Her brother William drove her in a wagon the 25 miles from home to Sandusky City which was the nearest place to get a train.  When they got there they discovered that the train to Cincinnati wouldn’t leave until 6 PM, so William put Laura in the care of the hotel-keeper, asking him to make sure she got on the train.  Laura was left on her own to begin this great trip.  She was, however, approached by an old lady who asked where she was going and found her a nice young couple also going to Cincinnati to travel with.  The railroad that Laura traveled on was probably the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad.

Laura described the trip, which took overnight, in this way:  “The car, tho not as luxurious as the present day Pullman [she was writing in 1919], was provided with seats having iron head rests of the shape of a half circle within which you were supposed to rest your weary head while in the embrace of Morpheus.  This arrangement not being conducive to sleep, my fellow travelers and myself engaged in conversation and in the course of the night, which was a long one, we made the discovery that the gentleman had been raised in the same neighborhood in Ohio as myself until a boy of fourteen years when my father had bought his father’s farm and the Tucker family moved to Indiana and we had lost all trace of them.”

“This little episode helped to while away the weary hours of the night and at daybreak we arrived at the great city whose smoke laden air was almost stifling to one who had always been accustomed to breathing the pure fresh air of the country.  I was met at the depot by a brother of my sister’s husband who escorted me to a hotel and arranged for my stay until the riverboat for New Richmond should start up the river.  This was a new experience for me, –riding by steamboat on the Ohio River,—and one I greatly enjoyed.  Never shall I forget the fine scenery along its banks as there came into view the vine-clad hills laden with the great clusters of the purple fruit.  The waving grain and field of clover all spoke of the richness of the alluvial soil.”  This was in the fall of the year and I suspect that the purple fruit she saw was wild grapes, maybe riverbank grape.

Laura was met in New Richmond by a another young man who had been sent from the house where her sister was staying, to take her there.  Ann Denman Parker was staying at the home of the Donaldson family, while her husband was absent in California, presumably because Mrs. Donaldson was her sister-in-law.  The Donaldson house was described by Laura this way:  “..English mansion located far up on the hill overlooking the Ohio River, which at times was dotted with boats plying up and down on its placid waters.  The proprietor of this mansion had built in English style, –four square in its outer dimensions, partitioned into four large rooms with a spacious hall running the entire length of the building, while a wide staircase led to the upper rooms, one of which my sister occupied and where much of my time was spent the next four months in caring for her and her young son.”

Dr. Parker, husband of Laura’s sister Ann, was anxious to hear from his family often.  Ann was not strong enough to write, so it fell to Laura’s lot to carry on the correspondence.  I can picture her sitting at a small desk in her sister’s room, or maybe by the bed with a lapdesk, writing for her sister.  Perhaps Ann dictated and perhaps she only told Laura what she wanted to say and left it to the writer to put into words.  One specific that Laura described was the discussion that her sister and she (and likely the rest of the Donaldson family) had about the name to be given to the young son just born.  The final decision was to name him Frederic Donaldson Parker.  When Laura wrote to Dr. Parker that his son was named Frederic D. Parker he assumed it was for Frederic Douglass, “the great colored orator of the day”.  Laura doesn’t tell how she responded to this, but moved on to telling about the excitement over slavery running high in those days.

Soon after this, Laura’s mother sent word that she wanted them all to come home if Ann was able to travel, and “she would take her to Cleveland to a doctor who she thot could cure her.  Arrangements were hastily made and we set out on our journey.”  The kindness of the conductor and some men traveling in the car helped improvise a bed of sorts for Ann.  The men spread their overcoats on a seat to cushion it for her.  They were met at New London by their “mother and brother Charles who went on to Cleveland with Sister Parker while I took little Fred and went to my Father’s the with sister who had come for us.”  The treatment by the Cleveland doctor was very successful and by the end of 6 weeks Ann was able to return to her parents’ home and take up the care of her little son.  Laura was free to look for other employment.

Then, a new college was located a few miles distant from the Denman place and the “financial agents invaded the neighborhood in quest of signers for scholarships” which John Denman was persuaded to do.  This was the Oberlin Collegiate Institute which actually opened in late 1833, with 29 men and 15 women beginning classes.  These early students were expected to help build the institution with their own labor.  Despite this, the Institute was in financial straits and fund-raising went on as Laura described.

The scholarship arrangement meant that John Denman could send his older children for further education.  In 1907 Oberlin College made a concerted effort to locate all alumni so that accurate and compete information about them could be published in the about-to-be issued General Catalogue and Alumni Registry of Oberlin College 1833-1908.  In that publication there were 23 Denmans listed; 11 of them were John and Marinda Denman’s children (all but the two oldest sons, Edward and William, and son Charles who had died at age ten).

As Laura wrote: “My eldest sister was the first to receive the benefit of this arrangement and after spending one year there she gave place to the next sister who, after spending one year in the college, decided to go another year.  Then she with myself entered the college the next year.”  Laura’s ambitions were being gratified.  Laura and her sister “entered upon this year of study with great zest hoping to be able to complete the course and fit ourselves for the work of teaching school, which in those days, aside from housework, was the only occupation open to women.  But, alas! after five months of study we were both stricken down with typhoid fever and sent home to be cared for by our family.”  “This new school was of necessity very primitive in all its appointments.  The buildings were of the cheapest material, the furnishings limited to the merest necessities and the board supplied nutrition, tho severely plain in all its details…”

In those early days of the college, the vacations were the three winter months, as Laura explained: “This was planned in the interest of the students who spent their vacations in teaching in neighborhoods of the surrounding country.  Many young men who thus spent their vacations returned in the spring to resume their studies full of enthusiasm and well supplied with incidents of their experiences in their various locations.”  The students also brought back amusing stories from their boarding around with the various families of the pupils they taught.  Laura herself wrote of the differing treatment she got in boarding around, from bad and minimal food to “hospitality itself, nothing was too good and no effort too great that would add to the comfort and happiness to the weary one returning from the arduous duties of the schoolroom.”

Her older “sister having decided to enter the school of matrimony” Laura completed another year but then decided to leave school for a year or two and spend the time teaching.   “Teachers, be it known, were not as numerous in those days as at the present writing and yet the salaries of teachers were not commensurate with the demands, six dollars a month being considered the limit, and even then, such unheard of extravagance being admissible only upon the recommendation of one of the school board”.  Laura ended up taking a school for the winter that had been engaged for another who had become so discouraged that she gave it up after a few weeks.  Although with misgivings, Laura took the school on and soon found the source of the trouble.

“On entering the school room the first day, I was surrounded by an eager group of youngsters each anxious to inform me of the faults and failings of others, and all insisting it would be my imperative duty to whip Almeron McKinney, Miss Linton did, he wouldn’t mind her and she had to whip him.  And there, sitting quietly in his sear, this bad boy listened to the reports of his school mates, undoubtedly sizing up the new school teacher and deciding what course to pursue.”  Laura described that his boy was abused and neglected at home by a mother who idolized her daughter, and the last teacher “resorted to the rod to enforce her rules.”  She decided to try an entirely opposite course of action: to try to interest him in his studies, encouraging him to do his best.  “To the surprise of the whole school Almeron became  a faithful student and even surpassed some of the brighter ones in the final examinations.”  Laura’s conclusion to this story was that in future years she heard of this boy as having become an energetic and useful citizen in the town where he resided, and she from that time forward “always had a warm place in my heart for boys, and even boys whose early lives are so unpromising it seems useless to attempt the making of true men and desirable citizens of them.  The possibilities wrapped up in these youths are very great and only require right leading and right influences to cause them to develop into true genuine manhood.”

Laura was clearly very happy to head home to the farm at the end of that school year in the spring of 1850.  She described her pleasures in all the delights that awaited her: maple trees tapped for sugar making; early vegetables and flower beds being prepared; the orchard trees already budded and full of promise.  After spending a few months at home, Laura was the sister who was available to travel to southwestern Ohio where her sister Ann had a new son, was in ill-health, and her husband had gone to the gold mines of California.  It was during this time that Laura’s letter writing created a very favorable impression on the man she later married.  And that will introduce the next chapter of this memoir.

My gorgeous magnolia and Cornell pink azalea – Happy May!

Organization
* The inboxes on my desktop are cleared! Three cheers!! Continuing the work listed above on the Denmans is also organizing files on my hard drive (and helping me establish a standard file naming process).
* Back up the blog! Plug-ins found so far to automate this task don’t meet my needs However I just saw a review of another one, that looked worth investigating. There is always hope – in the meantime I must remember to do it by hand.

Education
* Watch one online video or webinar about genealogy. [Watched the Legacy Family Tree webinar by Judy G. Russell on "That First Trip to the Courthouse" which was very useful. Like many of us, I suspect, I feel tentative about researching in a Courthouse. I hope what Judy said will help me figure out what I might get from a Courthouse (and nowhere else) and then plan a trip.]

Laura Denman was born March 22 1828 in the family home, which was then a log cabin on her father’s land in Florence Township, Erie county, Ohio.  Her father was John Denman and her mother was Marinda Blackman Denman.  Laura was the 5th child and third daughter.

Laura began her childhood memories by describing the log cabin set in the orchard. The orchard was planted by her father from seeds he had carried on his back as he walked from Neversink, New York to northern Ohio.  He made at least two trips between New York and Ohio as he brought things to his new home. Laura reported that he carried a peck of seed and she commented that the seed along with some other belongings must have made a sizeable pack to carry such a distance. Her father was described as being a lover of fruit and as wanting to start an orchard growing on his newly-acquired land as quickly as possible. The question of the amount of seed he carried has been something of debate in the family, over the years.  I know Grandpa Lyle talked about it and, as I remember, he was sure it couldn’t have been a peck as that would have been so much to carry.  Laura was quite clear about the amount however, and likely was told about it by her father himself.

The cabin had one small window and a “fireplace of wide dimensions which, when well filled with the ash and beach wood, furnished the heat for the family cooking.”  Laura particularly remembered and described the tin bake oven which would be set in the hearth, perhaps near the meat hanging and roasting over the fire, in which her mother made biscuit to go with the meat.  “Mother’s biscuit, and such biscuit! The like of them has never been seen since the invention of the cook stove.”  She also mentioned the “July apple tree” that put out golden fruit so looked forward to.  There was a little stream which ran into the Vermillion River that the children played in and cooled their feet in.

Laura and her siblings first attended a school that was a log construction in one corner of her father’s land.  He had cleared that area particularly to make a place for a school house. Apparently there had been a school house “over the hill” for two winters previous to this, but the “big boys” broke up this school by their behavior. It likely looked much like this picture of another log schoolhouse¹.  Laura went into some detail describing the interior of this “primitive seat of learning”. There was a large fireplace in one end of the room, and round the sides of the room there were boards placed to provide desks for the older students with seats in front. I imagine boards attached to the outer walls so that the students were facing toward the wall and away from the center of the room. For the younger students there were seats in the middle of the room, made of boards with holes cut for their legs to fit through and no support for their backs. Laura reported that the “poor little urchins” were required to sit for 6 hours of the day with brief intermissions, and yet were expected to be “quiet and behave like little ladies and gentlemen”. This sounds to me like the voice of experience. There was also a bench with a water bucket and several times a day the dipper would be passed around to quench the scholars’ thirst. The lessons lasted from 9 o’clock to 4 o’clock, with an hour at mid-day for lunch and recreation. From the first day, Laura remembered that there were reading and writing lessons for each group. As the students left for the day, each boy turned at the door and bowed to the schoolmaster and each girl curtseyed to him.

All of the children in the immediate area attended this log school house for two years and then many, including the Denman children, were assigned to a new schoolhouse in a town a mile and a half distant (Terryville). Laura was then about 7 years old, it was 1835, and she described the new school as made from lumber from the new sawmill on the river. It was heated by an iron stove, which was something she had never seen before.   The first day it was in use, Laura burned her hand on it as she climbed around it to her seat,  through not knowing it would be hot.

The Denman children attended this school for 2-3 years and then “the little red schoolhouse on the corner” of the Butler Road and Denman Road was built and the children of that neighborhood were educated there for many years.  This was one of eight district schools for Florence Township². Laura attended school there from age 10-19. At first the subjects were just Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, with a weekly spelling school or spell down at night as a big event. Then grammar was introduced. The teachers were then recruited from a nearby college (probably a teacher’s college) and they introduced other subjects, including composition.

**********

Organization
* Still trying to get that last inbox cleared – somehow there is always something more urgent (read: interesting) to do. Also, I don’t have a great work process for dealing with papers, which makes me less than eager to move them around.
* Back up the blog! Plug-ins found to automate this task don’t meet my needs.

Education
* Watch one online video or webinar about genealogy. [Judy and I are now set to attend the GRIP course in Pittsburgh in July. I may decide that it will serve for a number of months-worth of genealogy education. However, I will continue to track the webinars and to watch the ones that look useful to me.]

I’m pretty sure that it started with our Grandma Cena (our mother’s mom) making clothes for us. She was an amazing seamstress and came from the time and place where women made most of the family clothing. Moreover, for the next 5+ years after I was born our mother was busy taking care of infants and toddlers, so I am guessing that Grandma continued to contribute in this way. We lived just far enough from Grandma and Grandpa that we didn’t get to see them very often so she couldn’t help out in other ways. It was always exciting when a box arrived from Grandma with new clothing. From the time I was about 7 or 8, however, Mom made our Easter outfits with Grandma continuing to whip up accessories and outfits for other times.

Margaret and me, 1950

The earliest picture I have come up with so far is from 1950 when I was not quite 3. I don’t remember these outfits but have a half memory of getting the hats. Mine had navy velvet ribbon around the outer edge and I think we helped pick these out ourselves.

me and my big sister, June 1951

The first one I remember was a white dress with a separate organdy pinafore. My sister’s dress has been less clear in my memory’s eye, but I know for sure that it wasn’t scratchy like mine! I would often wear the pinafore by itself if it was hot, and it was stiff fabric that scratched. I don’t know for sure that these were Easter outfits but I’m pretty sure they were. This picture of the two of us in these dresses refreshed my memory a little about these dresses and confirms that we both had pinafores and that the pinafore was worn by itself on occasion.

Margaret and me, 1955

By 1955 my mother was going all out on our outfits. That year she and my sister and I all had pink poodlecloth (that was what she called it) jackets. It was very cool and grown-up feeling to have jackets just like Mom’s. Our dresses were navy, and had permanent-pleated skirts and lace on the collars and appliqued to the fronts. In the picture you can also see the crocheted purses that Grandma Cena had sent (I think they were new that year).

The year after that (either 1956 or 1957, I think) we wore the jackets again but had blue dotted-swiss dresses with cummerbunds and lace on the tops. I’m guessing Easter might have been later that year, since the dresses

Margaret and Pat, maybe 1956

About 1960

The last Easter picture in this series shows my sister and me as young teenagers. By that time she and I were both making some of our own clothes and I suspect that my sister made this Easter dress for herself. I was in a shy phase about having my picture taken and so was making faces that day.

Research
* Write to Christ Church in Cincinnati to see if there are records there of Lucy and Thomas O’Shaughnessy’s marriage.
* Write to Ditchling church about possible archives and records for Denman family.
* Set up Salts database and add what I’m learning about the Tennessee Salts.

Organization
* Still trying to get that last inbox cleared – somehow there is always something more urgent (read: interesting) to do. Also, I don’t have a great work process for dealing with papers, which makes me less than eager to move them around.
* Back up the blog! Plug-ins found to automate this task don’t meet my needs.

Education
* Watch one online video or webinar about genealogy. [Judy and I are now set to attend the GRIP course in Pittsburgh in July. I may decide that it will serve for a number of months-worth of genealogy education. However, I will continue to track the webinars and to watch the ones that look useful to me.]
* Still looking for more sources of webinars – preferably free.

Two days later we had a new refrigerator delivered and so all the attendant moving of food out, cleaning where the old one had been, and then hurriedly replacing all the food before the frozen food defrosted and the milk went bad.

I am not complaining – I’m only rationalizing my lack of progress on the family history front. I am very pleased with my new, warmer office floor. The bedroom looks much better with the new carpet and so does my husband’s office. The bonus is that we have extra room in the new fridge, which is a little larger than the old. So life is good!

In my genealogy world, the past month has been full of correspondence with several Boorman relatives as we all work on a mystery. There are many Boorman families in the counties of Kent and Sussex in England in the 1700s and we are trying to figure out a John Boorman who migrated to America, specifically to New York state north of New York City along the Hudson River, in the late 1790s along with a number of others. There are at least 2 books of compiled letters from these settlers and a specific letter has raised questions about which John this was and who his wife and children were. I will likely post about all this in the future, I hope when we have sorted it out to our combined satisfaction. In the meantime this is preoccupying me.

My final excuse for lack of accomplishment is that we are on a longer-than-usual vacation stretching across January into February. I am leaving this scheduled to post on Jan 31st but I won’t be here!

Marion, ca 1945-1949

Although it was the second weekend in December and, like everyone else we had plenty of holiday tasks to be doing, Judy and I decided it was time for another trip to the Connecticut State Library in Hartford. We hadn’t done a trip in a long time, and we always enjoy the excuse to get together. We don’t have as much opportunity as we’d like to catch up in person on all the happenings in our lives, especially the genealogy ones. Then, I thought, since I would already be as far as Hartford I should see if it would be convenient for me to go on down to visit my husband’s cousin Marion who lives very near New York city but still in Connecticut. So I got in touch with her and invited myself.

The time with Judy in Hartford and at the Library was, as usual, fun and refreshing. There is something about spending time with a friend who has known you for so long that is renewing. We acquired some new information on the projects we were working on and learned about another resource available in the Library. We have gotten into a bit of a rut about how we use the Library, but learned that there is a large newspaper collection on microfilm that we hadn’t known about. I wonder what else they have that we don’t know about?

Saturday morning I headed on south and west in Connecticut. I had called cousin Marion and had her good directions for getting to her house, and so managed to get there with no problems. We had just enough time when I got there for her to start showing me her most recent pottery and sculptures (she does amazing work!) and to start talking. Then we headed for the train station to pick up cousin Jean who was coming to join us. These two represent two different Levine family lines: Marion a branch that stayed in the New York City area and Jean one of the Syracuse branches.

I had two general genealogy goals for the visit: to get Marion to talk about her parents and grandparents and to try to record some of this; and, to look at some of her pictures and get her stories from them. I took my digital recorder and my new present to myself, my Flip-Pal scanner, and intended to make use of both of them. Which I did. I’m still a rank novice using the recorder and have trouble getting the volume right, but I did get some of her memories captured. And the Flip-Pal worked like a charm.

Marion is the daughter of Esther Bialke Pintel and Samuel

Bella Pintel

Sam Malin in a sewing room

Bella worked as a seamstress in New York City until she married and had children. She then stayed home for several years. She probably met her husband, Sam Malin, as a function of living and working in the same area in Manhattan. Sam had signed as a witness on her father, Alter Pintel’s Petition for Naturalization attesting to knowing Alter since 1917. They were married in 1922.

Marion’s father was a man of few words and one who didn’t show his feelings easily or often. Bella on the other hand was known for yelling, particularly at him, and for letting you know exactly where she stood on an issue. One time they came to visit Marion and her husband Al and before they arrived Al asked Marion to tell her mother not to yell at Sam because it made him uncomfortable. So Marion talked to Bella while they were out in the car, going shopping in another town. She said, “Ma, please don’t yell at Pa while you’re here. Al doesn’t like it.” To which Bella responded: “I don’t yell at him.” Marion laughed about this and allowed that her mother did yell, and that she had discovered the same habit in herself as a young mother.

At the end of his life, Sam fell and broke his hip and was hospitalized. Marion and Bella went to the hospital to visit him, and the nurse was in his room when they got there. So Sam introduced them: “This is my family. This is my daughter, Marion. And this is my wife, Bella. God gave her to me.”

What with the short time – it gets shorter and shorter every year – between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I haven’t accomplished many of my stated items in December. Instead I went off on two tangents, both involving the same weekend. Don’t they call that time management?

Judy and I met again in Hartford and spent a lovely Friday afternoon in the Connecticut State Library. Then on Saturday, I went on toward New York to visit with cousin Marion and cousin Jean. I took the opportunity to do a little recording of family stories and to try out my new Flip-Pal on some pictures. So that is my excuse explanation for not making progress this month.

Research
* Write to Christ Church in Cincinnati to see if there are records there of Lucy and Thomas O’Shaughnessy’s marriage.
* Write to Ditchling church about possible archives and records for Denman family.
* Set up Salts database and add what I’m learning about the Tennessee Salts.

Organization
* Still trying to get that last inbox cleared – somehow there is always something more urgent (read: interesting) to do. Determined to do this over the holiday season. [I actually made a start the end of November and may have a brief post about this process at some point. I learned (finally got it through my head!) some things about how to do this process.]
* Back up the blog! Plug-ins found to automate this task don’t meet my needs.

Education
* Watch one online video or webinar about genealogy. [I watched Judith Eccles Wight's webinar on researching your Irish ancestors which both interesting and useful.]
* Still looking for more sources of webinars – preferably free.