Fun Times with the Romeros

   I have been enjoying having the Romeros visiting for the past week.  I've seriously taken advantage of grandsons Anthony and Jonnie to get some manual labor accomplished in preparation for our upcoming Fifth Biannual Cousin Camp.  Besides general cleanup they have been involved in site preparation for the above ground pool and the patio and foundation for the outdoor bread oven.

    On Friday evening I went with Lia and the kids to the little carnival associated with the Kla Ha Ya Days festival in Snohomish.  The kids rode the rides while I took some pictures. We all shared a few elephant ears and curly fries.  Granddaughter Annika is a serious daredevil when it comes to carnival rides.  No ride is too high, too fast or too upside down for her.  She could easily get her money's worth from one of the ride wrist bands. Granddaughter Cozette seemed to enjoy the little alligator roller coaster but was convinced that it was a dragon.

Front end of the "Dragon" roller coaster

Cozy really liked this little roller coaster

Cozy enjoying a ride on the carousel

Tommy liked the carousel more than is apparent in this photo

Grandson James as the Kung Fu Panda

Seriously Cute Clown Cozette

Clown Tommy

Clown Annika

Kung Fu Panda Cozette

Family History Friday #17 - John H Crihfield

   I've done a little research lately on the family of my fourth great grandfather, John Crihfield, the father of Mary Crihfield who married James H Heiskill. This past week I discovered that her younger brother, John H Crihfield served in the Confederate army.  I have quite a few ancestors who fought in the Civil War. Most fought in the Union army, including some southerners from Tennessee and  Arkansas.

   John H Crihfield was born in Arkansas in about 1844. He was found living with his parents and siblings on the 1850 census in Lauderdale County, Tennessee. Sadly, his father died before the end of the year.  I next found him on the 1860 census living with another Crihfield family in Lauderdale County. The only other records I was able to find pertained to his service in the Confederate 14th (Neely's) Tennessee Cavalry and as a prisoner of war.  I haven't been able to find out the actual date of his enlistment, but I was able to find some information on the internet as to when various Tennessee cavalry units were formed.  For a while some of the Confederate calvary units in Western Tennessee were more like partisans than regular army units, hence some of the difficulty with records. A further problem is that the units were formed and reorganized a number of times. they were eventually consolidated into a larger regular cavalry force commanded by the now infamous General Nathan Bedford Forrest (purported founder of the Klu Klux Klan).

    I did find was that John H Crihfield was captured on November 27, 1863 in Haywood County, Tennessee, a neighboring county to Lauderdale County. His commander at the time of his capture was Col Richardson. Crihfield was then sent as a prisoner of war to Camp Morton in Marion County, Indiana.  The Conditions in Civil War prison camps were notoriously bad on both sides of the conflict. John H Crihfield died on July 13, 1864 from malaria. At the time of his death there were close to 5,000 Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton. Union army records provided the date of his capture and subsequent death. The Confederate prisoners who died at Camp Morton were originally interred in individual wooden coffins in the Confederate section of Greenlawn Cemetery.  Wooden Crosses with their names marked the individual graves. Their remains were later exhumed and reburied at Crown Hill Cemetery.  By that time the wooden markers had decayed so the soldiers were reburied in a mass grave.  A monument was erected to honor the memory of the 1,616 Confederate soldiers buried there.  I found a record on Findagrave thanks to the fact that all of their names were recorded on the monument.

    All in all, John H Crihfield had a difficult life.  He was born in Arkansas at a time when that would have qualified as the frontier.  He moved to Lauderdale County while a very young child His father died when he was just six or seven years old.  He lived in a tumultuous time.  His military service was probably somewhat brief and he died in what were probably miserable conditions as a prisoner of war.

    While I was researching John H Crihfield I learned some interesting facts regarding other family members.  An older sister, Effie Crihfield, was married at the age of 15 in Yell County Arkansas on February 12, 1846 to William Ball.  I couldn't find any records pertaining to William Ball other than this marriage record. Four years later, the 1850 census showed Effie Crihfield living with her parents and siblings (using her maiden name) in Lauderdale County, Tennessee.  It is very helpful (genealogically speaking) that Effie Crihfield was living with her parents, John Crihfield and Elizabeth Hustead, on the 1850 census.   The 1850 census showed Henry Crihfield, age 71, and his wife Jane, also living in Lauderdale County. Living with them was William Crihfield, age 30, probably their son, and John Heiskill.  I puzzled a great deal over this. Heiskill is not a particularly common  name and here was John Heiskill living with a Crihfield family a short time before James H. Heiskill marries Mary Crihfield in the very same county. To make matters more complicated I couldn't find James H Heiskill on the 1850 census.

