Sep 1, 2023 —Of Memory and Stoops
I’m definitely seeing a trend.
Oh… greetings!
But about that trend: I’m not getting nearly as much done as I want to. Sometimes, I admit, that is due to laziness on my part. But other times it’s the weather, or things I didn’t anticipate taking my time, or — worse — things I anticipated but that took way more time than I expected.
The past week has been a combination of all those things.
I had hoped to get the step up to the back door done, but that has not happened. I made some progress, but it was rainy and drippy much of the week. And when the weather was cooperating, I was working on the latest community email, which definitely took a lot more time than expected.
But first things first: last week I asked for suggestions on what to call the step I am replacing, and there was a request for a photo. Here’s what it looks like at the moment, with stacked pavers replacing the old — nasty — wooden structure that was there when we moved in.
The dogs hated walking on the old thing, and it needed to come out before we had the house painted. The pavers are a temporary solution until the new step is in. Also note the pavers are too short. The new step needs to come up to the bottom of the threshold.
And speaking of the new step, here’s how far it has come along:
I built the frame in the garage when it wasn’t raining. The tape is there to keep water from sitting under the decking but on top of the frame and rotting the wood. It’s overkill in this case, but I’m doing things properly.
I have to remove the temporary pavers, get some of the gravel out of the way, and install this beast. It will sit on 2x4 feet and I’ll put some concrete around those to hold things down. Then I get to install the deck boards to make it look nice. I think it will be two full days of work to get that done.
Now, back to what this thing is called. Some people pointed out that the word “stoop” can mean a single step up to a door, so that might actually be OK. I am still not sure. The size and shape don’t really agree with how I think about that word. Others suggested we make up our own word — like “stooep” — which is definitely fun, but will confuse those not in the know. Other words were reviewed and mostly discarded, like “porch”. (For the record, yes this thing is covered, but that’s an accident. The covering is not intrinsic to the step/stoop/whatever itself. For that reason I am not sure “porch” applies either. But maybe not all porches are covered? *sigh*)
The question remains open in my mind, but for the moment I think “stoop” is what I will call it. If you have a better idea, please let me know.
As mentioned, a fair bit of time this week was spent working on the latest community email, a publication called the Blueridge Bulletin. It occurs to me that some of you might be interested in what that winds up looking like. I might have shared a link a couple of months ago to a previous issue, but here’s the latest: September 2023 Blueridge Bulletin. There is no obligation to read it, of course. Most of the contents relate to North Vancouver and British Columbia, with as many articles as possible focusing on our immediate neighbourhood. But even so, I hope it is interesting to skim through. I welcome feedback from anyone who wants to provide it.
Last week I shared a photo of an odd looking object I found on one of my walks. Reader Dr. Deana asked if it was embedded in the ground rather than in a tree. When I had the time, I went back and got these photos:
As you can see, it’s definitely stuck into a fallen log. And I checked the gap underneath and didn’t see anything there, so as best I can tell it’s embedded in the log itself. And while it appears to be a lid of some sort, I have no clue what it was for or why it’s been there for so long.
And finally this week, I also managed to spend one afternoon working on the genealogy project again, and this time I resolved a personal mystery.
For a long time I had a story in my head about our family. It was a bit crazy, and I wasn’t sure where it came from. It went something like this: my mother did some genealogy research and had (a) traced some of our ancestors back to the original 13 colonies that began the USA, and (b) that somewhere in the tree she had found someone who had married his sister.
On reflection, the first part of that story seems entirely plausible, but the second part is exactly the opposite. And when I asked my mom about this a while back, she told me she didn’t think the marriage thing was true at all. I don’t recall her making any claim about relatives in the colonies, probably because the dumb story about someone marrying his sister was so outlandish that it caused everything else to be ignored.
Fast forward to last week, when I finally finished dealing with the first batch of records from my grandmother. I moved on to the next folder full of files, and found something very interesting. There are a bunch of documents labelled “Powell-Findlay” genealogy, and one of them is a hand drawn family tree, starting with me and my brother, and going back a long time. The oldest given date in there is to “Thomas Whitlock”, born in Rattlesden, England in 1608. He married someone named “Joan”. More on them later.
