dual personalities

I woke up this morning from a vivid dream in which I had composed a brilliantly insightful blog post. Unfortunately, waking drove my stellar plan away, and all I remember now is something vague about historical novels. On the upside, that experience got me thinking about how time eventually reduces our lives to a series of random snippets, like a dream that other people — not the dreamer — must somehow remember. Inevitably, those who study the past make a coherent story out of incomplete evidence. It’s important to remember that, try as we might to be objective and find “the truth,” those who tell the story, shape it.

Consider our great grandfather, Daniel Cameron, about whom we know so little. Day in and day out, from 1857 to 1929, Daniel lived and worked; he traveled from London to South Africa, back to Scotland, and thence to Canada and the United States. He married and had four children. He worked for the same company from the moment he landed a job in Canada, until a month before his death in 1929. But what do we really know about him? Bits and pieces –some tantalizing (what happened to those medals?),

some of them rather humorous,

and some more mundane.

By the way, the medals article appeared in the Montpelier Morning Post of January, 1910, while the other two stories ran in the Burlington Free Press. The car-fire occurred in January, 1928 and the election in March, 1918. When Daniel died in May, 1929, his obituary appeared in the Burlington Free Press.

Alas, newspapers often contain errors: DHC was not born in Edinburgh, though he might have thought it was his birthplace, and he lived in Rockland (not Rodsland), Ontario. His father did die in South Africa, but the likelihood of his earning a commission in the regiment (he had transferred to the 10th Lincolnshire by that time ) is effectively nil. All this goes to show that it is vital to verify information!

Since I get to “frame the story”, I’d say that our great grandfather was a Christian gentleman, who managed to maintain his good character even in the darkest of times: in a Scottish orphanage; during WWI when his son served and his nephew was killed; when his daughter died soon after, and when he lost his job. He was a dependable, intelligent, honest, and honorable man, strict with his sons and a pushover with his daughters, and devoted to his wife — a man who would not have approved this public attention to his private life, but whose example we are in need of these days.

Meanwhile, in my small corner of the North Country, the ground is still frozen but the amaryllis is blooming!

I can’t tell you what a morale boost beautiful flowers are, especially at this time of year, when the snow and ice still lie thick on the ground and the wind bites. Thank you CDC and JRP for such a lovely gift!

* The Tragically Hip, “A Beautiful Thing”

You’ve probably heard the oft-told story that poet Wilfred Owen’s parents received their son’s death notice as the bells pealed to honor the end of World War I and the streets filled with celebrating people. I have always thought that story was just horrible, but then I found this family twist on the same theme.

Five years ago, I posted about Dorothy Chamberlin, out great uncle Guy’s wife. In that post I wrote that Guy’s death in France in September 1918, “was, of course, a terrible blow to the family, made more so by the fact that he was the youngest, and that unbeknownst to them he had gotten married  just weeks before he died.  According to family tradition, the young widow showed up in Vermont to meet her ‘new family’ and was promptly dismissed as a tacky, gold-digger, who had had the audacity to claim the poor boy’s pension.” As it turns out, that’s not how it happened.

Poor Dorothy found out about Guy’s death when she read it in the newspaper! Presumably, he never bothered to tell anyone that he was married. After all, he was young and did not expect to die. He certainly hadn’t told his relatives, who, though they had received a telegram announcing his death, found out about the marriage when the Burlington Free Press picked up the Washington Evening Star story and ran it!

The Burlington paper, where our grandfather worked before the war, had blown it big time. They followed up their blunder with this announcement.

So, Dorothy found out about Guy’s death in the newspaper, and his family found out about her the same way (and we think social media is bad!). The news was too much for the Chamberlins, and yet, one other little detail suggests that they did not reject Dorothy outright. When Anna Hendren Chamberlin, the grieving mother, died in 1919, the Free Press noted:

Someone must have sent her the news. How else would she have known about Anna’s death? Could it have been her sister-in-law, our grandmother? It must have been an awkward trip for Dorothy, who is not mentioned in the funeral notice, but then neither is anyone else in the family.

In another unusual twist, I discovered a poem that our grandmother had written about Guy’s death published in an obscure Mississippi newspaper!

Mississippi? I have no explanation for that one. Maybe one of her college friends lived there and published the poem. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know…

Have a grand weekend and be sure to spend part of it thinking about your ancestors, who deserve to be remembered.