        Some of these relationships were clarified when Henry Crihfield died and Effie Crihfield was listed in his will as his granddaughter. Thus we learned that John Crihfield was the son of Henry Crihfield.  However, I was still left wondering what was the relationship between John F Heiskill  and Henry Crihfield.  John F Heiskill married Effy Ball (Effie Crihfield) on September 14, 1852 in Lauderdale County.  I also don't know for sure what the relationship is between John F Heiskill and James H Heskill. I think its likely that they are either brothers or cousins.  I did some investigation on ancestry.com and was referred to a family tree that listed John F Heiskill's parents as Lewis Heiskill and Nancy Crihfield.  I followed that lead a bit further and learned that Nancy Crihfield was the daughter of Henry Crihfield. If this information is accurate,  John F Heiskill and Effie Crihfield were first cousins, each being the grandchild of Henry Crihfield.  Furthermore, if John F Heiskill is the brother of James H Heiskill then Mary Crihfield and James H Heiskill would also be first cousins.


   

Knee High by the Fourth of July

    I'm very pleased with the progress of my vegetable garden, and in particular with my little corn crop.  Most of my corn passed the proverbial "knee high" benchmark in late June. I had to replant a portion of my corn patch due to some unknown critter (possibly a crow or Stellar's Jay) pulling some of the little plants out by the roots. The replanted parts are just now approaching knee high. I'm not sure it was worthwhile to replant the corn, but the gaps in the rows bugged me.  Enough of the corn escaped predation such that I'm looking forward to a good harvest of indian corn.  I have gone to great lengths to find corn varieties that will work in our Western Washington maritime climate.  This year I am growing Mandan Red Clay Parching Corn. It is a short season lavender colored flour corn, suitable for both parching and cornbread.  The problem with corn is not so much the length of the growing season as the amount of heat.  Our growing season is long enough but our maritime summers usually don't provide enough heat for many varieties of corn. This summer has been so much warmer than past summers that I think I could have planted any variety of corn this year and it would have worked.  The past few weeks have been mostly in the low nineties and high eighties.

More than knee high and tasseling

   My pole beans have started to produce blossoms and they are all climbing up their respective poles.  My winter squash and three varieties of summer squash are off to the races.   We started picking zucchini this past week. I managed to get all of my cucumbers and cabbages transplanted, but I've had to water them almost daily to help them get their roots established during this hot weather. Cucumbers don't really start to grow well until the weather gets warm. They are really starting to take off  now.

    I harvested my first potatoes several weeks ago.  I tried mulching the potatoes with straw, having read that they will form potatoes in the straw.   I didn't experience that, possibly I didn't add enough straw. However, none of the potatoes were sun scalded.  They may have grown close to the surface of the soil, but the straw mulch protected them from the sun. I harvested the one row of potatoes that was right next to my cabbages as they had grown so tall that they were shading the cabbages.  We also harvested our first onion so Linda was able to make creamed peas and potatoes. Unfortunately we had to use frozen peas. I planted my peas about a month late so they weren't ready.  We have also harvested our first tomatoes.  I really look forward to the time of year when we are able eat from our garden every day.

    I have experimented growing Jerusalem Artichokes for the past few years. I still haven't eaten any of them, but they are very spectacular plants to grow. They are a type of sunflower, native to North America. Indian tribes who lived in the midwest and the plains used to harvest the wild tubers. So how did it get the name Jerusalem Artichoke?  At some point it was introduced into Europe. Because the flavor of the tubers is similar to artichokes they were called Girasole Artichokes after the Italian word for Sunflower. Somehow that name migrated back to America, being corrupted to Jerusalem Artichoke.  I have had several problems with Jerusalem Artichokes, also called Sunchokes.  First of all, little voles have eaten a good part of the tubers.  Voles are like a cross between a mouse and a gopher. They have also caused some problems with my potatoes, but its worse with the sunchokes because they are harvested so late in the year. I usually harvest my potatoes before the voles do too much damage.  The second problem with sunchokes is that in spite of the voles, there are numerous little tubers that I always fail to find. In spite of the fact that most of my harvest has gone to the voles, the plants come back year after year, regardless of my present plans for that portion of the garden.

   This year I'm trying a new strategy with the Jerusalem Artichokes. I transplanted some of my volunteers into old ratty unusable honeybee shipping cages.  I planted the whole box into the ground so the tubers will develop inside the shipping cage.  The tubers are protected from the voles and when I pull up the shipping cage, I should be able to remove every last tuber. At least that is my plan We'll see if it turns out according to plan. I've also transplanted some of the volunteers into pots.