Most important to my crazy story, there are several people with birth and death dates in the 1600’s and early 1700’s who were in the colonies. And it seems that the handwriting in this family tree is my mother’s. It is probable that she was actually copying data from another relative, but it looks like her handwriting as I recall it from being a kid.
So it seems (so far) like my crazy story was actually half correct — mom did tell me about relatives in the colonies — but we’re not done.
As I entered the data into ancestry.com I encountered an oddity, where the same names appeared in two places. Trying to figure that out took a while. Mom’s family tree only made sense when something specific finally clicked: there’s a loop in it! Bear with me… this gets a bit complicated.
- On April 30, 1689, a man named Deacon Eleazer Hawks married Judith Smead. I’m not yet sure how many children they had, but I do know of two: a son — Eleazer Hawkes — born December 26th, 1693 in Massachusetts, and a daughter — Hannah Eliza Hawkes — born July 7, 1703, also in Massachusetts.
- Hannah Hawkes married a man named Samuel Edward Allen (wedding date not determined yet) and they had at least one son also (helpfully) named Samuel Allen, born on April 23, 1738.
- Eleazer Hawkes married Abigail Wells on November 24th, 1714, and they had at least one son, (again, helpfully) named Eleazer Hawks Jr, born on November 13, 1717.
- Eleazer Hawkes Jr. married Margaret Allen (no clue if she is related to the other Allens mentioned here yet) on May 9, 1743. They had at least one daughter named Zilpha Hawkes, date of birth unknown so far.
- Zilpha Hawkes married the younger Samuel Allen on May 24, 1764, and they had at least one son — yet another Samuel Allen, for crying out loud — born on December 19, 1766. But Zilpha and Samuel were related!
I know it’s difficult (probably impossible) to understand in text form. I had trouble with my mom’s tree for at least an hour. But here’s how ancestry displays the tree for the youngest Samuel Allen:
I’ve added the red lines and dots. What it shows is that Samuel Allen’s great grandmother and grandfather on his father’s side are also his great-great grandmother and grandfather on his mother’s side.
The entries for Deacon Eleazer Hawkes and Judith Smead — those relatives — all have three red dots on them. If you tried to lay out that tree with only one entry for each of Deacon and Judith, it would have a loop in it; the sides starting at Zilpha and her husband Samuel would connect back together at Deacon and Judith.
For the record, the youngest Samuel Allen is my great (x5) grandfather. That makes Deacon Eleazer Hawks my 8x and 9x great grandfather. Judith Smead is equally situated as my 8x and 9x great grandmother.
Going back to my crazy story, it wasn’t that someone married his sister. Instead, Samuel Allen and Zilpha Hawkes were cousins of some sort. They were in different generations, so they were not just cousins, but the terminology for what they were is beyond me. Were they second cousins? Once removed? Both? Something else? I really don’t know.
I love the games my memory plays. If I had to guess, my mom drew up this tree and showed it to me when I was pretty young, probably in grade school. I’ve had some recall of it since then, but the cousins that married got turned into a brother and sister somewhere along the line.
Memories are weird. They’re definitely not perfect recordings of what we saw or heard or read. I don’t think anyone knows what they are exactly, but it is clear they can change over time.
I’m happy to have figured this out, and to have my memory proven to be less bad than I thought it was. Turning some obscure cousins into a brother and sister sometime during a fiftyish year span doesn’t seem so bad. I’ll take it as a win.
One other tidbit from this week’s digging: I mentioned a Thomas Whitlock who married “Joan”. Well, Ancestry tells me that a number of people have been digging into that family tree over the years. It turns out that Thomas Whitlock is probably the son of John Whatlock (yes, there is a spelling change there for some reason) and “Agnes”, who is probably Agnes Ashton Becke de la Beche, Heiress of Beches Manor. One member shared a document that indicates it may be possible to chase this branch of the family back to the 1100’s. No one seems to have done that yet, but perhaps someday it can be accomplished with help from someone across the pond.
I really don’t care about having nobility in the family, but I do find the ability to trace some of it back that far interesting. Who knows what else I may learn given time.
That ends this week’s post. May your family trees all be loop free!