Go Fish

As children proceed through life, there is a progressively increasing reliance on memory. Children must become efficient in their use of both long-term and short-term memory. Rules, facts, concepts, procedures, language, and all sorts of social skills are to be learned and placed in memory. Oh...those childhood memories...some are good, some are bad...and some are just there.

It is certainly a rare occurrence that a child has a chance to store memories of his great-grandfather. I suspect that it very few who can remember meeting and talking to theirs. The picture to the right is my oldest grandson, Sam, playing cards with his great-grandfather, my Dad. I believe they are playing a game called "Go Fish". Sam showing his card, asking Dad if he had one like it. If not...go fish! You then had to draw cards until you got what was asked. The one with the most cards at the end would lose. Lose, win, one of those things one must learn. Go fish, I thought. A Chinese proverb tells that if you give a man a fish, he will eat one day...teach him to fish and he will eat for a life-time. Here, great-grandfather is teaching great-grandson how to fish. [Or maybe it is the other way around!] May Sam store this in both his short-term and long-term memory.

The Silver Penny

Money has played an important role in most cultures. For the genealogist, understanding how, how much, and why, will often help make decisions regarding our ancestors. For the English around 1600 the silver penny played an important role. The following outlines its use around 1600 England:

12 silver pennies = 1 shilling

240 silver pennies = 1 pound

160 silver pennies = 1 mark (two thirds of a pound)

Shillings, marks, and pounds = terms of accounts/account records

1 silver penny = a days labor wage.

Daughters' Drawings

Coloring books are often a large part of learning to keep within the lines. All those choices, and shades, and shapes, can keep one occupied for hours. However, sooner or later you are given the freedom to draw on your own. [Walls, floors, and refrigerator doors are often the objects of this expression.]

Two of my most precious keepsakes are the drawings made by my daughters. Lisa, my oldest, was the first to put on paper her drawing of our "Jones Famly". At around age seven, here we are through her eyes. A rainbow arches over head, a sun with rays is in the sky, and lots of green grass. A swing set is drawn [we spent a lot of time swinging] and a car is drawn [we spent a lot of time traveling], and our family is drawn with smiles. My wife (and Mom) is drawn to my left, and the girls are drawn from youngest to oldest on my right. My glasses are in place. Dresses are in order, and this may have been one of our "Sunday Go to Meeting Days" with the car just ready to be loaded.

My second daughter's drawing follows. Her "Jones Famliy" is more organized according to rank. Dad first, Mom second, Lisa third, Lesley forth, and Ellen fifth. All smiles on the faces are drawn. She must have liked bows, for every sister has a large bow in place. Glasses on me, full dress on Mom, and carefully drawn dresses with fluffy sleeves on the girls.

Both drawings have me with glasses and black hair. Special memories are these. What a treasure these drawings... bows and a rainbow...and smiles...what joy.

Hickman Street School

Hickman Street School was the home of my family for at least three generations. Mam maw would have attended around 1910, Dad around 1930, Uncles Gene and Gayle around 1940, and my brother and I in the 1950s. The picture to the right shows the building as it stood before the 1940s. Large and impressive from the street, and stately to the onlooker. It had changed quite a bit before my brother and I attended with the front, back right, and sides much different looking. The lower left of the picture shows the bell tower of our main street church, and the top of Brown-Proctor Hotel just beyond. This drawing would have been made before the large Presbyterian Church was built and after 1873 when our Main Street church was built. No clear date is given on the drawing, but 18-- something is shown in the upper left.



The second picture shows my brother's first grade class of May, 1956. The picture is taken on the steps of the large Christian Church which stood on the hill across the street from the school. Here, the steps provided an ideal stage for class alignment, and provided the photographer a way to get all the faces in the picture. Four rows, equally spaced, and about equal shoulder to head ratio seems the pose.

My brother, Henry, is third row up, second from the right with that Jones straight line smile. Little did he know that the pretty little girl, Marcia, second row up, second from the left, would prove to be more than just a first grade classmate. For it was in this very church that some 14 years later they would come down these very steps as husband and wife. What a deal! Hickman Street School brought more than one family together.

Sunday go to Meeting

Going to church on Sunday was always a part of life for many of those living in my family's past generations. To get away from the daily tasks of life, and feed the spirit and soul was generally thought a good thing. The whole family; dad, mom, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends would share time catching up with one another. [It was more common for the moms than the dads.] Coats and ties for the guys, hats and dresses for the gals, allowed for a general family clean-up and dress-up. The first picture shows such a gathering outside the home church at Nada. Lots of children of course, more women than men, and lots and lots of white dresses stage the picture. One little girl on the front row is looking down at the shoes of the fellow standing next to her..."wher'd you git those shoes"...she seems to be saying. It must have been one of those "hell", "fire", and "damnation" sermons for there does not seem to be a lot of happy faces. I would guess the preacher man is the one standing at the upper right, since it appears that he is holding the Bible. I roughly count about 100 souls this Sunday picture...a "Sunday go to Meeting".


This is a picture I took of that very church as it stood this past summer. Windows boarded up, locked, and falling apart, it looked mighty empty and alone standing there. All the folks in the first picture must be dead by now, or at least close to it. No coats, no ties, no hats, and no white dresses...only boarded windows and broken down steps. Where have the Sunday go to meeting days gone?

The Bearded Ones

Granny Ewen's nee Morton family sure believed in beards. [Nee is used by genealogist to mean the maiden surname.] Of course only on the men, for almost every picture I have of the Morton family, the men have beards. The first picture is of Granny Ewen's Uncle William Morton. His beard extends down to his shirt. The second picture is of Granny Ewen's father Cordillis Morton, who's beard is fairly short considering the Morton standard. The third picture is of Granny's grandfather, Moses Morton. His beard seems to fill the picture. By the time this was taken, he had pearly white hair. The last picture is me. I must have inherited the Morton's beard gene and the white hair gene.

Virginia Land Laws : Cabin Rights

It was during the Revolutionary War that Virginia addressed the land expansion to the west for the first time under its own laws. "Taking up Land" meant building a cabin and raising a crop of grain of any kind, however small. This entitled the occupant to four hundred acres, and after 1779 the pre-emption right to as much as one thousand more adjoining acres. [Most of the first patents of Kentucky were under these laws.] This pre-emption right was to be secured by a land office warrant which became known as "Cabin rights". The word "patent" as used here means the official certificate of a government grant or franchise. [No longer under the King!] As an adjective it means protected or conferred by letters patent.

"Tomahawk Right" was claimed from deadening trees about the head of a spring and marking the bark of some trees with the initials of the one who made the improvement. Unless followed by a settlement these rights were held invalid. If some one else desired to make a settlement on the land and secure a title, he would buy up the rights rather than quarrel with the one who made them.