This one took an hour—because the person who did the first one on this tooth 10 years ago missed a root (branch) and used pins with a cement that resisted being removed. Got it, however, and am back on antibiotics. Sigh.
On the genealogy front, I turn out to have some relatives with a whole national history I have not a clue about: Frisians. Lots of Frisians, from the 1300’s, whose names I’m having to look up because the spellings are nothing I’m familiar with. It’s out of a Dutch genealogy site, and sometimes I don’t know a title from a first name. Some are from Lower Saxony, some from the Netherlands, and I foresee a bit of fun figuring this all out. Seems there was some conflict in which many of them figured, and I’m about to learn about Frisia. I love genealogy. This is kind of ironic because I am VERY aware of my maternal great-great grandfather and that lot, out of New Amsterdam, but this is a whole new bunch who seem to have slid in sideways, from a marriage into that line once they had left New York…I don’t know what set of events caused a set of people with a Dutch background to settle in early Oklahoma, but I know that my mother’s father’s family was not the only one, because in my childhood, coping with the old crank-phone party line, there was, on the party line, a set of sisters who would hold great gossip sessions on line—in English, until they got to the good part, then change languages, so the language was still active in that area until the 1950’s. In such a small town as it was, people all knew each other, but my uncle never told me the sisters’ family name, and I wish now I’d asked.
How is Jane doing? We haven’t heard from her, other than we know her hip is giving her problems.
Last entry on Harmonies was the pictures of Miscon. Hope she’s doing well, but I figure that if there were an issue, you’d let us know here.
Jane’s been working on her writing and just came in from doing the front gardening, with help from yrs truly. We’re trying to get caught up and the guy to fix the chimney is coming Friday, I have another dental appointment on Monday—life is just full…
But we’re happy, most of me is healthy, so is she, and we’re just playing catch-up on work we lost traveling. We’re about to have a garage sale to get rid of some of the clutter so we can move around here! Once the floors went down (the kitchen is still a wreck that was supposed to be fixed, but not this year, now) we found what we really need in the way of furniture was less than the furniture we have.
We also just got one of those glider exercisers but have no place to put it until we get some stuff outa here!
Garage sales, even if they go well, are one of Dante’s concentric circles of hell. Sometimes you sell a bunch of stuff and make a reasonable profit, as well as moving out things for which you no longer have a use (or space!) Sometimes they make you wish you had called up your local Goodwill and told them to take it all!
That is usually my wish even before it starts.
This gentleman may be one of my remote relatives. I have some connections to confirm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocko_I_tom_Brok
glad to know she’s okay…
The only Friesian I know anything about (and this is peripherally only) are the warmblood draft horses, from the area of that name.
Somewhere in one of the first books I read on language, an adult-level book when I was around 12 or so, was a brief quote illustrating now close Friesian and Dutch and English are (immediate cousins). Let’s see if I can get it right from memory. I will probably misspell or geta word or two wrong.
“Brod, butter, en grene Kiese / en hwat is dat, but kein gut Friese?”
“Bread, butter, and green cheese / And what is that, but (if) not (a) good Friesian?”
It’s supposed to be from a common little rhyme, like a nursery rhyme or lullaby, going back hundreds of years, much like Mother Goose and so on, in English. A point in the translation is supposed to be that (1) It’s good Friesian, the products, and (2) It’s what a good Friesian, a person, would eat, use, buy, sell, produce. The “green cheese” there is evidently like a blue cheese or other local variety cheese. Bread, butter, and cheese, being a simple, common meal any Friesian might eat.
I’m not sure I have the words exactly right. One of the points was how similar Friesian and Dutch and English are, closer than they are to German, their other nearest cousin. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (Jutlanders) moved into what became Ænglelond, while the Friesians, Dutch, and more Saxons stayed home and became who they were in Sachse Germany, the Netherlands, and Friesland.
Additionally, even at the time of the settlement of the Colonies, English people conflated “Dutch” and “Deutsch” (German) often into the same thing, despite that they weren’t. Thus, the Pennsylvania Dutch (and Amish and Mennonites) are German in ancestry, not Dutch. But there were plenty of Dutch and German people in the early colonies, so much so that my college American history textbooks pointed out German nearly won as a co-equal language in the newly United States, but Dr. Franklin spoke in favor of English.
My own ancestry is mostly English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, German, possibly Dutch, a little French, and likely on both sides of the family, Cherokee and/or allied tribes. (Reminder to self: Find the pictures and old files you keep meaning to look for.)
If I can find the photo again, there is/was an old photo, last half of the 1800’s, showing an Indian woman wearing a pioneer dress, the photo taken in northern Texas. She was either my great-great-aunt or a great-great-grandmother, but in my line on my mother’s father’s side. She was either Cherokee or an allied tribe, or one of the local tribes in Texas, such as Comanche or (?) Chickasaw. (There are also another native Texan tribe whose name I’m blanking on now.) My recollection is, she was probably Cherokee.