A patch of volunteer Jerusalem Artichokes

An unusable shipping cage repurposed to a subterranean planter box

Jeerusalem Artichokes safely contained

Family History Friday #16 - Pioneer Carpentry

     Our fifth biannual cousin camp will take place the last week in July.  We're  doing a family history theme this year and focusing on the lifestyles of some of our hardy pioneer ancestors.  One of the activities we are planning is pioneer carpentry.  My inspiration for this particular activity stemmed from a probate record I found pertaining to my fourth great grandfather, John Crihfield.  He died in 1851 in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, which borders on the Mississippi River.  Included in the probate record is a report of the estate sale which provides an exhaustive list of John Crihfield's personal property. This gives us a pretty good view of how the Crihfield family lived.  He appeared to have been a fairly prosperous farmer as he owned a fair amount of cattle and hogs. His son-in-law, (my third great grandfather) James H Heiskill, purchased a number of items at the estate sale. He purchased half of a canoe along with catfish hooks and lines. I'm assuming he probably already owned the other half of the canoe. It seems likely that he and his father-in-law were running trot lines on the Mississippi River to catch catfish.  James Heiskill also purchased some carpentry tools, specifically a hatchet and a drawknife. Other carpentry tools sold at the estate sale included two frows (also spelled froe), a hand saw,  2 pairs of compasses, 1 axe, 2 augers, chisels, a gimlet, and several whet stones for sharpening tools.

     Our pioneer ancestors used tools such as are listed above to build their homes and make all kinds of furniture and other useful items.  It was a lot easier to carry all of the carpentry tools in a wagon than it would have been to carry a load of furniture. Clearing land in a new location always provided a good supply of wood.

     If words such as froe or drawknife were featured in a modern day trivia test, I suspect that most people wouldn't have any idea what they were. Some people might figure out that an auger bit is used for drilling holes. Most people outside of the south also would have no clue as to what a trot line is. The autocorrect feature of my computer keeps trying to change froe to fore, but it seems ok with drawknife and trot line.  For the education of the small handful of friends and relatives who read my blog, I'm going to include a few photos and brief explanations as to the use of these tools.

    Let's start with the froe.  This is a tool used to split wood.  It was commonly used to make shingles. It consists of a long heavy blade attached to a handle. The blade is driven into the wood to be split with a heavy mallet.  The handle of the froe is then used to apply leverage to force the wood to split as well as to provide some control of the direction of the split.  I watched a really interesting show on Netflicks a year or so back. It was called "Happy People, a Year in the Taiga".  It told about the lives of fur trappers living on  the Yenisey River in Siberia. My favorite part of the show was watching this trapper manufacture a pair of cross country skis from a tree. He used a froe to split a small diameter log into two boards.  He then shaped the boards into skis primarily using a drawknife.

Froe

    Drawknives are used to shave off wood. Heavy duty drawknives can be used to remove the bark from a log.  Smaller drawknives can be used to shape wood to make things such as chair or table legs, or the skis mentioned above.  Drawknives were often used in conjunction with a shave horse, a type of workbench which also functions as a clamp to hold the wood being shaped with the drawknife.  The woodworker would sit on one end of the shave horse and push against a foot brace in order to hold his work piece firmly in place.  I'm planning to build a shave horse to use at our cousin camp.

The drawknife is at the bottom of the photo

    An auger bit is a primitive drill.  It consists of a long drill bit and a handle which fits down over the top of the drill bit.  As the handle is rotated, the bit drills into the wood.

Auger bit with handle

   I found the medium size drawknife, the auger bit, and the two hand planes on craigslist.  The froe was a gift from a good friend, Duncan Biddle. I also bought a pair of smaller drawknives at a local hardware store a larger drawknife from Grizzly Tools.

     So, you're all probably wondering what we are going to do with all of these wonderful old tools.  My plan is to saw down a Red Alder tree,  cut it into sections of appropriate length, and split those sections of trunk with mauls and wedges or possibly with the froe into two equal halves. We will drill holes for legs and shape those legs using the shave horse and drawknives. Then we will pound the legs into our benches using a heavy mallet. Last of all welwill use the jack plane to smooth out the surface of the bench. It sounds like a wonderfully fun time to me. I'm hoping the older grandkids will enjoy it as well. I can only imagine the consternation of the parents as they try to fit their child's camp project into the car at the end of cousin camp.

