dual personalities

Tag: family history

November 2, 2021

We are family*

by chuckofish

Last September when we were bouncing around southeast Colorado, we visited the John W. Rawlings Heritage Center in Las Animas. A helpful staff person there told me that they had a few volunteers who would do research for me, since their Heritage Library is not open to the public on a regular basis. I filled out a form asking for information concerning my Hough and Prowers ancestors. After some phone message tag and an email, I was getting ready to check back with them when, low and behold, yesterday I received a little packet of photocopies in the mail.

“Bing-pot!”**

Included were photocopies of several photos donated to the museum by one of the daughters of John W. Prowers, including this portrait of our great-great grandmother Mary Prowers Hough at a younger age than previously we have seen with the notation “Aunt Mimie Hough”.

There is a new portrait of Anna Hough, daughter of Mary and John Hough, our great-grandmother (on the left)…

…and of the elusive Susie V. Hough, sister of Anna.

This is thrilling!

There is also a picture of Frank Baron Hough, John and Mary’s son, as a boy…

Here is a new-to-me picture of John S. Hough at an older age…

…and at a very old age in Lake City, Colorado with his son Frank and a young neighbor (Ward Crane) circa August, 1919. “The last picture Dad had made.” (He died on November 28, 2019.) Note he is wearing the Kit Carson coat.

Along with another portrait of Mary Hough which I already have is the notation: “Mrs. Mary Hough, a well beloved Christian whose untiring efforts matched by faith which never wavered, gave to this community its early Baptist Church. In early 1874 a group of seven Baptists, led by Mrs. Mary Hough, associated themselves together for the purpose of organizing a Baptist Church. The first church building was erected that year.” It was the first church in Bent County. Indeed, Mary was what they now call a church “planter”–someone who organized a community of believers wherever she chanced to be. She helped to do this in Las Animas, Lake City and Trinidad, Colorado. She usually ran the Sunday School.

This makes sense since Mary grew up in the wild and wooly Westport Landing, which became Kansas City. Westport, you will recall, was founded by John Calvin McCoy, the missionary who came to help resettle the Eastern tribes that were beginning their migration to the Plains States. He plotted most of the original streets and settlements of the city. His brother-in-law, Johnston Lykins, was the first duly-elected mayor of Kansas City who, along with his wife, Mattie, pulled together the founders of First Baptist Church on April 21,1855. Before this, these pioneers would have met in private homes. Lykins is the minister who married our great-great-great grandmother Susanna Matney Prowers and her second husband Louis Vogel in 1840. They would have been members of this group.

Well, we keep digging away and sometimes our digging yields dividends!

*Sister Sledge

**Bing-pot = bingo and jackpot combined, coined by Jake Peralta

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February 17, 2018

Don’t be afraid to write in a book — own it!

by chuckofish

Last week I wrote about the prologues of books. This week’s post will continue the theme, this time concentrating on dedications and doodles, and what we learn from them.

A few days ago, I received a box from my cousin Steve containing four books that had belonged to our grandfather and great-grandmother, and to a distant uncle by marriage.

This  1880 edition of Ben Hur belonged to George S. Smith, who married Sarah Pamela Rand in 1882, when they were both in their fifties. She was the daughter of Robert Rand and Laura Wheeler Rand. I believe that I read this copy of Ben Hur the summer I visited my aunt Susanne when I was about 13. I am delighted to see it again!

More unusual is the book, Up from Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T. Washington that Susie Louise Cameron gave to James Erskine, the uncle who raised her and her sister after their mother’s death. It is inscribed thus:

What an interesting gift choice. I was so intrigued that I started reading it, and I must say that I am incredibly impressed. Booker T. Washington was a profoundly thoughtful Christian man, who should be much more celebrated than he is. I’ll blog about him  next week. In the meantime, let’s turn to the two volumes that belonged to our grandfather, Bunker Cameron.

The first, Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton, he received from his sister when he was 13 years old.

The classic story of two farm boys, who build a teepee in the woods and decide to live off the land for a month, the book primarily teaches practical woodcraft. The well worn pages and slightly broken binding suggest that Bunker got a lot of use from the gift. Certainly, he was the type to enjoy “going native” in the Vermont woods. Two Little Savages is still in print and would make a perfect gift for anyone who wants to learn how to survive in the wild — or at least the backyard. Today’s youth could use more of this type of thing, don’t you agree?

Finally, we have a school text, Selections from Irving’s Sketch Book, in which we find these lovely doodles and comments:

Some things never change, especially the impulse to write our names and draw in our books . Notably,  none of the books I’ve inherited contain book plates. I suppose that before the advent of the stick-in, write-on kind we use now such extravagances were the province of the rich.

As for the rest of us, it’s fine to write in books as long as we don’t deface them (YES to light annotations, but NO to underlining and highlighting). When you give a book as a gift, you should always include a dedication. Such inscriptions give a book a provenance and add to its history. Your message will resonate long after the hand who wrote it is gone, and someday someone may wonder enough about the book’s previous owner to go find out who he/she was.

Books are wonderful artifacts. Treat them with respect and care, but don’t leave them on the shelf. Read them!

 

 

 

 

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