You say Potato…I say Potahto…

A Note to My Readers:  So much for soundex.   I mean, let’s face it, it can only go so far and sometimes too far giving you a plethora of odd results.  My fifth great grandfather is Samuel Weyburn.   Sam finally settled on spelling his surname as Weyburn after generations of Wiborn(e) and Wyborn(e) ancestors.  And I learned to use variations of the name working through the research.  Soundex was pretty responsive to the whims of spelling and so the search results were decent enough.  Just decent.  Like most genealogists, I am a greedy goose and I want more than a decent amount.  I decided to forgo the crutch of technology and use my own brain and begin to change my research strategy.

What did I know about Samuel Weyburn besides his name?

Samuel Fletcher Weyburn’s genealogical publication “Weyburn-Wyborn genealogy: a history and pedigree of Thomas Weyburn of Boston and Scituate, Massachusetts, and Samuel Weyburn of Pennsylvania with Notes on the Origin of the Family in England and Several Branches in Kent County in Particular”, copyrighted in 1911, provides the researcher with a glimpse into what he found as he went through old documents.  Mentions of our common ancestor with spellings of Samuel Waburn and Weaburn settled me back into the job of using different spelling options as I poured through archival material myself.  A tip of the hat to S. Fletcher Weyburn’s  hundred year old research and using the variations he documented, I dug deep into Pennsylvania Archives and found the muster rolls of the Eighth Battalion of Cumberland Pennsylvania and Samuel serving under Captain Robert Samuels.

Of course, the surname variation is something we all expect to see in our research.  It occurred to me as I read through the old archives that first name variations can trip you up as well.   Even a simple name like Samuel.   I found Sam, of course, but then Sam’l popped up from time to time and it occurred to me that I had to broaden my thinking and be prepared to find my ancestor as S., Sam, Samuel, Sam’l, Wiborn, Waborn, Waburn, Weaburn, Wyborn, Wayburn, Wyburn and even Wibron…a transcription error that I almost missed.

As a primary research parameter, Samuel Weyburn, was obviously not a good option.    Going to the biography that I had assembled, I decided to use life events, dates and places as the primary parameter and to use his surname variation as a second qualifier.   He was from Connecticut and he migrated to Pennsylvania where he served in the militia and participated in the Pennemite War.  His wife was Jane Bratton from Juniata, Pennsylvania.  In the late 1780′s they migrated to the head of Cayuga Lake with their seven children including my 4th great grandmother, Elizabeth Weyburn (Ingersoll) and where Samuel and his oldest son, Samuel had built a log cabin at the base of Taughannock Falls.   Where he fought a bear.

A New York State Historical Marker sits at the trail entrance commemorating when Samuel Weyburn rescued Abner Tremain during a blizzard.   And there is the 1790 Federal Census…the very first one, that has Samuel Wayburn and his family living in what was then geopolitically Chemung, Montgomery County, New York.    In 1794 New York State land records show that Samuel Weyburn bought 150 acres from Abner Kidder in Ovid in what is now Seneca County.   His probated will records are archived in Waterloo, Seneca County, New York where he is Samuel Weyburn.  As is the simple inscription on his monument in Lakeview Cemetery in Interlaken, New York.

Samuel Weyburn  Died March 29, 1825 at 78 years, 9 months & 29 days.

Reading and researching old history books about Pennsylvania and the Connecticut Yankees that settled the Susquehanna Valley,  I found Samuel with Weyburn spelled in a number of ways and serving with Captain Samuels and the activities of the Paxton Boys. “A History of Wilkes-Barre, from its First Beginnings to the Present Time, Including Chapters of Newly Found Early History of Wyoming Valley, volume II” compiled by Oscar Jewell Harvey in 1909 lists Samuel Weyburn “or Wibron or Wybrant” as one of the eighty-nine Susquehanna settlers who were ‘inmates’ of Fort Durkee.

Of course, no Boolean online tricks there.  I was back to the days of S. Fletcher Weyburn, my second cousin 3 times removed.   Back to turning pages and comprehensively reading books and footnotes and bibliographies which lead to more books.   I even own a few now.   Hard copies.   Early editions.  A bit of an expensive indulgence, but then I don’t like foie gras and champagne so I am good with that.  Besides…I gained an enormous understanding of the Scots-Irish that came from Norwich, Connecticut and claimed the Susquehanna Purchase in Pennsylvania and the colonial tug of war between the Yankees and William Penn’s Quakers.    They were a particular thorn in the side of Ben Franklin, but as England along with their native American allies and the colonials began to clash, the two groups found their common interest and joined forces.

And amidst the militia men I find Sam Weaburn and his brother-in-law, Edward Bratton.   I close my eyes and say “Weyburn” and imagine that Captain Samuels was spelling Private Samuel Weyburn…Weaburn.  And in each case, it is the ‘soundex’ of an individual way back in 1781 that gets me there.   And so it goes with enumerators and clerks, authors and any one who could put pen to paper…or keyboard to cyberspace.  And now we have to worry about voice recognition.

Author’s Note:   I will be back in central New York this summer haunting libraries, historical societies, and pioneer cemeteries.  As always, I will take some time to enjoy Cayuga Lake and surrounds…where I was born and where Samuel Weyburn settled over 150 year ago.   The journey back to his Pennsylvania and Connecticut days up until now has been by the written word and  I plan for a field trip armed with the combined work of S. Fletcher Weyburn and a number of old history books, a handful of documents and the sure knowledge that I will be challenged with creative spellings.  But then that is the fun of it, isn’t it.   The ‘aha’ moment.

Deborah Martin-Plugh

Author, Historian and Genealogical Researcher

http://www.facebook.com/thegenealogistsinkwell

A Saratoga Trunk with a Stranger’s Name

A Note To My Readers:  Family historians have a penchant for heirlooms and many of us are fortunate to be the keepers of family treasure.  Some of us haunt antique stores searching for a talisman of the past.  Perhaps great grandpa was a cobbler and and a vintage shoe last calls out to you from a shelf and you take it home to remind you of him.  Perhaps a Saratoga trunk with a stranger’s name.  Deborah Chase.

I always marvel at those folks who have seemingly endless family heirlooms still in their possession.  I have been reading old wills from the 1800′s which spell out the usual estate holdings followed by the distribution of goods and money.  In those formal documents the trail of an heirloom exists.  After all, these vintage things that we possess today were inherited down a line and have a history.  Practical, personal and human.

The heirloom centerpiece of what I have belonged to my great grandmother, Elizabeth A. Williams Purdy Smith.  Her marriage bible…the family bible…from 1867 and its companion pieces tucked away in its pages.  Tintypes and cabinet cards, yellowing obituaries, handwritten birth, marriage and death notations.

And her rosewood parlor chair…delicate and small with a horsehair filling.  It crunches when the seat is touched.  I have recovered it a couple of times.  It’s original ivory white silk cover was deteriorated and worn when I received it from my late Aunt Elizabeth’s belongings.  I wished I had kept a scrap of the silk, but I was young when I reupholstered it the first time and what did I know about such things.  I kept the horsehair fill though…it…spoke to me, I guess.

My mother told me of a stack of letters “from a loved one” that my great grandmother kept bundled in a blue silk ribbon and a marble topped table that sat in her parlor with the Brussels carpet.  Her grandmother would carefully untie the silk ribbon and read aloud the contents of  the letters while my mother sipped tea.  Ceremoniously the letters would be tucked back in the envelopes….the ribbon neatly tied and Grandma Smith would finally pour her own cup of tea.  My mother knew that parlor and could recall every detail of it right down to the marble top table and the lovely patterned carpet.  It was because of the recall of my mother that  the words from the 1887 will of my great great grandmother’s sister, Deborah Van Dorn Chase, leaped out at me when I read them.

“I give and bequeath to my grand neice (sic) Libbie Johnson the sum of four hundred dollars and the following named goods one Piano one parlor bedstead with high top one common bedstead one cane bottom rocking chair three can bottom chairs one marble top table eighteen yards brussells carpet and one Syrtoga (sic) trunk said property to be paid to her at the age of twenty-one years to have and to hold during her lifetime and in case she should die without child or children then the aforesaid money & goods or what shall be left of them shall go to my sister’s daughter, Elizabeth Purdy or her heirs.”

Deborah had been been married twice, but had no children of her own.  In her last will and testament she bequeathed money and goods to her sister, Mary Williams (my great great grandmother) and her daughter, Elizabeth Purdy (my great grandmother).  Deborah also left money and goods to her grand niece Libbie Johnson .  Libbie’s mother, Mary Lorinda Williams Johnson, would die one year after Deborah leaving the young girl without a mother.  Her father, Captain Albert Johnson, was a highly educated man, a Civil War Veteran and a career internal revenue man with the Federal government.  Albert left the little village of Enfield behind after his wife’s death, remarried and his career took him to New York City and Chicago.  Libbie found maternal love and support in her Williams and Van Dorn families and at age 20 married her second cousin, William Van Dorn who was almost twenty years her senior.  And she had a child.  Julia Burton Van Dorn.  Her heir.  Libbie and William eventually had separate households.   While William remained in Ithaca , Libbie and her daughter lived in Rochester where Libbie ran a boarding house and Julia worked at Kodak.  As a young woman Julia played the piano and spent many afternoons in my great grandmother’s Ithaca parlor serving tea.    A parlor with a marble top table and Brussels carpet.

It might be a leap to think my great grandmother’s table and carpet might be the ones mentioned in Deborah’s will…especially because they were willed to Libbie Johnson, but I do wonder.  And then there is the trunk.  My mother never mentioned a trunk and she had a memory for those details so it leaves me to think that Libbie passed the trunk on to her daughter, Julia.    Julia Burton Van Dorn became the wife of  John Fulmer Davis in 1925 in Trumansburg, a small town near Ithaca, New York.  Her father, William had died in 1922 and it is reasonable to think that she and her mother returned to settle William’s estate.    Libbie and  the newly weds moved to Binghamton, NY where Libbie’s father, Albert Johnson, had earlier retired and left a small estate upon his death in 1920.   Julia and John Davis had no children.   When Julia died in 1993, there was nowhere for the “Syratoga” trunk to go.  The close family connection was long gone.  My mother was the last of the Van Dorn Williams Purdy line to live in Ithaca and we had moved away in 1953.  Mom never mentioned Julia and if there had been a relationship, she most definitely would include her in our afternoon trips down memory lane.

Perhaps the trunk ended up in an antique store in Binghamton.  Perhaps a stranger treasures Deborah’s trunk.   I hope so.

Deborah Martin-Plugh

Author, Historian and Genealogical Researcher

One Hundred and Fourteen Candles

A Note to My Readers:  My mother’s birthday is April 30th and I remember her birthday every year…much more than I remember my own.  My father died when I was just ten years old and my mother is the central influence in my life.  I love her more every day and there is many a time that I wish I could just talk with her once more…even for a brief time.  Not just to ask her all the questions that as a genealogist I wish that I had, but as her daughter to hear her voice…smell her perfume and share a lazy afternoon sifting through the boxes of old family memorabilia that she treasured.

One Hundred and Fourteen Candles

Happy Birthday to my dear mother.

She would have been 114 years old on April 30, 2013. Mom was a wonderful spirit who loved people, made the best lemon meringue pie and every Easter dress my sister and I wore. She kissed my forehead when I had a fever (and left telltale lipstick) and she gave me the gift and inspiration to write. Christmas was a joyous season despite our dire straits after my father’s death and my mother made it that way.  I cannot smell oranges or cloves without my heart being lifted because she made pomanders that Christmas of 1958 and kissed and hugged me so hard while I sat making garlands of popcorn and cranberries.  She taught me courage and personal responsibility by living her life with resolve and hope and joy. I had been working on a blog post about my mother and looking through the myriad of old black and whites for a photo of her as a child and realized that there was never any there.

The only ones that she ever had begin with her at age 12 ensconced in a Stutz Bearcat that belonged to one of her sister’s Cornell sweethearts. The very ones she would always pull out first and tell me what was happening at that very moment.

At sixteen she was a flapper and had marseilled, cropped hair topped with a cloche hat. And long legs covered in silk stockings. She danced with Franchot Tone at a Delta Tau Delta party and once dated author Sid Kingsley.

While I have been sad that I don’t have photos of my mother as a small child, I have something better I think. Her stories that she would share with me. Stories of Ithaca and Mama and Papa and Grandma Smith and her life amidst the early days of trolleys and horse-drawn ice wagons and movie making at Stewart Park and the heydey of Cornell. When Papa leaped from the second story of their home to escape the fire that burned their house and possessions…and no doubt gobbled up some of the family treasures that included her childhood photos.

Mom and I gave each other presents and cards on our birthdays.  Always on my birthday…I sent her a dozen pink sweetheart roses.   I was here because of her and I am part of her. She kept the crayoned cards that I would draw for her as a child. I found a dried Mother’s Day carnation and one of my cards in the family bible that she gave to me to preserve. The family bible is an heirloom…her grandmother’s marriage bible from 1867 that is full of family stories and mementos and the root of the stories that I write.

When she was in her late seventies, she leaned on me and said “I miss my mother.”   At the time, I thought it odd and perhaps a bit of senility creeping in, but now I know that she was meant every word without confusion.

 

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you…and I miss you.

 

Deborah Martin-Plugh

Author, Historian and Genealogical Researcher

www. facebook.com/thegenealogistsinkwell

A Port In A Storm

A Note to My Readers:  Organizing old photos….what a daunting task…when I came across these black and white photos taken by my brother Dave in Auburn, New York on October 22, 1954 one week after we had been in the direct path of Hurricane Hazel. The monster storm had made landfall in the Carolinas on Friday the 15th and moved up to New York State and hit Auburn during the afternoon, hammering us all through the night with winds up to 90 MPH.

Perrine Street. Auburn, NY. October 22, 1954

Saturday was normally grocery shopping day and my family..with everyone else in the Northeast…had spent Friday night hunkered down listening to the world outside come apart. As soon as the adults thought it was safe, Dad made his way on foot to the auto parts business on East Genesee Street where he worked and Mom walked to the Mohican with my eighteen year old brother, my baby sister and me and we joined the other ladies and their children in line to get groceries. There was no electricity, but then there were no automatic open doors or cash registers that required electricity.  It was dim inside, but Mom knew the store from her years of shopping the aisles. She could have shopped it in complete darkness, I think. The Mohican ran out of change at one point so they could not provide change to their customers. My mother signed a piece of paper for our groceries. I was handed a black and white cookie for being patient and we went home. The next week when my mother went back for more groceries, she settled from the previous week’s shopping. All on trust.

I was seven years old at the time and there was no school that week. Auburn was a city of massive trees…oaks and elms.

North and Seymour Streets. Auburn, NY. October 22, 1954

So many had fallen that it was weeks before you didn’t hear chainsaws or smell freshly cut wood. I remember walking to church the following Sunday and being lifted over fallen trees so we could get through. Men from the church had formed a line and the ladies and children were lifted over the debris. It was warm in the church, but we kept on our coats which I thought was quite wonderful. Even the grown ups were fidgety in church that day. I missed the sounds of the organ…it was an echoing creature in the big old church building on Exchange Street, but the congregation was in a grateful frame of spirit and the singing was full of energy.  The strains of the choir singing  “Onward Christian Soldiers” moved us to the pews of the old brick church.  

This was the Methodist church where as a historian and genealogical researcher  I would  learn  that from the early 1870′s my paternal great great grandparents, Daniel J. Jennings and Harriet James worshiped with their children.  Their daughter, Miss Lillian W. Jennings would marry fellow Methodist,  Henry A. Martin on July 16, 1884 in a ceremony conducted by the Reverend L. C. Queal and leave Auburn within days to live in Brooklyn, New York.   Henry’s parents, Albert S. Martin and Harriett Frear and their family were all in the member role in 1875 with the Jennings.

Jennings, Daniel M 33 Seymour St.

Jennings, Harriett M 33 Seymour St.

Jennings, Hattie S 33 Seymour St. Jennings,

Lillie S 33 Seymour St. Married Martin.

Martin, Albert S. M 13 1/2 Clark St., 60 Seward Ave.

Martin, Harriet C. S 13 1/2 Clark St. 60 Seward Ave

Martin, Harriet M. M 13 1/2 Clark St. 60 Seward Ave.

Martin, Walton S. S 13 1/2 Clark St. Rem. by C. Mar. 24, 1878

Martin, William A. S 60 Seward Ave

First United Methodist Church Membership List Summary “Circa 1872- 1885″ from the records archived at the Cayuga County Historian’s Office in Auburn, NY.

I sat next to Mrs. Glen Mosher that day. She ran the Sunday School and conducted the children’s choir…and wore fur coats…and sang like an angel.  My mother was in the big kitchen with the other ladies of the church assembling lunch for the congregation.  Big tables had been set up in the large hall with white tablecloths where plates of sandwiches and pickles and salad were served. After everyone cleaned up the church…the children, too…the men reformed the line and we made our way home. I thought that was the best Sunday church I ever went to.

WIKI – The hurricane made landfall in the Carolinas, and destroyed most waterfront dwellings near its point of impact. On its way to Canada, it affected several more states, including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, bringing gusts near 160 km/h (100 mph) and causing $308 million (1954 USD) in damage.

Deborah Martin-Plugh
Author, Historian and Genealogical Researcher

In Civil Defense of Root Beer Floats

After the events of the past few days, I was thinking…I don’t remember feeling so vulnerable as an American as I have since 9-11, but that isn’t true. In fact, I remember the Cold War era of my childhood and the air raid drills at school. Duck and Cover. It was an odd game to young children, but one look at stern Miss McDonald chilled even the most innocent heart. Bombs were never as scary as she was.

Then there was the day the Civil Defense ran an air raid drill in downtown Auburn just as I was leaving the dentist’s office. I was 12 years old and felt pretty wise for my age. Didn’t I go to the Saturday movie on my own? And ride the bus by myself! I just went to the dentist. On My Own, for heaven’s sake. But the adults were run-walking to the shelters with such a look of anxiety on their faces. It was a drill. Right?

Well, I turned away from the bus stop and began to walk home…the opposite direction from the shelter that was in the basement of W. T. Grant’s. Somehow heading toward that black and yellow sign and down into a basement with fearful adults made me want to go home to my mother. I was twelve and could take care of myself and besides old Miss McDonald wasn’t there to scowl at me. W. T. Grant’s was where I liked to sit at the soda fountain and savor a root beer float. They gave you two straws and you could make springs out of the wrappings. I would swing my legs while I sat on the stools at the counter and watch the hot dogs go round and round on the grill. Somehow root beer floats with two straws and air raids just don’t belong together.

After just three or four steps of my westward journey on Genesee Street, two firm, gloved hands had clamped down on my shoulders and put me back in the path of the scurrying grown ups. Turning my head I glimpsed up at the hard hat with the Civil Defense logo and figured the old man under it must be Miss McDonald’s twin brother. He wore the same look on his face…”This is not a game, little girl.” It was like being in rapids and I was pushed along despite my dread. Funny how I still remember the sound of leather soles on the steps in the echoing stairway and shiver.

Since at 12 the concept of time revolves around…time for school…time for church…time for breakfast, lunch and supper…time for bed…and I was too young for a watch…it seemed forever that we stood among the stacks of ‘emergency supplies’. Boxes and boxes with that terrible logo. No danger of a root beer float down here. As if we were hiding from some unseen invading force, the adults stood in small clusters and spoke in whispers. Their faces were oddly lit with a sickly yellow wash. There was a faint and unpleasant smell of floor wax, sweat and a light lavender perfume.

I felt homesick. I wanted my mother and HER clean smells of fresh starch and perfume. I wanted to laugh OUT LOUD and jump rope and to sit on the front porch when it rained. And I wanted to run up the stairs and sit at the soda fountain where everything smelled right.

The “All Clear” siren wailed and like salmon we swam upstream…up the steps…to the light…to Genesee Street where I broke away and headed west…homeward…and the adults found their original paths and assumed their light strides as if they hadn’t stood in a fallout shelter…in the semi-dark and with an uncertain boogeyman lurking in the shadows. Adults were baffling to me then. Maybe they still are…I know I wonder at myself sometimes.

I never spoke of it to my mother. A young widow doesn’t need her daughter’s fears added to the big worries she already had. So I adopted the behavior of the adults. I worried in the basement and headed for the sunshine when it was All Clear. But I never sat at the counter at W. T. Grant’s again. I took my root beer float reveries to the counter at F. W. Woolworth’s across the street and learned to ask for an extra straw.

They didn’t have a bomb shelter there.

Deborah Martin-Plugh

Author, Historian and Genealogical Researcher

Ain’t She Sweet?

A Note to My Readers:  I just spent a couple of hours going through some material from the 1950′s and 1960′s.  “The old days” as my grandchildren would say though it is just yesterday to me.   My childhood is never far from my thoughts as I work through my genealogical research.  In fact, since this is a ‘working backwards’ kind of thing, I realized that I am thinking of my ancestor’s lives in reverse sometimes.  We work in the world of adult landmarks…deeds, wills, church and military records, marriage records…and even the birth of children is in relation to the parent as a first thought.  

On occasion someone has memorabilia from their childhood…a child’s drawing…a report card…a diploma…certificate of achievement…old photos…and if we are really lucky…the old sled that carried you downhill through countless winters or the worn out stuffed animal that kept you company after your tonsillectomy.  I have a box full of my report cards from kindergarten through high school…and my college diploma.  Amidst hundreds of old Kodak photos, my mother kept a birthday card I made for her when I was nine years old.  Her sentimentality and the serendipity of what she kept sometimes is a mystery to me, but that makes the keepsakes all the more tender.  But…the most fragile memento of all…is a memory.  That is why I write.  My mother threatened to write…she wrote lovely poems and only one remains among the family treasures.   Although I continue to research and read a variety of publications, every once in awhile I am prompted to recall my own childhood. 

The old days.  Yesterday.

When I was a kid, my mother made the same meal plan every week. Sunday’s dinner after church was Spanish Rice, salad, a slice of bread and my mother’s lemon meringue pie for dessert. Wednesday…always spaghetti with meatballs, salad and a slice of bread. Tuesdays…pork chops, mashed potatoes, green beans..and yep…a slice of bread. Breakfast was always a bowl of Cheerios with a banana and a small glass of orange juice. Saturdays we had tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches and a dill pickle slice. There were no ‘snacks’. Just a shiny apple fresh from New York state orchards and during the holidays…a big crate of oranges and grapefruit shipped from the Indian River area of Florida as a gift from my mother’s sister.

My widowed mother worked SIX days a week…and nine to nine on Fridays…eventually it became my job to start the meal so she could finish it when she got off the six o’clock bus. The table was set and my sister, my mother and I ate supper together, talked about our day. We cleared the table together and stood at the sink and ‘did the dishes’ together. It was my favorite time of the day. We sang songs…mostly badly…but we laughed and had fun and the lack of melody didn’t matter.

I just read this article about planning a different meal for every day of the month without repeat…aimed at women. The heck with that…Mom..AND Dad…whip up some Spanish Rice and hang out with your family…get everyone to the sink to do dishes and sing something. I will never forget those times with my mother. Thank goodness she didn’t know that she was supposed to cater meals instead of share them and her time with us. I think it is more important that I remember my mother’s laughter…the smell of her perfume while she stood next to me with a dish towel in her hand…than some dizzying pantheon of recipes.

Besides…I learned to make great Spanish Rice and though I own a dishwasher, I still find myself singing one of her favorites…“Ain’t She Sweet” while loading the pots and pans.

Deborah Martin-Plugh

Author, Historian and Genealogical Researcher

http://www.facebook.com/thegenealogistsinkwell

What’s In Your (Virtual) Wallet?

I made a pledge to myself regarding my upcoming research-vacation trip to central New York.  NO OVERBOOKING!   Yeah.  Right.  It just seems to happen to me.  Every time.  For the past four years I have scheduled a trip to Ithaca, New York,  the city of my birth and the nexus of my New York state family history.  I firmly set goals for myself and structure my research so it is fruitful AND enjoyable.  I mean who doesn’t love it when you come away with some valuable piece of information that one cannot access without a physical visit to a library or archival site.  Or learning from a local historian who is a walking encyclopedia.  God Bless ‘em.  And how about that amazing out-of-body experience of walking down the streets of your ancestors?

In this economy it is a special thing to be able to indulge in such an adventure.  We are all squeezing the proverbial penny…some of us with the intensity of our Scots blood.  All of us looking for free sources.  There are so many wonderful ones.   All of us stepping up and helping one another in the wonderful virtual community called social media…sharing on a level that would send genealogists of the past into an old fashioned swoon.  And all of us wishing…hoping…planning to find the money and time to make that research trip.

I almost…ALMOST…didn’t make any trip this year.  Spent the past year or two struggling to recover from debilitating pain due to nerve damage combined with the double nasty that we all are dealing with…a lousy economy that has us all holding our breath.  After a lot of tests…expensive ones…and bad ‘guesses’… one course of cortisone shots and like magic, the suffering ended.  I wish we could do the same for our politics and our economic condition.

Counted my coins…and with a “life is short” lecture to myself, I am planning TWO 2013 trips.   I started out simply at first…the basics.  Over a long weekend in June I am in Auburn, New York visiting friends from my youth and researching at the Cayuga County Museum of History and Art .  I miss my own history and reminiscing with school chums is just the ticket.  Besides…I am not getting any younger.  Working with museums has become a fun and intriguing sidebar to genealogical research.   The “things’ on display have taken on a whole new meaning…a serious human connection.  It is probably why I prefer the term “family historian” to genealogist.  It just has more weight it seems.

Over the summer I am back to the Ithaca area and gathering with historian friends I made last year.  Lunch lakeside..al fresco…with talk of history and writing.  A couple of pioneer cemeteries and a visit to the office of a small village town clerk and the Tompkins County History Center in Ithaca and the Cornell Library.   Evenings spent on the deck of my rental cottage…writing and having a glass of wine from one the local wineries along Cayuga Lake.  Some time with my kids and grandchildren sharing my day’s find and their discoveries..skipping stones on the lake and watching minnows swim around your legs.  Not bad.

I feel virtuous…darn near saintly with my restraint.   The research plan and itinerary for the Auburn trip is organized and the proper materials and tools are all set.  Appointments have been made and any fees noted and money has been set aside with a cushion for the ‘just in case’.  I found some places only accepted cash so I know when and where to bring enough.  My iPhone…my indispensable tool and sidekick works wonders in the field.  I GPS pioneer burials as well as video and still photo record them.  The voice recorder comes in so handy.  The Facebook app allows me to pin where I am at.   My kids like to make sure their mother isn’t loafing off at Simeon’s  in Ithaca quaffing their most excellent Bloody Mary.   Since the iPhone serves multiple purposes, it has surely lightened the load of my backpack.   I still carry a notebook and pen.  Can’t break old habits.

Knowing me and the fact that life always throws some juicy plum in one’s path…I will find some impromptu diversions that MUST be done while I am there.

It happens every time.  It’s what keeps me going back.  That and the breathtaking beauty of the gorges…the deep blue of Cayuga Lake…the rise and fall of the glacier formed hills.  The wonderful people who have the same central New York twang that has never left me.  The whispers of my ancestors who call me home.

Author’s Note:  Every field researcher has their ‘kit’.   Their favorite method, materials and tools.  I started out with a trunkful of stuff to cover every contingency.  I still keep the cemetery research kit well stocked with what is needed for trekking and prepping…but the tripod is gone and the bulky camera equipment.  The snake stick-actually a hiking stick- is still there.  I call ahead on my cell phone…confirming appointments.  I input GPS coordinates to locate my meeting places and research sites…record voice memos…post on Twitter and Facebook…and Pinterest.   It’s all a virtual productive life in the field.  But…check my passenger seat for the dog-earred and worn notebook with the cheap pen clipped to the spiral…there you will find my most inner thoughts and fanciful doodles.  I wonder if it is a generational thing…or just plain human.