll continue to look, because Essex County is a big place, and there were a lot of little newspapers all over at that time period.

For early baseball see SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) http://sabr.org/

Baseball Biography Project Website: http://bioproj.sabr.org/

Duffy Lewis’s Biography
http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=1691&pid=8220

Dom DiMaggio’s Biography
http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=1471&pid=3606

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Advent Calendar- A Holiday Food Tradition- Fondue!

Why fondue?  I don't know why it started, but in the 1970s fondue was very popular.  That's why I still have Mom's avocado green fondue pot.  We always had fondue on New Years Eve, or Christmas Eve, when there was a long wait for a late night church service or for Dick Clark's midnight TV special.  It takes hours to eat fondue, since every little bite was cooked slowly over the pot.  It was a good way to pass the time, so we continue the tradition today!

1974, New Year's Eve fondue-
everyone  is enjoying the fun of cooking in the pot!

2004, we introduce Hubby's parents, from Spain, to fondue.
My Father-in-law had a sandwich! 
It was taking too long for him to cook his own tidbits!

2009, New Year's Eve in Londonderry.
We have the same old green fondue pot,
but we've added a small chocolate fondue, too, for dessert!

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo