Salem Cemetery Update

I've added three lots to the Salem Cemetery blog, which links out of the sidebar at left. The updates are Lot No. 35, which contains only the unmarked grave of Cora Houck, 12; Lot No. 48, which contains only the grave of Lilly Bell Parsons, 4; and Lot No. 30, which contains the graves of the Rev. Marcus L. Evans and his wife, Elizabeth (Hetser) Evans. Unfortunately, I've misplaced the photos of the Evans tombstone, so either will have to find it or retake it.

The Evans entry does contain a lengthy account of the collision of two freight trains at Chariton in 1875 that claimed the Rev. Mr. Evans' life and remains interesting reading. The five who died in that crash included the first passengers to be killed on then then relatively new main line of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad (later the C.B.&Q and now the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe}.

Praise song for the day

"In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

"On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp --- praise song for walking forward in that light."

Those words from Elizabeth Alexander's magnificent inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day" fairly well summed up for me Tuesday's inaugural. I can't remember the last occasion in our collective recent history so filled with hope and eloquence. Now the work begins and we'll see, as we do every four years, if hopes and dreams expressed on the Capitol steps can become real.

I listened to the inaugural events on National Public Radio driving north across Iowa, and there are advantages to that because the focus shifts from television's array of sights and sounds and commentary to the words --- what's being said and sung.

Frankly, if I'd been sitting at home in front of the television I'd probably have gone out to fill my coffee cup during Alexander's poem rather than sitting behind the wheel speeding through an Iowa winter transfixed by her words. I wouldn't have listened as carefully to Aretha Franklin's magnificent performance of "America" or really thought about the words arranged into prayers by the Rev. Rick Warren and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery.

Much of President Obama's inaugural speech coincided with those few miles of my narrow gravel shortcut west of Marshalltown where the snowbanks were taller that the truck, the surface hard-packed snow with ice beneath and heavy equipment was being used at intersections to push the mountains back in anticipation of the next storm. Is that an analogy for the situation we're now in? It almost seemed that way.

I liked the speech --- sober and reflective. There was mild complaining among some NPR commentators who felt the speech didn't soar --- and anyone who has listened to Obama speak knows he is a master of the language and can use effectively any rhetorical device he chooses to. So the sober nature was intentional. I especially liked this:

"We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."

Funny to me at least was the whispered commentary on the Rev. Rick Warren's invocation: "He said Jesus." Warren did a fine job, I thought, but the apparent surprise is bemusing, a sign of a mild cultural divide, as was the pre-inaugural speculation about whether he would or wouldn't. It's useful to know that if you invite a Southern Baptist preacher to preach you'll sit longer than 20 minutes and there will be an altar call. Invite a Southern Baptist preacher to pray and it is inconceivable that Jesus will not be part of the equation.

But I thought the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery's benediction more eloquent and moving. Nothing could have been more fitting than closing prayer delivered by that 87-year-old civil rights pioneer and United Methodist preacher.

"With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

"Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."

Seeing photographs later of George W. and Laura Bush board a helecopter after the inauguration on the first leg of their journey home to Texas was surprisingly bitter-sweet. I'm afraid history will not be kind to the Bush presidency and that it may be consigned to footnotes --- the unique father-son succession of George H.W. and George W. Bush, the responsibility that falls on George W. Bush's shoulders as commander in chief for the war in Iraq.

I hope the bright footnote of his strong and reassuring leadership immediately after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon will end up in the books, too; as well as acknowledgement that because of the war on terrorism we really will never know what he might otherwise have done had he presided over eight years of peace. I probably wouldn't have liked it, but there is the benefit of that doubt.

Jimmy Carter, to whose presidency the historians have not been especially kind, is one example to how an ex-president with an ambiguous record can soar unambiguously. Bush might choose that path, or if as sometimes is suggested he is not an introspective man, he may just get on with life. But it would be very bad manners indeed not to wish him well.

Tuesday was the easy part, the inspiring part. Now it's time to get to work and I hope and pray that the work goes well.

Just for the record ...

... the official overnight low in Mason City overnight Thursday-Friday was -31F, breaking a 1977 record of -27F. Of course that's out at the airport, on flat land with no shelter from the wind, where it's always colder than it is in town. It's now above zero with a high near 30 predicted (and light snow in the air).

I've enjoyed complaining about the cold snap, but didn't have to do farm chores or other outside work and spent most of my time in warm places, so really didn't have much to complain about at all. But that's the best kind of complaining --- when there are few justifications for it. Now it's time to move on.

ALTHOUGH ... It's after 1 p.m. now and a balmy 24, but what with the wind and the blowing snow seems to feel colder. I switched from insulated to regular pants this morning and now my legs don't know what to do. Since I had to go to HyVee West (the grocery) anyway, I decided to have lunch in the deli (which translates as cafeteria, not a deli at all). After seating myself in a booth beside a window it began to feel as if the heat had been turned down, way down; my legs began to complain and I began to think hypthermially.

I've eaten at a lot of HyVee deli's whilst roaming around Iowa in a hurry, working on the premise it's healthier to eat where vegetables are available than in other fast-food establishments where iceburg lettuce is about it. Although the decor all looks roughly alike, the HyVee food ranges I found from unspeakable to decent. Go to a larger store and you get real plates; to a smaller store, and you get styrofoam that heaves and buckles under its load (something to do with dishwashing equipment I supposed). I've only had to give up on one --- in Eldora --- because of the chief cook's apparent fondness for salt. This is not a blood pressure issue; I just can't handle food that consistently tastes as if the top of the salt shaker fell off while it was being prepared.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS are developing gradually. I resolved to get a haircut on Jan. 2 and it took me two weeks to get it done. But it was a beast of a day when I did it, so I got right in and didn't have to sit around.

Today's resolution is not to lose household bills. This is a mildly complex matter few people other than me would have problems with, but I'm challenged by having two sets of bills for two establishments that arrive at two locations and the fact bills no longer all arrive on or soon after the first of each month. So it's not possible to sit down on let's say the 5th and pay everying at once.

This month I lost the Chariton water bill, a postcard affair that has a habit of slip-sliding away. After dropping the midmonth bills off at the postal station at HyVee today, I finally spotted the water bill peeking out from under the passenger seat in the truck. So now I can pay it --- two days late. Had I not spotted it, I'd have moved on to the alternative --- send a check in the general amount with "sorry" written on it and leave it to the water department bookkeeper in Chariton to sort out.

Heaven help us ...

... or where is Billy Graham now that we need him? Sadly, the Rev. Mr. Graham, now 90 and beset by the infirmities of old age, rarely leaves his North Carolina home and certainly is not up to a trek to Washington, D.C., to pray at Tuesday's inauguration of Barack Obama. I'm sure he'll be praying for Obama and the nation anyway, bless his heart, but it will not be quite the same. It was kind of nice when most felt one guy, even though unabashedly Christian and Southern Baptist to boot, could pray for us all and few minded --- and no one seemed to feel he or she was being prayed against.

So we've been treated recently to a variety of unseemly skirmishes on the inaugural prayer front. First Obama asked Rick Warren (upper left), a preacher licensed by Southern Baptists who leads the Saddleback megachurch. Because of that, there was rejoicing among conservatives and great wailing and gnashing of teeth among liberals, including many of my queer brothers and sisters.

Then Obama asked V. Gene Robinson (lower left), Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and gay, to lead prayers on Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial during an inaugural kickoff event. Because of that there was great shrieking and hand-wringing among conservatives and general rejoicing among liberals.

And so it's gone. Betwixt and between we've learned that the Rev. Sharon Watkins, head of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a moderate to liberal denomination, will preach at the National Prayer Service, and that here and there along the inaugural parade route we will hear from a Roman Catholic archbishop, at least three rabbis and a Muslim. We heard from atheists and agnostics in the form of a lawsuit (rejected) challenging prayer of any sort, or for that matter mention of God, during the proceedings. About the only folks not heard from, as nearly as I can tell, are the Mormons (take that, Mit Romney). If we're going to all of this bother to be inclusive, it would have been nice to include them. There are more Mormons out there, after all, than many of the other varieties heretofore mentioned.

I read a good many religiously-oriented blogs, ranging from ultraconservative to flaming liberal --- including a few Mormon ones, and much has been said there about all of this. But I'll spare you. Nor I would never link to those faith-based (?!?) blogs because quite frankly they all manage to give religion a black eye on a regular basis. If any of the great unchurched mass out there are looking for faith-based homes, I'd prefer they just pick a few churches and start attending (OK OK Take the BeliefNet "what denomination am I?" multiple-choice test if you must). But read the blogs and you'll have the bejesus scared out of you before ya get off the ground.

I guess in general I'm OK with this multiple-choice inaugural prayer business if one of its points is to say "Now looka here. No matter what we think or believe about each other, we've got to keep all this sniping down to an uproar and make sure everyone's got enough to eat." And what with the economy and all, that could become an issue unless we behave ourselves in more ways than one.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if there were no prayers at all. Somewhere in the process of offending no one many of them end up sounding a tad hollow. And presumably our leaders and all the rest of us would be off in our respective closets praying privately anyway, something I think there's a New Testament precedent for.

Minus-22 and rising

It was -22F and clear here just before sunrise and even a hyperactive furnace couldn't keep the cold from creeping toward my feet from the (covered) window a couple of feet away. The good news is we will top zero today (by as much as eight degrees); the not-so-good news, freezing rain of all things is in the forecast. Ya just can't win this year.

All things are relative, and when I saw it was only -7F while driving the block (yes, just a block) back to the office at 6 last evening I thought, "well, that's not bad." When I left work at 11 p.m. it was -9F and after driving around town for 15 minutes, -15F. I'd never think of driving if it weren't for the truck, which seems to benefit from regular exercise when it's this cold. So the drill three or four times a day is to start it (mild complaining), let it warm up for 10-15 minutes, then drive around at a gradually-accelerating pace to get the juices moving. Without the truck, boots, good socks, insulated pants, a heavy parka and sensible gloves keep me going for a reasonable length of time in just about any temperature. But the key is to not be without the truck.

The overnight low Wednesday-Thursday was -27F, one degree short of a record, so all schools in the region were cancelled Thursday and perhaps they are today as well (I haven't looked). That's intended (a) to keep smaller children inside and out of the cold when they'd usually be headed for school and (b) to avoid problems with diesel-powered school buses that sometimes react badly to extreme cold. No one wants a busload of kids stranded on a back road somewhere if the diesel gels.

So it's just another day on the prairie. When I looked at the Iowa forecast map this morning, there was a tiny spot of white (meaning more or less seasonal cold and otherwise reasonable weather expectations) down around Lamoni. The rest of the state still was covered with brown, light blue and grayish blue meaning winter-weather advisory and differing degrees of wind-chill watches and warnings. Maybe we'll dig our way out of this yet.

In the meantime, I've been spending too much time reading blogs written in warmer places. Australia's good this time of year since it's summer there and folks are complaining about the heat! Stay warm.

Baptists always have the best stained glass ...

I doubt that's universally true, but I like the line --- used by an acquaintance when talking about First Baptist Church in Humeston at a time when the United Methodist and Christian (Disciples of Christ) congregations there were merging, tearing down their old buildings and building a new joint house of worship that incorporated glass from both buildings.

What is true, in Lucas County at least, is that First Baptist Church of Russell (photos top and bottom) has what may be the most architecturally significant building in the area --- and I say that with appreciative nods to both First United Methodist and First Presbyterian churches in Chariton, both of which are larger and grander and quite beautiful.

I can't say that I grew up in First Baptist Church, but I was on the Cradle Roll there (and have the registration card to prove it). This was the only church my parents ever joined other than birthright assimulation into their childhood family churches, neither Baptist.

But sometime after the pastorate of the Rev. Donald Brong ended amicably in 1952, holy war erupted among the Russell Baptists and my parents, neither of whom were religious combatants, fled. And so my career as a Biblical scholar was nipped in the bud, a sad occurance for someone who while he was neither born in a log cabin nor walked miles barefoot through the snow to school did learn to read at age 4 or so from the Bible while perched on parental knees.

But my first memories of church are here, and they are all good ones: Sitting in a pew in the warm glow of sunlight streaming through the Woodman memorial window, the splay of gold organ pipes (now gone) across the front of the church, the dark wood structure that supported the roof and --- best of all --- as the Sunday school hour ended and the time for worship neared, the ceremonial opening by ushers of the immense (or so they seemed then) doors that slid first to double up and then vanish into the walls to reveal the adult Sunday school room, equipped with theater seats, that formed the north end of the church building.

That was a time when many small-town churches, including First Baptist, actually were full on Sunday mornings and the overflow seating area was needed.

I'd always thought First Baptist was a pretty church, although not exactly in the traditional triumphal southern Iowa way, but hadn't thought about its significance until a couple of years ago when I received a query via this blog from Elizabeth Vandam of Minneapolis, a research historian working on a biography and catalog of works of Minneapolis-based architect Harry Wild Jones.


She had found among his papers Wild's drawings of the elevation and floor plan of "Baptist Church, Russell, Iowa," and wanted to know if I could tell her if it still was around. I was able to tell her it was and went down that winter to take a couple of exterior photos so I could show her how near to the original design it remained.

The only exception is the absence of a towering steeple designed to top the bell tower and I have a feeling (but can't prove) that the practical Russell Baptists just never added that final flourish.


The major interior change I noted was the disappearance of the pipe organ I remember, perhaps an enhanced version of the one salvaged from the original First Baptist Church, a quite different building destroyed by fire. This was gone by the time I went to a wedding at First Baptist the summer after high school graduation, sacrificed (as many, many pipe organs were at that time) to the wonders of a shiny new electric organ. The pipes had vanished and had been replaced by an expanse of cream-colored wall.

Vandam now has published the results of her research (Vandam, Elizabeth, "Harry Wild Jones, American Architect," Minneapolis: Nodin Press, 2008), and I assume Russell First Baptist is mentioned in the large catalog of his work appended to it, although I've not yet seen the book itself.

I did a little research myself, trying to figure out exactly when the undated design was undertaken (probably 1913-1914), but issues of the Russell newspaper for those years have vanished and Chariton newspapers were not especially helpful. So there's still some doubt here.

Charles M. Wright, in his 1966 centennial history of Russell, tells us that the original church, built in 1883, burned in October of 1913 and includes the following transcript of an undated clipping:

"The Baptist Church in Russell caught fire last Sunday afternoon and was completely destroyed. The fire, which was discovered about four o'clock, started in the furnace room and from the headway it was making when discovered had evidently been burning two or three hours. The firemen arrived as soon as the alarm was given and made heroic efforts to save the building, but it had gotten too much of a start and all that could be done was to watch the building burn and to keep the nearby buildings from catching fire.

"Entrance to the building was gained through the southeast window, and the pulpit furniture and choir chairs were saved. The pipe organ was too large to get out through the window, but by quick work the sides of the window were chopped out, making a hole large enough to get the organ through and it was saved just as flames came through the floor near the pulpit.

"The church was dedicated thirty years ago the 30th of September, and was a good building, much better than could be built now for the same money.

"The building was insured for $2,000, and with that and what money will be raised later, the Baptists intend to rebuild as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made."

