Family Patriarchs are not saints.

 

Incredibly, family patriarch and provider of his large clan Martin Van Buren Shive spoke, said, and did every blessed thing the stories passed down insisted.

The bastard was a spiteful old sinner…cranky does not begin to describe his temper…words that son of a bitch could say…his wife would weep at the vile vernacular when Martin exploded in one of his rages…

 

 

Many more true tales hovered about.  Subsequently, at Martin Van Buren Shive interrment, over six hundred town residents gathered around the grave to hear final words from the Baptist preacher.

 

Then, one by one, each passed by the mound of dirt, either to toss black dirt or to spit on it.  Some spoke words in their own vernacular, expressing heart-felt wishes.  One frequently used phrases were “May you rot in hell" or "Thank you for all you did for our country" or....

   .

My great-great-great Grandfather was Martin Van Buren Shive. The Christian name is a family name, why I don't know.

 Apparently my description of this patriarch of the family is accurate according to my aunt who told all sorts of random stories. She also said that he was one mean sonofabitch. 

To give him some praise is that he fought in the battle of Bull Run , Shiloh, and more battles during the Civil War . He eventually was injured in the leg, sent home to Illinois. He lived in constant pain, which might have contributed to his personality, or if he was always a sonofabitch.

600 people did not show up  to his funeral.  More like 50. 

 

We do not know if the community hated his guts or if they actually treated him with the respect a Civil War veteran deserves. Whatever.

 The Wed. Words above were provided by River back in 2016. . The underlined and italicized words are the gems. This writing challenge was created by Delores, who has since passed the baton to others.  Check back with River.

A Day to Remember and Honor

Going through old photos, and finding the veterans from 1800s through modern times reminds me how history is not kind. Ancestry shows so much.  

The veterans shown here range from Civil War to Korea.  There is a great-grandfather who rode with the Rough Riders; I couldn't locate his photo.                         

This is the photo taken of my grandfather before he left for France. He fought in the trenches

, sharpshooter

Lest we forget...

 

                                                     Entering and liberating a town in France

Newspaper photo of Civil War and WW1 veterans
Great-Grandfather B. Peck, 3rd row, 6th from the left;
Great-Uncle Leo Peck, front row, 2nd from the left, gun in lap 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My father in about 1942

 

 

 

 

 

From Attic to Cellar

The cellar, Jackson sighed as he descended moldy steps.  Having worked from attic to cellar, Jackson had just eaten a copious number of brownies Grammy forced on him.  Oh, Jackie!  What an industrial (industrious) little boy you are!  Have another brownie…

After a pot of black coffee and a belly full of brownies, Jackson was galvanized to tackle the dank cellar. The first few boxes were with junk.  Then the third box yielded treasure.

An old camera from long ago era, 1870s maybe Civil War? Riveted by the tin-type photos carefully labeled with names, Jackson could pick out physical resemblances in his own generation.

Jackson froze when one branch of the family turned and headed to here-to-fore hidden family names, absent from family conversations.  One of the great-great-grandfathers was Amos Lee, a black soldier and his black wife, Martha Lee held a child on her lap…Jackson Lee. 

It was a page turner.  Tin-types led to Seneca tribes in New York and then onto Oneida tribes, some twigs went to the Lakota tribes in the West. 

Well, that’s a hell of a thing…Jackson smiled.   Trees have to have deep roots.

 

 This was a Wednesday Words challenge from 2014.

Delores started this challenge TO challenge bloggers to try other genres. She started this to challenge bloggers to try different genres. She passed the baton onto

 http://myjustsostory.blogspot.com/  and river

Check them out!

 

Delores passed the baton onto Elephant's Child and River, who now post those words for us to take on and whip those words into shape

Head over to their sites. 

 

Note: I cannot edit out the LOONG space to comments.Why, I don't know.

                              My gr-gr-grandmother Elizabeth Lucy Nichols

                                                    

Where my great grandfather (one of eleven) was born, top left side, "Mrs. Nichols" Iroquois Nation honor the matriarchy society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                

People who went before you

 The pillar is still readable, in its own way.  Who was there and what they were is still a possibility.This group was from the Shive family, from all sorts of places and people.

This was Janie C.--she traveled to Oregon in a covered wagon, hated it, came home. So I have been told. At one time, her father wanted her to win an election, so he handed a bunch of money for her to throw from the Ferris wheel. Did she win, probably not.

It is said that death bestows gifts upon all.  I won’t try to name them, but the one I like is: Death washes the past and gives sanctity to the dead.

Julia, Nora, Bessie, and ?

At least, so I thought.  Recently I visited my favorite and remaining Aunt Vada in Macon, Missouri.  It was the first week of October, with all the beauty of fall giving glimpses of what colors were to come.  We visited non-stop, words filling the air.  Aunt Vada is a gifted writer, with a way of placing words exactly where they need to be. 

 

James W. Shive, died at age 3 years, 3 months, and 16 days.

One of our days involved traveling to my mother’s hometown, across the Mississippi River into Pike County, Illinois. 

We visited Crescent Heights Cemetery high on the bluffs in Pleasant Hill, IL, where Mom’s parents and relatives were buried.  Each time I have been there, I vowed that this place has the most incredible view of any cemetery.  

It is also the only place I can get cell phone coverage in the whole of Pike County.

We stood silently over Grandma and Grandpa’s graves, and then examined a family pillar on which Grandma’s side of the family were recorded.  I have seen that thing hundreds of times over my life there, but I never knew.  I never knew the stories that Aunt Vada shared with me.

My grandparents

Oh. Really?  No, not back then…  Those were my words and reactions as she touched each name and told the highlights of some very rowdy, randy, and raunchy ancestors. 

 

Martin Van Buren Shive, patriarch with the names of his children carved on all sides of the monument.  Lots of children. He was a veteran of the Civil War. He came home after a few years, having been injured drastically.

 Moonshiners, fornicators, adulterers, underhanded politicians, swindlers—they broke every sin listed in the Bible. I heard the stories from my Grandma Cardiff. 

I tell you, check out your ancestors while you still have relatives who know the whole story about them.  And, it might be a good idea to look at your own life, since someday you’ll be the ancestor about whom stories will be told. 

 

 Posted in 2016. Grandpa Cardiff was born in 1892, Grandma was born in 1901.

 

 

 

A Leaf or a Star

Even the smallest to the largest

In the 1850s, an American poet pulled away from standard poetry format and moved into his own poetry. It was a bold move, but then Walt Whitman was bold in so many ways.

His “free verse” was exactly that: free.  Whitman was strong in his beliefs that all people should read and understand the meanings that are embedded in the words.  The importance of the individual, whether it be a person or a blade of grass or a distant star, was central to his vision.

Walt Whitman fell under the extreme condemnation of his bi-sexuality.  Although Leaves of Grass was labeled to be almost pornographic and obscene, but that did not restrict its success. In a November 1885 review, it was suggested that Whitman was “guilty of the horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians”.

This part of the popular opinions, Whitman had intense relationships with several women, and claimed he had six children. Whatever his sexuality, it cannot be criticized in current mores and rightly so. One cannot be defined by one element of life but taken as a whole.

Whitman’s most memorable poem will always be O Captain! My Captain, written after Lincoln’s assassination. He once said, after constant repetition,

"Damn My Captain...I'm almost sorry I ever wrote that poem."

So, hoist a glass to an individual who believed that people/leaves of grass/stars are unique, no matter how small or large or whatever.

From YouTube read by Tom O'Bedlam

We were soldiers once....

...and we were young.**

Gr-grandfather, Martin Van Buren Shive, Civil War, Bull Run

Gr-Grandfather Martin Van Buren Shive, second from right, Bull Run
Civil War. Supposedly a mean "son of a bitch".

Louis Benjamin Peck  Civil War Veteran

Uncle Leo Peck, WW1
Son of Louis
B. Peck

Lewis Parker Cardiff, WW1

Grandfather

Louis "Bud" Peck, Army Air Corp., Mariana Islands
Grandson of Louis B. Peck.
Location of the atomic bomb plane, Enola Gay

Cousin Bill Peyton, Infantry, Vietnam, died  1970

Classmate from high school, James Michael Williams

A boy from my town,  Jay Shelby, died 1967

Our town boy, Jay Shelby, died 1967

Not just memory

**
A book written by Lt. General Hal Moore (Ret)
with war reporter Joseph L. Galloway

The Freedom of the Letter E

http://www.12frames.eu/

Eagle...Egret...Entrails...End...So many possibilities, aren't there?

For me, the Letter E is about something very important:

Emancipation

Of all the Amendments made to the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation was perhaps the most controversial, made possible by the bloodiest war ever fought on American land, and one of the most important amendments made.

Source

If you have seen the movie "Lincoln", in which Daniel Day-Lewis was President Lincoln, then you have in inkling of how much this all cost.

Here are the words in part, written by hand, and signed by President Lincoln:

                               Emancipation Proclamation

Please try to see this movie.  It was filmed mostly in Springfield, Illinois, where much has been restored.  Daniel Day-Lewis did 

Source: The Movie

not allow himself to lose his characterization of Lincoln, to the point where he walked around surrounding areas, speaking to residents as would Lincoln have spoken.

The Letter E is for Emancipation.

K-L Post: Katrina Lang, part 1

source

Katrina Launtenheimer was the thirteenth child of seventeen children whose parents were hard-working farmers, Klause and Helga Launtenheimer.  The three oldest boys died brutally in the early days of the Civil War.  The Ohio family grieved as stoic farm people grieve: privately, silently, chins high, shoulders back.

Katrina was chosen as the “take care” progeny, which meant simply that she would remain at the family home and take care of the parents as they aged and died.  All the other children were expected to marry and procreate, but not Katrina.

This had been understood as long as Katrina had been alive.  

It did not matter much to Katrina, until she watched siblings four, five, six, eight, nine, eleven, and twelve marry and leave.  Numbers seven and ten were boys and they would remain on the farm with their wives, if and when they married.  

Numbers fourteen, sixteen, and seventeen had died in a smallpox epidemic.  

Number fifteen ran away to Chicago, they thought.

source

Katrina sewed wedding dresses for her sisters, cooked and cleaned for her parents, and watched as her friends left.

A ruthless reality of wars is that a generation of men are killed, leaving fewer options for husbands.  

Some of her pretty friends married quickly when they hit marriageable age, but the other friends had few options:  be like Katrina or become a mail-order bride for the open territories to the West. 

Since the transcontinental railroad’s success in the 1870s, mail-order brides packed and left, searching for better lives.  One such friend was Mary Lannahan, whose beau Harold Finster had jilted her in favor of Gracie Smith.  

Disgraced, Mary was fleeing Ohio in tears.

Katrina hitched the wagon, and drove Mary to the train depot. 

As Mary prepared to say good-bye after her hefty trunk was loaded, Harold arrived on his horse, pleading with her to marry him.  He had made a mistake, clearly.  He loved Mary with all his heart and…

Mary looked at Harold and then at Katrina.  Shoving her tickets into Katrina’s hands, she insisted.  “Katrina, get the hell out of here.”

Katrina speculated for a moment, then leaped on the train.  “Don’t tell my folks!  I will write to you..."

Source

All persons, characters, places are fictional.  No resemblance to any person, living or dead, is intended.  What will happen?  Will Katrina find happiness?  What will her parents say?