 

Visiting Grand Children

   We've been pretty busy grandparents the past few weekends.  Several weekends back we traveled to Ellensburg to attend a production of Fiddler on the Roof with my son James and his sweet family.  We left for Ellensburg right after I closed the store on Saturday afternoon.  That two hour drive to visit the Tunnells will soon be increased to about five hours after they complete their move to Pullman. It was hard for us when they moved from Monroe to Ellensburg and went from 15 minutes away to 2 hours away.  Now we have to get used to a greater distance from loved ones.

     Fiddler on the Roof is one of my favorite musicals and this particular production was very well done.  They had brought in a professional Tevia who was marvelous.  Our grand children were very well behaved and attentive throughout the performance.  Even little Nora managed to at least make it through to the intermission.  The only serious fly in the ointment was the late night drive home to Snohomish after the performance.  Fortunately, with my recent release from the Bishopric, I no longer have an early morning meeting on Sunday.

   The following weekend we traveled to Oregon to watch our grand daughter Chloe perform in a Shakespear comedy, As You Like It. She has been involved in a home school group which studies Shakespear for the past year.  Chloe played the part of Adam, the elderly servant of one of the main characters.  Obviously from the photo below, its hard to make a pretty twelve year old girl look like an old man.  Chloe did a great job on her lines and hobbled and shuffled as well as any old man of my personal acquaintance.They put on a pretty good show and we had a great time.

Chloe Kang as Adam from As You Like It

Family History Friday #15

   This past Sunday morning I was looking at family search.org. The pedigree chart was in portrait mode and I noticed that it didn't show a photo for my maternal grandmother, Lillian Mae Rolo. I was sure we had photos of her uploaded into the memories section so I investigated further.

    As it turns out there were a number of wonderful photos of Lillian I could chose to display on the pedigree chart. However, I found something much more important than the photos. I found eight letters she had written to her children, just a few months before she died in a sanitarium from tuberculosis. I had known about one of the letters which was addressed to my mother, but I didn't know about the ones to her siblings. 

      It just so happened that Mom's younger sister (Macel Arlene Sinor) was visiting us at the time. I walked downstairs and introduced my Aunt Arlene to family search.org. As it turned out, she didn't know about the letters. She was such a small child at the time of her mother's death that she doesn't remember her mother at all. It was a special moment for her to be able to read her mother's last expression of her love for her children and to her specifically.

    Later that day, as I was sitting in church, I pondered what had gone into the preservation of those very special letters. First of all, Lillian's mother, Ann Lee Stromer (married name Rolo)  had chosen to save the letters after Lillian died just a few months later. Later, when grandma Rolo died, the letters came to the custody of Lillian's older sister, Elsie Rolo (married name Shuck). When Aunt Elsie died, the letters came into the possession of Elsie's daughter Patty. When Patty found the letters, she passed them on to my mother, Cozette, who shared them with other family members, which lead to the letters being uploaded onto familysearch.org. I couldn't help but think of the sacred nature of a mother's last expression of her love for her children and it moved me to tears. Linda was sitting next to me and kept asking me if I needed a tissue.

  There were so many people who possessed the letters and each of them could have easily thrown them away or simply misplaced them among all of the other stuff we all carry around. I am convinced that the dead are very much involved in preserving the records that are important to their story. I also believe it was no coincidence that I found the letters on family search while my Aunt Arlene was here.

    Among the letters from Lillian, there was also one letter from my grandfather, James Wilburn Sinor, Sr.  My mother has some issues with her father and has been pretty critical of him. In this letter he wrote about his love for his children and how much he missed them. He also expressed regret for the decision to leave their children with Lillian's parents in Klickitat, Washington while he took her to California to get treatment for her tuberculosis. A good part of the letter was devoted to expressing concern for Lillian's health and happiness. He may not have been the perfect father, but it was clear that he loved his wife and children. After reading the letter I was a little more inclined to cut him a little slack.

    I would like to have included some of the letters and photos of Lillian and her husband, James Wilburn Sinor, but I was unable to figure out how to transfer the photos from family search. When I figure that out I will do like a congressman and revise and extend my remarks.

Grandma's Cuckoo Clock

     We have eight of our twenty-five grandchildren visiting this week. They were really intrigued by Linda's new cuckoo clock. They would get really excited whenever they heard the cuckoo, but somehow never managed to arrive in time to watch the event. This morning they were determined not to miss the cuckoo and all gathered in anticipation of the clock striking eight.

Rapt attention

     They had a lot of questions regarding the workings of the clock.  They were intrigued by the fact that the clock works off a pendulum and a system of weights and gears and has no battery.