The Chariton Leader of Thursday, 23 October 1913, reported as follows: "The Baptist Church at Russell was destroyed by fire on Sunday afternoon and was a complete loss. All that was saved was the organ and pulpit furniture. There was only $2,000.00 insurance on the building. The structure had cost many thousands of dollars and was one of the prettiest edifices in the county. It will be rebuilt, no doubt, and people will generally assist in the enterprise, as the Baptist congregation there has always been liberal and free to help in the cuase of Christianity. So the people feel that is is a general loss and not confined to the Baptist congregation alone."

On 6 November 1913, The Chariton Herald Patriot reported, "At a special meeting of the members of the Baptist church this week plans were made to erect a new structure on the same site of the old one. It will be a good modern church."

Charles Wright goes on in the centennial history to tell us that after the fire, the Russell Methodists invited the Baptists to share their building and the pastors of the two congregations alternated as officiants. According to Wright, the new Baptist church was "built by Reuben Dixon and was completed in 1915."

Dixon undoubtedly was the contractor, the the architect is not mentioned; and there is no account of why the enterprising Baptists picked a Minneapolis architect with a nation-wide reputation to design what probably was the most remarkable church in the county when it was completed.

But Harry Wild Jones (1859-1935) was himself a staunch Baptist, born in Michigan as the only son of a Baptist preacher who, as preachers tend to do, moved about considerably before alighting at last in Bristol, Rhode Island. There seems to have been some expectation that Jones would become a preacher himself and he spent two years at Brown University in Providence before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he completed in 1882 its Short Course Architecture Program. After his marriage in Rhode Island, Jones established his Minneapolis practice in 1883.

So that strong Baptist link may explain in part at least how a church in Russell came to be designed by an architect highly regarded across the nation and whose work now is gaining a new generation of admirers. Known for his versatility, Jones also was among the most skillful structural engineers then working as an architect. So that may help explain why the building has proved to be so durable.

There's not much more to say here, other than I consider myself lucky to have these pleasant early church memories from Russell First Baptist to carry around with me --- and I think Russell, and the current generation of First Baptists, are lucky to still have this remarkable building doing the job it was designed to do.

Have I mentioned the snow?

Or the ice? Or the extreme cold? I suppose so. The red pickup (above) lives outside in Mason City and doesn't seem to mind. There are days when I do. We had about six more inches of snow overnight, so I've taken the preliminary steps needed to get moving (sweep some of the snow off and shovel a foot or two so I can back out into the driveway (the guy who clears the paths and the parking came while most of us still were parked). The next step will be to start her up, let her run for a while and then I should be mobile again.

It is -5F here right now. That translates to -21C, so perhaps we can feel a little warmer in Fahrenheit than Celsius and be grateful the U.S. has resisted urgings to switch. Sadly, -24 (-31C) is predicted overnight. Since the sun was out earlier today than predicted, it could get colder I suppose.

A warning that Interstate 35 was closed north of Webster City kept me home in Chariton for an hour longer yesterday morning, but that turned out to be pointless. The blockade actually had been in southbound lanes only due to a crash just where the great diagonal north of Blairsburg begins. By the time I got there, only a sedan in the configuration of a pancake (probably after rolling several times) and a few of the vehicles it had taken with it remained scattered in the median and beyond.

Actually, I counted only 20 vehicles in the ditch between Des Moines and Mason City, so it hadn't been a bad night accountable most likely to the fact the blizzard lasted only a couple of hours rather than the predicted several. We had about two hours of early-evening blizzard in Chariton after perhaps three inches of snow Monday morning followed by a warming-up period in the afternoon when it was possible to shovel it all comfortably away (of course it blew back Monday night).

It grew progressively colder as I drove north: 0 in Chariton, -4 at Dows and -6 in Mason City. Now I'm going to go start the truck and think warm thoughts.

Week that wuz: Good riddance

I drove nowhere yesterday, since I always walk to and from work, so now comes the job of sweeping the snow off the truck, firing it up and going out to do what needs to be done. Chinese snow torture continues: One flake at a time.

The day that began with snow ended (for many at the office) with a really uncomfortable confrontation between two of the participants at the late-afternoon meeting. Why is it, with at least eight hours in a work day, looming disputes cannot be resolved earlier and in private? When they're not, two peoples' unhappiness suddenly spreads to include several uncomfortable witnesses.

These are not good days in media-related businesses, especially newspapers, because of the general financial mess complicated for us by a corporate master teetering on the brink of Chapter 11 after having shot itself in the foot financially by being the rabbit who tried to swallow the elephant some years ago. So everyone's on edge to begin with.

I usually don't worry much about the important stuff like that and spend my time obsessing about inconsequential things --- like why I couldn't find my glasses a while ago after putting them down in a place I usually don't. It's not complacency, but in the course of a middle-aged life I've managed to wobble through Vietnam, the AIDS pandemic and good deal of other gloom, doom, death and destruction. So in all likelihood I'll make it through this, too, as will everyone else.

The third health-related shoe also dropped Friday in the circle of people I'm concerned about. First it was surgery to repair an ankle bone of a guy who while on a routine visit to his doctor said "Oh, by the way" and discovered that the bone apparently had just broken spontaneously. Then a trip to Mayo for the gal who had a benign tumor removed there a couple of years ago, then received a troubling report after a scan. No major problems turned up in either of those cases. But the capper is impending colon cancer surgery for another friend who already has survived breast cancer. Sheesh.

So there's my gloom and doom report. Now I'm going forth into the snow!

Freedom at last

More snow in Mason City (darn it) overnight and this morning, so I'm still breaking my only new year resolution so far --- get a haircut --- and fiddling around here. It's not that bad. I just don't feel like going out in it until I have to.

Someone at a newspaper I know of decided to conduct an online poll asking North Iowans what their favorite winter-time activities were. Snowmobiling? Ice fishing? Cross-country skiing? As it turned out the overwhelming majority favored staying inside, off the ice and out of the snow as often and for as long a time as possible. I can identify with that, although I don't mind being out in snow. It's the ice underneath that concerns me. I used to bounce when I fell down. Now it's more of a splat.

I had two errands out at Freedom Cemetery Monday, so this will be a little about the other one. But speaking of Freedom, isn't that a great name for a cemetery? I'd never really thought about it before, since those of us native to Lucas County for the most part know that the name "Freedom" actually comes from a little town there that made it onto the maps only briefly before drying up and blowing away. So our thought processes never move much beyond that, or Freedom Bible Camp just up the road west, still active and used by several Iowa congregations, that also owes its name to that once-upon-a-time little town.

Another of my favorite cemetery names is Eureka (after the Greek, "I have found it!") down in Marion County, where several of my Brown relatives are buried.

Back on track: The photo up top is of the tombstone of Barbara (Teas or Tease or Teese) Tuttle, first wife of Noah. Noah is the most prolific patriarch buried at Freedom with 14 children by two wives to his credit. Barbara was his first wife, daughter of Joseph and Sarah (Hartley) Teas (or one of those variant spellings). Barbara came to Benton Township with her mother, Sarah, and stepfather, Levi Fox. Somewhere around here there's a post entitled "Fox Hunting at New York" that was in part travelogue but primarily directions intended to guide Fox descendants to Levi's and Sarah's graves in the New York Cemetery.

Barbara married Noah on 8 February 1855 in Lucas County and they settled down on a farm just south of the Lucas/Wayne County line and produced a family of eight children before Barbara's death on 21 November 1871. So this photo is for the Fox descendants who didn't make it out to Freedom on their visits or who haven't made it back to Lucas County at all (are you reading this, Roberta?).

Some years after Barbara died, Noah married Margery Williams and they produced a family of six, one of whom was Guilford Tuttle who married Augusta "Gusty" Schreck, a Redlingshafer/Rosa descendant who, so far as I know, is my only kin at Freedom.


My favorite given name at Freedom is Gatsy, as in Gatsy Tuttle, wife of Benjamin and mother of Noah, whose tombstone you see here. It's a unique name in Iowa, at least, and when I plugged it into the Ancestry.com search engine to see just how unique it really was I discovered that a majority of the Gatsys in the world came from North Carolina. As you might guess, so did Gatsy Tuttle and her brood.

There are two Gatsys at Freedom, although Gatsey (Tuttle) Mitchell has an "e" and her grandmother apparently didn't, if her tombstone is to be trusted. Gatsey-with-an-e was Gatsy's granddaughter, daughter of Noah and Barbara.

Arthur Lillly Revisited

I wanted to use the title “Arthur Lilly Redux” here, but some folks are fussy about that word “redux” and heaven knows Arthur Lilly already has generated enough controversy.

In February of 2008 I wrote about Arthur’s death and burial in a piece entitled “The Contentious Passing of Arthur Lillie,” which you can find here if interested. If not, here’s the summary:

Arthur was something of a hermit who lived during the 1860s and early 1870s in a cabin just northwest of where the New York Road and the Lucas-Wayne county line intersect in far south Benton Township. Born in Ireland and far from kith and kin, he had neither known relatives nor intimate friends, only good neighbors --- including the Levi and Sarah Fox family and my own Myers ancestors and their extended family.

In late May, 1875, neighbors who knew Arthur was not in the best of health and who hadn’t seen him out and about for a few days investigated and found his decomposing body on the floor of his cabin. They built a coffin and buried him near the cabin, then turned his assets, roughly $70, over to the Lucas County courts.

There it might have ended had this footnote to Benton Township history not caught the attention of an anonymous source with the pseudonym Alba Owen who poison-penned a report to The Chariton Leader alleging that Arthur appeared to have been strangled, that those who buried him ransacked is body and cabin and made off with his treasure and then addressed the deceased as follows, "You lived like a hog, and we will bury you like one," as they unceremoniously buried him. That report was published June 5.

This report caused considerable unrest among the neighbors whose reputations it blackened, and on June 12 The Leader published a somewhat red-faced retraction, then went on to recount what really had happened.

I ended that piece a year ago convinced that Arthur’s unmarked grave still was out there somewhere on those 40 acres that he claimed. But I was wrong, as my cousin Frank Mitchell kindly pointed out a few months ago.

I had violated Rule No. 1 to follow when dealing with folks who are buried in Lucas County: Check the Lucas County Genealogical Society’s 1981 compilation of county tombstone inscriptions first before sticking one’s foot in one’s mouth and chomping down.

Frank, out at Freedom Cemetery last fall on a Tuttle-related errand (Freedom is a Tuttle boneyard), noted a tombstone way off by itself in the far northeast corner of the cemetery, walked over to examine it and lo and behold, there was Arthur Lilly. He checked the cemetery book, and yes --- there was a recorded, if not quite accurate, Arthur Lilly inscription. The actual inscription on the stone reads,

ARTHUR LILLY
Died May 21, 1875
Aged
60 years

The odd thing about Arthur’s grave at Freedom is this: It is barely inside the cemetery fence (although that fence dates from long after 1875) and a considerable distance from any other marked grave in the cemetery. Look carefully below and you can barely see the tombstone in the middle distance, right against the north cemetery fence.


So how did this all come to be?

Frank speculates (and I agree) that Alba Owen’s poison pen stung Arthur’s Benton Township neighbors so badly that they decided to deal unambiguously with anything that might be perceived as a wrong. My guess would be that Michael Reynolds, who The Leader reported had been named Arthur’s executor, ramrodded the project.

In all likelihood, Michael (who lived closer to Freedom than he did to either Salem or New York, the other cemeteries in the vicinity) probably obtained a gravesite at Freedom and the neighbors who buried Arthur in the first place disinterred his body, perhaps the following winter, and reburied it there. The $70 found among Arthur’s possessions when he died probably bought the tombstone.

Since cemetery lots in those days usually were quite large, Michael would not have wanted to buy a full lot for a single burial and because he apparently was Roman Catholic, probably would not have been interested in purchasing a lot of his own in a Protestant cemetery on which Arthur might be buried. So he probably obtained a site for a single burial in what was considered the “public” area of the cemetery, set aside usually for those who lacked enough money to purchase a burial plot.

Inscriptions from Calvary Cemetery in Chariton, Lucas County’s only Catholic cemetery, show a Michael Reynolds, born 4 March 1816, who died 4 March 1876, less than a year after Alfred did. If this is our Michael, then he outlived Arthur by under a year.

Most likely the date of Arthur’s death on the tombstone, May 21, and the age, 60, are best guesses.

Whatever the case, it’s good to know that Arthur Lilly’s whereabouts are known and that he’s not lost out there somewhere in Benton Township in an unmarked grave.

These photos were taken out at Freedom Monday. As you can tell, all but a few scraps of Lucas County's snow and all of its ice have melted. I wish that were the case in Cerro Gordo County.

Salem Cemetery Update: Daniel Ragsdale lot

I'm back on track now after holiday hiatus, I think, at this blog's sibling, the Salem Cemetery site. An e-mail from a descendant of John Houston, buried in Lot No. 31 with his daughters Margaret (died unmarried in 1857) and Sarah J. (Houston) Ragsdale as well as several members of the Ragsdale family, spurred me into action. So that lot now has been added and may be accessed here by anyone interested.

The photo up top is of John Houston's tombstone. I also posted Margaret's, but will have to wait until the weather improves a little before getting back out to Salem to adequately photograph the rest. A good tombstone photo depends upon arrival at a cemetery when the light is just right --- and I've not managed to do that yet with the Ragsdales.

Death and Texas

I've been following for perhaps a year the relatively new LDS FamilySearch effort to index (using volunteers) and then make available free the gazillion microfilmed records from around the world held by the Genealogical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's an exciting project and early results (this is project that will take decades) come online for use on a regular basis at the project's beta site. If you're not familiar with the project, you can read more about it here as well as access (after free registration) the search engine and available records.

I used "Texas Deaths, 1890-1971" last week to track down the mortal remains of Granville B. Boswell, a first-cousin of my great-grandmother, Chloe (Boswell) Prentiss/Brown. Digital images of death certificates or death records are available here (as are similar records from other states, including Michigan, Ohio and Arizona), so that makes it especially nice for obsessive-compulsive people like me who don't quite trust transcriptions and feel more secure after they've seen the record themselves.

Tracking Granville down involved dealing with some of the pitfalls that face genealogists, so I thought I'd talk a little about the process.

The first problem is Granville's name. Although his parents, William M. and Eliza Jane (See) Boswell --- brother and sister-in-law of Peachy Gilmer Boswell, my great-great-grandfather, named him Granville B. when he was born in Wayne County, Iowa, he picked up the nickname "Macalola," often shortened to "Mac," early in life. Heaven only knows why.

So in order to track down scattered references to Granville, who moved from Wayne County to Chariton with his family in the mid-1860s and then as a young adult to Texas, it's necessary to be aware of all his names. Since he didn't marry or have children to tell his stories, the references are few and far between. But he seems to have worked nearly all his life as a printer, at times as a partner with others to publish weekly newspapers in Texas, so there are some. You'd have to know that he was called "Mac" in order to discover that he also went to Alaska during the gold rush, however.

In any case, I started the Texas death records search with "Granville" Boswell, then switched to variant spellings of that name, then to "Mac" and finally found him as "G. B. Boswell, the name apparently supplied to the coroner by Granville's brother, John C. Boswell, with whom he spent much of his life and who is listed on the death certificate as "informant."

The certificate told me that Granville died on 7 May 1924 of a heart attack in San Antonio at the reported age of 67 and was buried in "Mission Burial Park."

But there's a problem here with his age. The death certificate gives his birth date as Feb. 21, 1857. However, all census records, 1860 through 1920, suggest that he actually was born in 1859, not 1857. And when the 1900 census of Texas was taken, Granville told the census-taker that he was born in January 1859, not February.

The discrepancies probably result from John C. Boswell's faulty memory. Someone in his 60s in the 1920s who was not a military veteran and lacked a wife and/or children ran risks like this. Granville may not have been asked to state his birthday for official purposes after 1900. He wouldn't have had a driver's license or Social Security card, for example, nor would he have applied for a pension.

After fussing for a while about how to enter his birth date in my records I used the day, 21, provided in the death certificate, but the month and year, January 1859, from the 1900 census, since that was as close as I could get to a date straight from Granville's mouth. Then I footnoted the reasons why I'd done this, so that anyone who cared to reach another conclusion could.

In a way all this caution will prove fruitless, since someone somewhere will find the date 21 January 1859 in my online database and add it to his or her database without the footnote and my conclusion will become definitive. But I've done the best I could do given what there was to work with.

WALKING WOUNDED

We had ice in Mason City on Saturday, the kind generated by a light freezing mist that just went on and on, coating streets and sidewalks already messy because of previous snowfall. At least 30 folks ended up in the emergency room at Mercy with broken bones, head injuries and the like as a result. It was as slippery as I've ever seen it by nightfall.

I went down twice, once walking back to work Saturday night on the First Christian sidewalk which had a long stretch of rough ice before the new ice came --- damn Christians and their damn sidewalks. Then again with only myself to blame when I got in a hurry heading into church Sunday morning and crash landed in the street just before I reached the salted and sanded Episcopalian sidewalk.

No permanent damage and the aches and pains have for the most part gone away, other than a pain in the wrist when I type too much, so that suggests I'd better stop typing for now.

We still need a little Christmas, darn it!

So I thought I'd start off the new year with a fuzzy photo of the Christmas tree that sits in a corner here in Mason City and never goes away. Fuzzy because I'm too lazy to do what I'd need to do to get a nice crisp entirely-in-focus shot into that dim corner.

Never goes away for the most part, too, because I'm lazy and it's a time-consuming task to decorate and undecorate this heavily-decorated little fake. So its lights comes on year-around when I flip on the living room lamps and in general it makes me happy --- although it does have to be taken apart and dusted every year or so.

Besides, the big plants on steroids I used to keep in this corner before the advent of the tree always died, and this is cheaper. And I have a hard time giving up on Christmas any way.

One friend in Chariton at least waited until the day after Christmas this year before yanking the family tree down and sending it to storage (it's rarely survived Christmas afternoon in the past). Another neighbor was disassembling and boxing up his outdoor display as I drove away Tuesday morning.

But I'll still turn on the outside lights and light the lanterns on the front steps until Epiphany, then we'll see. The (indoor) Nativity set will stay up, too, for at least a while since (a) it looks nice and (b) it was joined by an three-piece angelic ensemble this year --- on lute, harp and violin --- and I want to admire the whole thing for a while longer.

I'm never quite sure why we want to plunge so quickly into January's chilly gloom, making resolutions we'll not keep and leaving the bright lights behind. Having put Christ into Christmas I say we should now put more of the pagan back into Xmas and dance around the fire for a while longer.

THIS WAS THE YEAR Iowa's skittish weather punctuated the season. I drove south the Sunday before Christmas in a blizzard (not a stunt to try at night or on two-lane roads --- when the DOT says "no travel advised" they mean it). I waited until the no-travel advisory was dropped, but it was good to have most of the Interstate to myself since visibility sometimes was a problem.

After two feet of snow up here it was nice to find just a skim of ice covered by a couple of inches of snow capped by another layer of ice down there. Then it snowed some more. With help from Nash, the accumulated mess on the the driveway was chipped away Christmas Eve. The day after Christmas, spring arrived and I spent a neighborly morning helping to chip the mess off Lee's driveway. Then everything melted. By nightfall, there was nary a scrap of snow to be seen. But on Saturday we had another ice storm. On Sunday and Monday, however, that went away, too. And so it went.

I WISH I HAD reports of a really exciting holiday week to report, but I don't. Lots of visiting, lots of weather, lots of reading --- it was great!

Plans for a quiet New Year's Eve turned really quiet when I made the mistake of going into the office Wednesday afternoon do do a few necessary things, then inadvertently agreed to post the online edition. So there I sat as 11 p.m. approached awaiting the results of a local hockey game. At 10:45, the results came, I posted, turned out the lights and went home with no complaints at all.

So here I sit without a resolution to my name. Guess I'll think one up real quick then go out and break it immediately and be done.

Lime green to bright red: Blizzard warning

That ominous lime green "blizzard watch" over northwest Iowa turned bright red ("blizzard warning") overnight and expanded itself to cover Mason City, so we may or may not be in for it today, tonight and tomorrow.

We had a mildly cranky discussion at the office last night about exactly what a blizzard is (some thought merely heavy snow, but it's more than that). A blizzard involves the combination of snow and strong winds in excess of 35 mph. It's a nasty business resulting in zero visibility (stay off the roads) and extensive drifting (stay off the roads again). When combined with extreme cold, also predicted, a blizzard can be and often is deadly.

This part of the state is especially prone to blizzards since it started out in large part as prairie and there's really nothing between here and Wyoming and Montana (other than the Black Hills) to stop or slow down that darned wind --- and the Black Hills are a long day's drive away. So hold onto your hat (and parka and boots).



I UNDERESTIMATED the volume of the Thursday-Friday overnight snow --- actually about eight inches came down here, but most of that's been pushed out of the way by now and we're back in business for the moment. Here's a look at the pile of snow pushed off the small parking area along the north side of our office building and obscuring the newsroom door (the main entrance is around the corner almost a block away). Usually this sort of pile doesn't develop until January, so it's supposed to be hauled away today to make room for more.



Since I was out this morning, I took a quick photo of one of my favorite houses in this neighborhood, a grand old Queen Anne that hasn't exactly fallen upon hard times but certainly is in a gentle decline. That's the house at the top of this entry. And here you can see the rods the fire department installs at fireplugs so that they can be found if and when the snow buries them. Woe unto us if the snow gets that deep.


FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH (Disciples of Christ) is my next-door neighbor in Mason City and I have an uneasy relationship every winter with this rather odd example of 1920s triumphalism. The difficulty is, the Christians never attend to the sidewalk along the north side of the building, which I walk at least four times daily going to and from the office and that many others use since this is a mixed (and quite nice) neighborhood where all sorts of people live, including a good number who do not drive.

They've done much better this year, but I'm waiting to see if it's only because they've had a series of public events planned (a pre-Christmas bake sale today, for example). I'd never thought too much about it, since I'm entirely capable of taking to the street and walking around it, until a winter or so ago when I came across walking home at night a then-neighbor who was paralyzed and had no way to get around other than a sort of all-terrain wheelchair. He'd slipped off the damned Christians' unkempt sidewalk into snow and was stranded on a chilly night. I got him going again, but that's caused me to wonder since about what sort of message is being sent here. I realize this is now a smallish congregation in a largish building and finances probably are tight --- but still. There now, I've had my self-righteous moment for the day (very gratifying) and can move on.

I'M TAKING Christmas week off (something not done in years and years) and heading to the land of no Internet connection (Chariton, and most actually are connected there; I just enjoy being away from it for a while so never have bothered). But now with the blizzard warning and all, I'm not so sure when I'll leave. At least with time on my hands I don't feel pressured to hit the road when I shouldn't. But since the predicted low here for Sunday night is -16F I'd better go gas up the truck and get a few extra groceries just in case I'm here. Then I'll be off to the office, since this kind of weather almost always results in early deadlines.

Weather report and another blog

As often happens, the great storm didn't quite live up to the forecasts --- fine by me. From inside looking out, and I won't go out for another hour at least, we have maybe 5 inches of new snow here just sitting around waiting for the wind to kick in, but it hasn't done that yet. There is an ominous lime-green blizzard watch over in northwest Iowa, more snow is predicted tomorrow and Sunday and gusts in the 40s mph forecast here. Could have been worse, and may well be yet.

The McFarland News Service report from Chariton concerns ice and general slipperyness (but my garbage container made it safely out to the curb, thank you very much), but so far no downed limbs, branches (or power lines). Here's hoping there won't be.

It's always entertaining to watch the quiet frenzy mount around here as the forecasters become more and more shrill --- and at one point last night 8-12 inches of snow were predicted for Mason City. Everyone wants to get home fast, anticipating that hazard-filled 12 block drive to the east side of town. Multiple scanners bounce off each other from odd corners of the newsroom day and night. So about 9 last night someone caught the end of scanner conversation and asked, in alarm, "did they just say the Interstate was closed?" Well, it hadn't started to snow here yet, and didn't until just after I walked home at 11.

Like I said, I like to read about farming and ranching and the Internet has no geographic boundaries, so here's another favorite:

Musings from a Stonehead: Stonehead here refers to Stonehead Croft near Insch in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This guy who lives with his wife and children on and farms the croft (a smallholding that Iowans accustomed to hundreds if not thousands of acres would think very small indeed) subtitles the blog, "The trials and tribulations of a modern crofter." They raise hogs (Berkshires), chickens (Scots Grays and ISA Browns), sheep and vegetables, working to become as self-sufficient as possible. I really enjoy the running commentary of the head of this household --- and the recipes, too. This week we've had toad-in-the-hole, mincemeat and roasting pork the Stonehead way.

Blogs I read

Iowa's just sitting here this morning like a duck stuck in pond ice waiting for the next storm. You never know with the weather, but the latest forecast predicts a major ice storm across the south of Iowa and major snow across much of the rest. Merry Christmas from Mother Nature. I guess we'll just wait and see.

While waiting, I'm going to start replacing the "Blogs I Read" list over to the left. It'll take a while. A big problem with lists like this is that bloggers often stop blogging and links become dead ends. I went in several months ago to remove one of those dead ends from the previous incarnation of this list and accidentally removed the whole thing, then never quite got around to putting it back.

I read a lot of blogs and a lot of my favorites turned up as links on other blogs, so that's the reason for this list. Many of the blogs I read are rural. I've never farmed, but am in the first generation of my family not to (and now hardly any family members do), so I still think in farm/ranch terms much of the time and get up way too early in the morning even though there are no cows to milk or horses to feed. I think the world would be a better place if more people farmed or ranched, but on the other hand get cranky when city folks buy that little (or big) place in the country and clutter up the scenery with their outlandish houses.

I hardly ever read the blogs of people obsessed with politics (who seem to write the same thing over and over again) or of people who are angry all the time (ditto). Sporadic anger is fine, however. Many of my favorite blogs are written by people who share neither my political and religious convictions nor my sexual orientation. You never learn stuff if you only associate with people you agree with all the time. The point of the exercise is to learn how to get along amicably with people you disagree with.

So here starts the list, and if I carry through with this, "Blogs I read" will keep popping up on this side of the aisle as I add favorites over there.

Riverbend Journal: Ed Abbey (not that Ed Abbey) is a southern Iowan, too, although of a slightly more eastern persuasion. He's a native of one of the Iowavilles and you know how I feel about Iowaville. Ed started blogging as "Recycled Thoughts," but the problem there was that his thoughts tended to be original rather than recycled and quite intelligent and perceptive, too, so he closed that blog out and began again as "Riverbend." We share an interest in family history. It's hard to characterize Ed's blog, so you'll just have to see for yourself.

Sugar Creek Farm: Kelli Miller along with husband, Matt, and their children, live on a small farm not far from Osage in far North Iowa's Mitchell County. Since lots of what they produce on the farm is sold at farmers markets in the region during the season, you're liable to run into them. This is one of the friendliest, positive presentations of life on a smallish Iowa farm that I've come across, always a pleasure to read.

The Beginning Farmer: Like I said, I like to read about farming and ranching. Ethan Book and his family (wife and two young children) recently bought a farm with no buildings on it out there somewhere southwest of Knoxville toward Melcher-Dallas and built a simple home where they live now and are establishing a herd of Dexter cattle (I prefer black Angus). He also is associate pastor of New Covenant (Baptist) Church in Knoxville (that's Marion County in God's country --- southern Iowa).

Enough snow already!

By now we've seen enough snow around here to do for a while, so here's the upstairs Christmas cactus instead, blooming its little green heart out. There are two of these, one up and one down, but the downstairs version --- a different shade of pink --- hangs in an odd place and because of that is not as photogenic as this one.

I've posed the cactus (temporarily) on the old banged-up piano stool that's held a Christmas cactus for generations. I remember it sitting in the east window of Granddad Miller's downstairs bedroom out at the farm with his mother's cactus on it. I wonder what became of that plant (thrown out, I'll bet). My great-aunt Easter wanted it and Granddad gave it to her, but most if not all of her descendants moved someplace other than Chariton and I'd guess no one took it along. It was an old one, planted in a big enameled cooking pot that had rusted through and been recycled (waste not, want not). Since it predated the hybrid craze, it's blossoms were not as elaborate as these, but I wish we'd gotten a start off it anyway.

IT'S BEEN COLDER than the dickins here, but the deepest snow is in north Iowa where we had about a foot by the time it warmed up slightly last week, and now a fresh coat has been added and we're poised on a cold, sunny day between storms. The warnings are out statewide for that one, which seems predisposed to deposit ice in Lucas County and snow, in Cerro Gordo. Hopefully, we'll not have a rerun of last December's ice storm down south.

I timed yesterday's trip north just right, so felt safe taking the back roads. It had just started to snow in Chariton and since it was extremely cold the snow was light and dry and the wind wasn't strong enough to hinder visibility. It turned out to be a beautiful drive, all three hours-plus of it, with snow all the way, blowing off most of the north-south roads I traveled. Just like that Christmas card, as we sometimes say. Only between Union and the hills south of Eldora, where there's lots of shelter, had snow accumulated much on the roads and even then it wasn't slippery.

BUT COLD, oh yes. I finally got around Monday to going out to the cemetery to exchange (I thought) fall for Christmas flowers --- I know, I know, it seems odd to some but it's just one of the things we do around here. The dead quite often are as much with us at the holidays as not, so it seems nice to remember them this way.

Salem is one of the coldest places in creation come winter because there's nothing there where the prairie begins to break toward the Chariton River bottoms to stop the wind. There's been a lot of wind lately and that had scattered faded floral tributes, including my own, far and wide across the farm field to the north so there wasn't much use for the garbage bag I took along.

Used to be, the cemetery had a north fence line full of brush and stuff that stopped most of what was blowing around the cemetery and I could bag the debris and take it away. But now, in a fit of greed, the megafarmer who crops the field to the north has taken the fence row out so he can plant a row or so closer to the graves and there's no stopping anything when the wind's in the south. Kind of hope some of those wired flowers plug up his equipment come spring, the greedy bastard.

Anyhow, I accomlished my mission although it seemed for a minute or two when I stepped out of the truck and into the wind that I might be found there in the cemetery frozen solid with a plastic (silk actually) poinsettia clutched in my cold, dead hand. But I made it out and back, although I surely didn't linger.

Now I guess it's time to get back to the Christmas cards.

The Christmas Desk

Dickens knew the role of ghosts at Christmas best, and his lessons --- and theirs --- have resonated among us since that story of Scrooge and three night visitors first was read around open fires in the winter chill of London in December 1843.

Those ghosts, along with our own, still are with us in this troublesome year of our Lord 2008 as Advent moves toward the certain star of Christmas, but uncertainty beyond.

Now, as then, it is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come we fear.

But given our inability to do more than anticipate the future, it is the ghosts of Christmas past from whom those of us still writing our own Christmas carols can learn.

I THOUGHT AT FIRST that I would not tell this story of the Christmas desk. It seemed too full of the sorrows of 128 years, inappropriate in a season expected to be full of joy.

But this I think is only a perception built because we often dwell on the sorrows that punctuate life and lose track of the joy that came before and will follow if we allow it.

So I will tell you these family secrets and sorrows, as well as joys, hoping that you will recognize dark threads as only that, counterpoints in a larger and largely joyful pattern.

ALTHOUGH IT IS FADING and difficult to decipher now, there is an inscription on the bottom of the Christmas desk written boldly in black ink in a strong and graceful hand that I recognize as my Great-aunt Emma’s: “Emma Prentiss, Columbia, Iowa, Dec. 25, 1880.”

Emma, 16 in that year, also was the great-aunt of all reading this who are my Miller first-cousins, an elder half-sister of our grandmother, Jessie.

She was born on the 12th of September, 1864, on a small farm of woods interspersed with prairie along Wildcat Creek just north of Corydon in Wayne County, Iowa.

Her parents, who had settled here in a log house 10 years earlier, were Chloe (Boswell), born in Virginia, and Moses W. Prentiss, native to Ohio. Emma had three older sisters, Eva, Laura and Sarah. Living nearby were her maternal grandparents, Peachy Gilmer and Caroline (McDaniel) Boswell, and other Boswell kin.

When Emma was not yet a year old, on the 6th of July 1865, her father was killed when a boiler used to power a sawmill exploded --- an explosion still talked about a century later by my grandfather and distant cousins who had carried the story down.

There were no welfare programs in that time other than family, and remarriage was a widow’s hope. But who would take on a woman with no money and four young daughters?

It took time, but five years later, Joseph Brown, my great-grandfather, did just that. Born on the 4th of July 1811 in Ohio into a Scots-Irish family of fierce Presbyterian sensibility, he was 59 and Chloe, 37, more than 20 years his junior, when they married at Corydon on the 17th of November 1870 in the year that Emma turned 6.

Joseph, widowed first in 1850 when his first wife, Hester, died, had raised single-handedly a family that included seven children and while doing that moved all save one to Iowa. He had waited until they were grown before marrying again --- in September of 1869 to the widow Penelope Dawson who was of his own generation. She, however, died less than a year later in Washington, Iowa, and wasting no time --- this time --- Joseph married Chloe four months later, soon after they were introduced by her aunt, Mary (Boswell) Brown, who was the wife of his brother, Archibald.

Joseph was a small and compact man with a wispy beard and sparks in his eyes, respected and for the most part loved by children and stepchildren alike. I suspect, but do not know, that my Uncle Owen Miller might have been closest to him is size and disposition. Chloe was larger, and calm. Fire and water.

If Great-grandfather had a fault, some say, it was only that his fierce Presbyterian convictions sometimes caused him to come down on the near side of charity when the sins of others were considered.

In the spring of 1871, Joseph and Chloe, Chloe’s four daughters, including Emma, and Chloe’s mother, Caroline, loaded their belongings into wagons and moved the width of Lucas County north to Columbia, located just where prairie meets the woods near the Lucas-Marion county line.

There, two more children were born, Joseph Ellis Brown in 1871 and my grandmother, Jessie, in January of 1875 --- when her father was 64 and her mother, 41.

There were, if my grandmother’s stories are to be believed, far more happy than unhappy days in that trim white clapboard house, four rooms down and two up, at the principal crossroads in Columbia. Great-grandfather owned the northwest quarter of that town and sold off lots bordering the streets so that the May Store, other businesses and homes could be built. There was always something going on there.

It was here, two months after her 16th birthday, that Emma received the Christmas desk, although I do not know who gave it.

This surely must have been a remarkable gift at a time when Christmas presents were minimal and tended to be made by hand or edible.

Although not elaborate, this was store-bought --- it’s exterior hand-grained to simulate a grander wood with gold “hardware” carefully painted on. It had (and still has) a lock and key, so privacy would be possible. Fully open, it forms a sloped felt-covered writing surface not really convenient in a lap (although it is called a lap desk), more appropriate for a table top. The hinged writing surface opens to two compartments where writing paper and treasures could be stored and a small lidded pen try is flanked by recesses where ink wells could be placed.

Many of the items Emma placed in that desk during her years as its custodian remain there.

In the years that preceded and followed that Christmas, Emma’s sisters married, Laura to Alpheus Elkanah Love, a Carolina man with great musical and artistic talent but little ability to make money; Eva, to John Rush West and Sara, to Samuel McCorkle, husbands who died far too young. Sarah and Sam moved to Nebraska where he was struck and killed by lightning as he sought lost sheep on open prairie where there was no shelter.


EMMA, HOWEVER, DID NOT HURRY to marry, and was the last of Chloe’s first family to remain at home as the 1880s advanced. She was a fine seamstress who sewed for others, often staying in their homes while she outfitted children for school or crafted Sunday-go-to-meeting clothing for entire families.

By the early summer of 1887, when she was 22, Emma was expecting a child although she was not married.

Now a child born out of wedlock today most likely will be received graciously and generously and the mother will not be scorned, but that was not necessarily the case a century ago. And it is at this point from the perspective of 2008 that I would have a bone to pick with my great-grandfather.

According to the story-tellers, Joseph forbade Emma and the father of her child to marry, although they wished to do so, because of what he perceived to be great wickedness in their child’s conception.

That account of things may or may not be accurate, although surely there is some truth in it. It may have been that Joseph knew things about the father I do not and that there were circumstances lost to time, so benefit of the doubt remains and it can do no harm to extend it now.


WE DO NOT KNOW who the father was, but when Verna was born on the 17th of October 1887, her name was entered as “Verna Jones Prentiss” in a family Bible. Someone tried later with many strokes of a pen and black ink to obliterate “Jones.” But time and fading ink had made the name visible again by the time I saw the record among my grandfather’s papers.

So it seems that Verna’s father was a Jones, but I have never made an attempt to find him. Was he Welsh? Perhaps among the coal miners then at work in nearby Pleasant Township? Jones is not a Columbia name. Most likely we will never know.

It is Verna who is important here, however, not her father or the circumstances of her conception and birth.

Just as the Christmas desk was a special gift to Emma, so Verna was a special gift, unrealized then, to those of us who in the course of her 91 years would love her and be loved in return.

I will not try to fool you into believing that Verna had an easy life. That would make this an easier Christmas story to tell and ensure a happy ending. But she did not. Her life would have defeated many of us.

When still a toddler, Verna was stricken by polio, then known as infantile paralysis. As a result, her body was twisted and it always was a challenge for her to walk, more so as she grew older. In the years that I knew her, she had difficulty unless holding onto someone’s hand or supported by a succession of chairs on wheels that she pushed about the house as she cleaned and kept nearby as she cooked.

The polio also affected her ability to speak clearly, something that those who loved her didn’t think about but strangers sometimes found disconcerting, akin to conversing with someone whose English was heavily accented by another more natural language.

Within that somewhat battered small container, however, was a great spirit and a razor-sharp mind; and she became the repository of family lore stretching back a century or more that she gladly shared when asked to do so. Her mind, ears and heart always were open.

When Verna was 6, her mother, Emma, died --- on the 14th of January 1894 at the age of 30.