One my dad’s mother’s side, my dad believed the family story of “Indian blood” in the family most likely came from a very bad incident involving whites and Cherokee and allied tribes dating back to just during and after the Revolutionary War, with a man named Lt. Vincent Hobbs (or Hobbes) and a man named Chief Benge (or Bench). They were supposed to be not only friends, but brothers-in-law and blood brothers. A group of young Indian men conducted a raid against a local white settler’s farm, captured one or two women and girls and children, and took them with them. This was not sanctioned by their leader. But as Chief Benge was ultimately responsible (through alliances) he took responsibility for the young men’s actions. However, things went very bad, there was a local posse against them, and it went from bad to worse, forcing the Indians into outlaw rading status. Lt. Hobbs was sent to resolve this, there was a witnessed hand-to-hand fight, and Benge was killed…by the man who had been his friend and relative and with whom they’d served during the war. Worse, the lieutenant was awarded a rifle, engraved, by the governor and other local important pioneer figures. Sigh…. My dad believed this was where the “Indian blood” story had entered family tales, and believed Lt. Hobbs (and someone from Chief Benge’s people) were ancestors. So he believed Lt. Hobbs would have carried that fight around as a burden afterward. The clincher is that the posse was formed from people (whites) in the nearby valley to our family’s farm and the nearest town. yes, it sounds like the locals got all fired up and went off to hunt down the Indians, making things go further out of hand. The settler women and girls and kids were returned. Er, whether any harm was done to them, or whether there might have been a consensual visit involved to begin with, I don’t know. But it’s a matter of local history. My family’s farm was bought in the early 1800’s, if I remember right, about 1805, or a bit before or after. Note this was not by the Hobbs, but by my multiple-times great-grandfather. (If I recall right, this would have been my grandpa’s grandpa, and a son or grandson of the two brothers (or father and son or cousins) who came over on the boat in 1755 with German or Dutch or very northern English (near the Scots border) last name, and first names Johann or John, and Phillip or Philipp. (Spelling being very optional back then.) — My dad used this as a cautionary tale of how things could go very wrong between people. He always felt it must have been something Hobbs and Benge both regretted, but were pushed into and couldn’t get out of, with a tragic ending. It also means, he believed we’re part Cherokee or a related tribe, at least from that point, and likely another point down the line. However, any documentation was lost in fires at various points along history, at the county courthouse and the family farm, from storms or from things catching fire, or possibly deliberately by others. (The last was after my grandma on his side had died and the farm was vacant, someone came in, robbed the house, but left many things, and a fire covered it — burning family photos and documents and handmade quilts and carpentry from a great-grandfather who was a local carpenter.) So…. It’s something I doubt I’ll ever knwo the full answer to. I do know most of the immediate ancestry and cousins during the 1800’s, though. When a family farm and neighbors stay there for that long, and there’s two family cemetery plots, plus records in the county courthouse (handwritten in Spencerian Copperplate from back in the 1700’s and 1800’s) there are trails to follow. (Those show, also, that before, during, and after the Civil War, the family farm was deeded to the wife and mother of the family, as all the menfolk who were old enough went off to fight. (And note, my father’s father’s line and father’s mother’s line apparently fought on different sides, Union and Confederacy respectively.) During and after the war, troops from both sides “foraged” on land in and around the farm. When the war ended, the mother deeded the farm back to one of the sons. But this showed early on, a family interest in women being somewhat or fully equal with the men of the family. (IIRC, we didn’t find evidence in the court records (births, deaths, sales, deeds) of slave ownership (such as fractions of a person, used for male slaves). However, I will want to look over the photocopies again, pre-war and during and after, to see if I can re-confirm this. It was a small farm, so it wouldn’t have been too likely, especially since, apparently, they fought fot the Union. That’s a very unusual choice: The farm’s in Virginia.
Reading those old records, by the way, can get strange. Go back far enough, and they still used the long S that looked like an f or an integral sign, and I and J, U and V, could trade places. There were another few quirks too, and spelling was a mix, given who was educated or not and the whims of the clerks. (Fortunately, my family appears to have been able to read and write from the time they came over, but heh, locals could not always do so or spell right. That, and people still miss my last name today. It’s one or two letters off from a much more common English name, but it’s enough that it looks strange to most people.)
Oh, and the surveyor’s data from back then could be really fun too. “Such and such rods and chains to an old Ellum (Elm) tree… such and such to a large Stone… to a Silver Maple… to a Shumack… to a Sassafrass… to a hollow… to a drop-off of so and so foot…” Things like that. — But come along 5 or 20 years later, and you’d need to know the area as it was at the time of the last survey, to be sure of where those trees and rocks were, because they might not be there anymore, or they’d moved or grown. (Er, the trees, not the rocks….)
In that part of the country, you’ll also find plenty of stories about “haints” (haunts, ghosts, spirits) and a few supernatural or folkloric critters (such as the hoop snake) in addition to stories of bears and the various words for mountain lions / panthers (also called cougars, pumas further west) and wolves. Only — yes, you can still run into those today, out in the woods, so it’s best to be careful. People still hunt deer, rabbits, squirrels, and so on.
Oh, but — My grandma (dad’s mom) did once express her opinion about opossums: “Not in *my* pans!” Heheheh.
Have a really good day, y’all.
I just pre-ordered Convergence!
I usually get a notification on Foreigner pre-orders, but not this time. Thanks PJ for the heads up, my order is in! Nine months to wait *sigh*
Your package misfired. Typo in the house number. Will readdress and try again.