All in a Day's Work....

Sometimes I look at what I have “done” during the day and chastise myself for not doing more.  Since I am retired, I can always do whatever needs to be done “tomorrow” if I want.  Ah, but tomorrow never comes, does it?

So, what did I have to do today that didn’t get done?  Truthfully, nothing.

Maybe I feel guilty because he spent so much of the day outside, mowing the lawn and working in the yard.  I don’t have nearly as much to show for my efforts today….. Let’s see: I have done two loads of laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, put some things away, and worked on my scrapbooking.

Is that enough to do in one day?  Does every day have to have monumental results?  Is there really anyone who would be impressed if I did more?  Or less?

Actually, there is more that I did today.  I was online, finding out more about Harald Hardrada.  He was the King of Norway and my 33^rd great grandfather, on my mother’s side.  Funny thing, he tried to conquer England in September of 1066 but died trying.

 

He was known as the last of the Viking warriors.  After King Edward the Confessor (of England) died, there were three men who claimed the throne: an Englishman, Harold Godwinson, a Norman, William of Normandy, and Harald Hardrada, King of Norway.

After defeating Harald Hardrada at the Battle of Samford Bridge, Harold Godwinson marched his army to Hastings to meet his other foe, William the Conqueror, husband of my 33^rd great grandmother on my father’s side, Matilda of Flanders.  Exhausted from the previous battle and forced march, Harold’s army was defeated by the Norman.  What my maternal ancestors couldn’t accomplish, my paternal ancestors could.

No wonder I’m so tired…

Cali

First Voyage

Recently, when cleaning out boxes in the closet, I came across a treasure.  No, not savings bonds, or rare coins, or the deed to a gold mine.   I found a story written by my father.  And hand-written by him in calligraphy….

On the cover, he wrote: To my beloved daughter….From Daddy, Christmas 1979…

I couldn’t remember seeing it before, yet I obviously did.  I suspect that, since I was working night shift at that time, and had to leave his home to go to work on Christmas Eve, I probably didn’t give it more than a cursory look after he gave it to me.  I know I didn’t read it….

It was a different time then.  He was alive and well.  I was a fairly new RN, working the night shift, married, and raising three children.  Daddy was always in my life, and I couldn’t imagine his being gone from me any time soon, so there was no rush to read his story.

How things have changed.  Daddy has been gone for almost 15 years now.   And somehow, this booklet, with his story, has surfaced again.  What was once a simple Christmas gift has taken on much greater meaning: it is no longer just a story, it is Daddy’s legacy.  To me.  From him. 

I was shaking as I opened the booklet.  On the first page are the words “First Voyage”…..  I was intrigued.   As I read the next page, and the next, I was enthralled.  It is a story of my father’s first trip to Europe, as a young man, and it is a delightful recounting of a trip, yes, but also of a young man who later became my father.

His words make me smile:

"Other eight-year-olds had toy ducks floating in their bathtubs.  I had a wind-up scale model of a World War I battleship.  I wore navy blue “sailor suits” in the winter, and white in the summer.  Both came from Brooks Brothers in New York, where my dad bought his clothes."

There was never any question in my mind as to what I would be when I “grew up”: I would be either Captain of a big liner, or Admiral-in-Chief, U.S. Navy."

He relates that his father met Lord Louis Mountbatten, and through him, Captain Arthur Rostron, RNR, captain of Cunard Line’s HMS Mauretania, “fastest liner in the world”….  He was Captain of the Mauretania when the Titanic sank and was awarded a special Congressional Medal for rescuing the survivors…

As his parents became fast friends with Captain Rostron, they had lunch with him every other Saturday when the Mauretania was in New York.  "I had complete run of the ship; I knew Mauretania from keelson to truck."  Captain Rostron became Sir Arthur Rostron when my father was a teenager. 

The rest of the story is about his first sea voyage.  He was 23, footloose and fancy free.  "Despite youthful dreams of a maritime career, a shrinking Navy, limited berths in the Merchant Marine, and—above all—the Great Depression—made nautical openings hard to find."

So, in 1935, he embarked on the S.S. Black Tern (“a Hog Island single-screw well-deck cargo vessel, built in 1919, and refitted in 1930 with an oil-fueled GE steam turbine, multiple gear power plant.”) He worked his passage as an Ordinary Seaman.  For the grand sum of .01 cent, he worked his way from New York City to Antwerp, Belgium.

In his story, he recounts the tasks he was assigned while aboard ship: polishing the “bright”, chipping paint, and painting, battening down the hatches, and coiling wire cargo halyards, among other things.  The captain took a liking to him and let him stand watch on the bridge. 

As he recounts his voyage, I learn more about my father as a person.  I read his words, first scribbled in his journal, during the journey.  I feel as if I have met my father as a young man.  A man who worked hard and had the respect of his shipmates.  A man who enjoyed the beauty of the ocean and the stars and wasn’t afraid of hard work. 

As the voyage came to an end, he writes:

”For the first time in more than a week, the sea is calm.  No rolling, no pitching, whatsoever.  The water is almost an emerald green.  All about us are ships and birds. To port, we can see the chalk cliffs of Cornwall.  We steam past Penzance, and a thrill runs up my spine at the memories the name evokes of high school operetta days when a certain work-away sailor was Major General Stanley in ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’”

The adventure ends at a restaurant in Antwerp: four shipmates met for lunch and then split the check four ways: 45 cents each.  Daddy was leaving for Brussels and the World’s Fair the next morning.  As he said goodbye to his shipmates, they went off in one direction and he went in another….

The voyage was over, and a new adventure was about to begin…..

Cali

Long Ago and Far Away....

How long ago is long enough?  And how far away is far enough?  I’m sifting through my ancestry, again, and now I’ve gotten back as far as 540 BC.  To me, that’s amazing.

 

Apparently, some of it has been easier for me because so many of my ancestors were dukes, or kings, or queens, or conquerors, or even pharaohs…. Who knew?  I guess, since the family sailed to the New World, in the early 1600’s and settled on Long Island, we’ve become a little more common…

Sitting here, clicking on leaves on my family tree, it has been fun to see how far back in time I could go, and who I would find as I journeyed farther back in time.  I found William the Conqueror several months ago: he was the husband of my 27^th great grandmother, Mathilda of Flanders.

In the past two days, I have ventured even farther back in time, finding my 35^th great grandfather, Charlemagne.  Then I found the 51^st, Constantine.   Another great grandfather, the 65^th, was Herod the Great of Judea.

Still traveling backwards, I ran into a rather interesting 73^rd great grandmother named Cleopatra.  Poor dear, committed suicide at age 30.

The Rosetta Stone describes my 75^th great grandfather’s coronation as Ptolemy V.   And, apparently, way back there in the annals of time, my 79^th great grand uncle was a guy named Alexander the Great.

All told, there have been kings of England, Wales, Scotland, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Macedonia, Egypt, and who knows where else.  It gets confusing, at times, because royals usually married royals, so there are familiar names on almost every branch of the tree.  Cousins marrying cousins, etc.  It’s a wonder we turned out normal, or sort of normal….

And then, in the New World, titles were given up.  Lineage didn’t matter.  It was a brave new world, full of opportunities and fraught with danger.  A duke or earl or consort was no safer from the ravages in an unknown world than the common person.

 

My first great grandparent to arrive in the New World was apprenticed to a carpenter.  He was given the choice of being freed from his obligation and remaining in England, or sailing with his master to make a new life in the new colonies.  Of course, he chose to come to America.

The family settled in Long Island and lived there for nearly 300 years.  By the time my great grandfather died, at the ripe old age of 90-something, he was known as “Captain” and was an accomplished sailor, as well as a carpenter.

As the colonies became a country, my ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I and II.  There have been, in addition to soldiers, sailors and marines, many physicians, newspapermen, and other noble occupations.  

My grandfather opened the first movie theater in New York City, according to my father.  He had two partners in the venture: Lord Mountbatten (I have a photo of him with my grandfather), and an actor named Charlie Chaplin.

Now, it’s nice to be able to “drop names” sometimes, but mostly, it’s nice to be proud of one’s own endeavors, even if they are not royal, or historical, or humanitarian.  We all came from somewhere, but that is not as important as where we are going….

Researching my ancestry is giving me a sense of being grounded.  But today, and maybe tomorrow, is what really matters….

Cali

Grandpa Jarvis...

"Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

(Wm. Shakespeare)

That’s the first thing that came to my mind, about an hour ago, as I was doing some family research online and came to a curious character named Jarvis Mudge.  It seems that poor Jarvis is famous simply because of his relationships.  No, not for being my seventh great grandfather, although that is a worthy reason to be famous…

It seems that Jarvis was married to the widow Elsen.  They had two children: Moses and Micah.  But that’s not his “claim to fame” either. 

You see, Massachusetts didn’t have a corner on the witch hunt market.  Connecticut had their share of witches, too.  Hence, the great Hartford Witch hunts of 1692-1695.  And poor Rebecca Elsen Mudge, a confessed and convicted witch, was hanged on Gallows Hill on January 22, 1693. 

Yup, my seventh great grandmother, on my father’s side, was a witch.  I don’t know if she had a cauldron, or not.  And I have to wonder if she read Shakespeare’s Macbeth….

I heard, for most of my early life, about my heritage.  The English sailors who braved the seas.  The Vikings and their conquests.  My grandparents and great grandparents life and times….  I don’t know if my father knew we were related to William the Conqueror or not. 

If he knew about Rebecca the Witch, he kept it to himself….

Cali