Emma and her younger half-brother, Joseph Brown Jr., visited in late summer 1893 his much older half-brother, Jonathan Edwards Brown, a stonemason and builder of fine barns, at Durham, a Marion County town that by now has vanished.

As they were leaving in a horse-drawn buggy, a train whistle spooked the horse and it bolted. Joseph and Emma were thrown, Emma onto a pile of posts. Although she recovered sufficiently to travel that fall to her sister’s, Eva’s, home to sew for nieces and nephews, Emma’s health began to fail and it became clear that there had been undetected injuries by then untreatable.

In this manner, Verna was grafted onto my immediate family and became inseparable from it. Raised in Columbia by her Aunt Jessie, Uncle Joe and Grandmother Chloe (Joseph Brown Sr. died of old age on 4 December 1893, a few weeks before Emma’s death), Verna took the name Brown, although that was not formalized until in extreme old age when a government agency uncomfortable with ambiguity demanded proof that she existed.

My mother could have told you of the challenges involved in demonstrating to bureaucrats the existence of the person, Verna Brown, then seated before them, when a birth certificate had never been issued and the Bible record had been misplaced.

When Verna’s Aunt Jessie married my grandfather, William Ambrose Miller, in 1905, Verna was part of the package, as was Chloe, and they came along. Verna became an integral member of a rollicking household in English Township, Lucas County, that included six lively children, including my mother.

After 40 happy years, Jessie died in 1945 at 70 of diabetic complications before I was born, but there was never a doubt that Verna would remain with Grandfather, whom she called “Dad,” as his companion, housekeeper and conscience (he had always been a difficult man to manage), and as surrogate grandmother to his grandchildren, few of whom had the opportunity to know Jessie.

Many more good years followed the sorrow of Jessie’s loss, but eventually, in her 80s, Verna’s health failed and my mother began to fight her battles for her --- which is why Emma’s Christmas desk of 1880 became a gift to my mother in the 1970s. It was one of few items of a physical nature that was Verna’s to bestow.

I am now its custodian by right of inheritance and the desk still is filled to brim and overflowing with turn-of-the-20th-century postcards, Emma’s autograph book, a few of her writings, locks of hair tied up in ribbon and string, a tiny corked vial filled with a mysterious powder, dozens of inch-square photographs of people long dead who were Emma’s friends and companions.

When my mother was a girl, the Christmas desk was brought out of safekeeping and given to children sick abed to keep them amused as they examined its contents carefully, one by one. Some items I suppose were removed over the years, others added. My mother removed a small glittering crystal paperweight she found there and put it where it caught the light.

I do the same sort of examination now and then, marveling that such things should have survived so long.

But although I value the Christmas desk for its beauty and its associations, I value the memory of Verna more.


AND SO THIS CHRISTMAS, in a season that may precede a challenging year, I want to hold Verna’s memory up before you --- not like a pale ghost of Christmas past --- but like a bright candle still burning against the darkness of adversity and the unknown. Her spirit was never extinguished by despair, she was grateful for the simplest of gifts and remained full of hope and faith and grace until the end of her time among us.

May these gifts be yours, and mine.

Merry Christmas!

Family history-related updates

Lots of my spare time lately has been spent over at the Salem Cemetery site or adding information to my online family history file at RootsWeb. Both of these are linked at left.

The Selders and Risbeck lots at Salem, Nos. 44 and 45 respectively, were added to the Salem site this week, although they're far from complete. Since the Risbeck family is related to my Redlingshafer family in a distant and obscure sort of way and the Selders were neighbors of my Myers great-great-grandparents at New Florence in Westmoreland County, Pennylvania, I keep going off on tangents when I work with them, which occupies more time than usual. Last week, I added the Calvin E. Hatfield lot (No. 50), but need to collect a couple of tombstone photos and obituaries to complete it --- since Salem is snowed under right now, that will be a challenge.

I've uploaded an update to the family history file, something I intended to do regularly, but neglect. I spent a little time this week adding information about the family of Martin and Anna Mary (Redlingshafer) Banschbach, who lived at DePue in Bureau County, Illinois. Anna Mary's mother, Doratha Redlingshafer (my great-great-great-grandmother), is buried at Salem.

The family history file is at RootsWeb rather than, say, at Ancestry.com for a specific reason. RootsWeb is free and open to all, while Ancestry is a subscription-only service, and the only point of having this material online is to make it available to others.

Still, what I consider misuse of the information aggravates me sometimes. Misuse in my opinion involves adding extensive information to one's own family file from someone else's without noting where the information came from. In the first place, it's good manners to give credit where credit is due, but of more consequence --- folks who happen upon material online need to be able to tell where it came from so that they can judge its authenticity and accuracy or track it to its original source if they care to do so.

Then there are folks out there who create trophy family history files containing tens of thousands of names (a curse be upon them) for no reason other than the fact that they can, in many cases "merging" others' files automatically with their own --- slob genealogy, in other words.

Online genealogy is a blessing (bringing sources that only a few years ago would have taken years to access as close as a mouse-click and connecting cousins who wouldn't have met in any other way) and a curse --- misinformation spreads like wildfire once published online. I may complain about it now and then, but would be hard pressed to live without it.

Jolly old St. Nick(s)

Seems like we all need a little more Christmas than usual this year, so I've pulled out all the family Santas I can find and marshaled them on the pie safe to await deployment.

A few still are missing, but will turn up. I'm anxious to find Santa as Uncle Sam waving a flag. I can't remember if he's musical (a music box in his base), or just stands there. So I'll keep looking. Then there's the tall homemade wooden job with "Peace" stenciled down his front. He'll turn up. Lord knows we need a little more peace than usual this year, too

My favorite here is the guy on the right holding a book. Although you can't see it, he's got a book bag on his back. That was a gift years ago motivated by the unruly stacks of books I live with.

I've known folks who are downright Ebenezer-Scroogish about old Santa, but it's probably a good idea to lighten up and rise above all that. I wonder what the original St. Nicholas, 4th century bishop of Myra, renowned for his gifts to the poor, would make of his continuing popularity.

Happy New Year!

We've been obsessing lately about the end of things --- of the economy as we've known it, of summer, of war, of autumn's long and gentle drift to snow (which is falling here this morning). In doing that, it's easy to lose track of beginnings, of new years and fresh starts, and hope.

I got to thinking about that yesterday after walking into a room that had been filled with conflict earlier in the day related to nothing more than bad temper related to the weight of the world on various shoulders. I'm grateful not to have been there for it.

The start of a new year now nearing on our western Gregorian calendar, Anno Domini 2009, is one way we we use to break the old off from the new and try to leave the debris behind, usually without much luck. That will be a Christian calculation, of sorts, but by no means a religious celebration on 31 December/1 January.

Of course it's not the only new year observance out there. Jews marked the start of year 5769 on Rosh Hashanah, observed from sunset on 29 September until nightfall on 1 October.

The pagans among us (and Christians, too, since we've never been shy about adapting pagen rites and turning them to our own uses) are entitled to celebrate at 6:04 a.m. Central Standard Time on 21 December, the winter solstice --- sun at its greatest distance from those of us in the northern hemisphere, shortest day of the year, longest night, beginning of winter --- but the turning point toward spring.

Come 26 January, the Chinese (or lunar) new year, called Tet in Vietnam where I once celebrated it.

But I prefer the beginning of Advent, which occurred on Sunday, the end of what sometimes seems the endless season of Pentecost and the start of a new church year and of the season of expectant waiting that will end with another new beginning on Christmas Eve.

Advent especially, because it begins with the lighting of a single candle around the world against the physical darkness that is closing in upon us.

Remember Eleanor Roosevelt's words? “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

Happy new year! Light a candle. Let your light shine.