Today is precious Ida B’s birthday! She is two! I wish I could include adorable pics in this post, but, as you know, I am over my limit. Daughter #1 and I are working on getting a new blog going, and hopefully we’ll have something next week.
My thoughtful cousin Steve just sent me the program from my Aunt Donna‘s memorial service (July 16), which I really appreciated. The service was held in her church in Andover, where she had been an active member for a very long time. Over those 60+ years I have no doubt it changed a lot, but she stuck with it until she moved up to New Hampshire. They sang all the old hymns at the service–“In the Garden”, “How Great Thou Art”, “The Old Rugged Cross”. They read the 23rd Psalm, plus Isaiah 57, Ecclesiastes 3, 1 Corinthians 13, and “selections” from John 14. The Isaiah was an interesting choice.
The picture of Donna on the front of the program really stopped me, because I thought, wow, I am aging exactly the same way–the hair, the eyes, the nose and skin. Our genes, our DNA, the same. And I have to say, looking at little Ida B., I see her sweet mother and myself and Aunt Donna. Beautiful, how that works.
The boy tells me that David Lynch has died and also ol’ Bob Uecker. We will miss them both.
It’s Friday once again. Have a good one!
Oh Darlin, pardon me but do I look familiar when we were just flying free and we burned from a freight train and we were some flicker of truth in the smile of a salesman and we were all buried jewels ‘neath the grass in the suburbs and we were all living proof oh Darlin, pardon me
Another rainy, overcast weekend filled with busy-ness. When did February become such a busy month?
Among other things, the bud had the Pinewood Derby…
He got the “Spirit of Scouting” medal…
…but his car came in 4th out of 12 in the race, so he missed out on a podium trophy by three-tenths of a second. C’es la vie.
Meanwhile the movers came to daughter #2’s house two days earlier than previously arranged, so they had a last-minute scramble to finish packing the night before.
This gives them more time to drive to Illinois, so it’ll work out.
They left on Sunday and will arrive on Monday, in plenty of time to close on their house on Tuesday.
The OM and I are poised to drive over to help them unpack as soon as we hear when the movers are actually going to arrive (probably Wednesday) with all their stuff. Prayers for traveling mercies all around.
This week our Sunday School class on the Doctrines of Grace (TULIP) focused on Irresistible Grace–“the point at which the things determined beforehand in the mind and counsel of God pass over into time.” Or to put it simply: “He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:6) I love this class!
After church the OM went to the Blues hockey game and the rest of us all went to see The Wizard of Oz (1939) on the big screen. (Check out Fathom’s Big Screen Classics series here.) As you know, it is one of my top 5 favorite movies, so I jumped at the opportunity. Wow, to see this great movie as it was meant to be seen was fantastic. The art direction is A++++ and on the big screen you can see every detail. The incidental music is awesome and Judy Garland is perfection. In fact, everyone in it is great.
The bud’s favorite part was the tornado in Kansas and Lottie’s fave was Glinda. We all agreed that Toto reminded us of Mr. Smith through the whole movie. I hope we can talk about it further sometime–they had to rush off to Lacrosse practice!
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite ancestors, John Wesley Prowers, the Colorado cattle king who was an early inductee into the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Hall of Fame in 1963.
I like to celebrate by watching a really good cowboy movie. This year we watched Red River (1948), one of the best and a favorite of mine. As Roger Ebert wrote, “….’Red River’ is one of the greatest of all Westerns when it stays with its central story about an older man and a younger one, and the first cattle drive down the Chisholm Trail. It is only in its few scenes involving women that it goes wrong.” I have to agree.
John Wayne and Montgomery Clift are perfect as father and (adopted) son. Every time I see it I am so impressed with both of them. And Walter Brennan gives one of his best performances.
I also watched Kevin James’ Irregardless stand-up special on Prime Video. I think he’s funny and he seems really normal. No bad language or vulgarity. No politics. Probably having an old lady like me like your comedy routine is the kiss of death, but oh well.
So it was quite a weekend. What did you do? What did you learn? There’s no place like home!
Today we remember Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) on his birthday. An influential American illustrator, he created the “Gibson Girl”–an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent American woman at the turn of the 20th century.
I think it’s safe to say that our grandmother, Mira Sargent, styled herself that way.
Sadly, I did not inherit her bountiful hair gene.
Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.
(1 Peter 3:3-4)
I’m still working on that gentle and quiet spirit.
Today we celebrate the day in 1876 when U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting Colorado to the Union as the 38th state. Because the country had just celebrated its centennial a few weeks earlier, Colorado became known as the “Centennial State”.
Several months prior, in December 1875, leading Colorado citizens gathered to draft a state constitution, among them our great-great grandfather John Simpson Hough, who represented Bent County.
He received 240 votes in the sparsely populated county.
Delegates to the convention came from every district in the soon-to-be state. They met at the Odd Fellows Hall, upstairs from the First National Bank, on Blake Street in Denver. Modeled after the United States Constitution, Colorado’s Constitution set the terms and duties of state government officials, and outlined the manner by which a law could be introduced and passed. It established the State Supreme Court, as well as district and county courts. A program for the supervision and maintenance of a public school system was created. A state tax system was developed, rules that regulate railroads and other corporations were adopted, and provisions created to amend that State’s constitution.
So join me tonight in a toast to the state of Colorado and to John S. Hough.
In science news, please note that the first of two full moons in August will reach its peak today, August 1, so be sure to check it out. And as an added bonus, both of the full moons this month are also supermoons!
And here’s a poem about the moon by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Have a good day! Read some history. Look up at the night sky.
The painting is “Moonlight Study” by Christian Friedrich Gille, 1831 .
*The motto of the state of Colorado: “Nothing without the Deity”
Here’s a reminder that knowing your past will guide your future.
“…[W]e are probably the first generation in human history that doesn’t really know the communities from which we come. I can’t name any of my eight great-grandparents. (Perhaps you can, but I would ask, respectfully, what do you know about them?) As Alasdair MacIntyre has famously argued, we speak of justice with verve and passion but are unlikely to know what justice really means or from whom we inherit the very concept. We’re so eager to throw off the shackles of our received traditions that we’ve wholeheartedly loosed our roots from the loyal land and bound ourselves instead to that great banality of modern self-actualization, “you do you.”
I do know the names of my eight great-grandparents, although I admit I don’t know much about my great-grandmother Isabel Stanley Sargent’s line. I only know she was from Maine and that she left her husband and two children and fled to Chicago. She was a shocking skeleton in the family closet, but undoubtedly there was a lot more to that story. I have a fair knowledge of the rest of my great-grandparents compared, I suppose, to my contemporaries.
Since I retired I have had it in the back of my mind to “organize” all the genealogy notes and notebooks I have stored in my office. I tell myself I should write some kind of narrative account of our family. I know from experience researching that there is very little written down out there in the way of personal history and a lot of it is full of mistakes anyway. Nevertheless, anything written down and preserved is good, if not always helpful. I think of my mother’s cousin Jane who wrote “a family history…at the request of her brother” for the “elucidation of our children and grandchildren.” A noble effort it was, which my mother and her sister Susanne tore apart and corrected and generally ridiculed. True, Jane made a few undeserved snarky comments about their mother, but beyond that and the multiple mistakes, it is still a valuable resource (with pictures).
So we shall see if I can get started. Starting is always the hard part.
Meanwhile my grandkids celebrated the 4th in patriotic red-white-and-blue style…
Cuties.
*The ODWM pictured is Joseph Warren Sargent, my great-great grandfather.
Recently I acquired a small battered book entitled “First Baptist Church Centennial Celebration–in Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the church in Las Animas, Colorado 1874-1974”.
It includes a history of the church. Our great-great-grandmother is prominently featured.
She was, indeed, a founding member, trustee, superintendent of the Sunday School, and the organist. Her husband, John S. Hough, was not a member; he was a Quaker and remained so his entire life. My great-grandmother Anna Hough was a member; she was 10-years old in 1874. Her two older sisters, Ida and Susie, would have been members too, but they died in 1875 and 1876 and were not included, therefore, in the list of charter members.
The history goes on to tell us:
The original building was an adobe structure built on land owned by John Prowers. The bell on this church was known to be one of the first bells ever to ring in the Arkansas Valley.
I love that the “two little girls” Anna Hough and her cousin Katie raised the money to buy the bell. Gee, girls were empowered even back in the 19th century!
In other news, we will toast Ralph Waldo Emerson today on his 220th birthday (1803):
The world rolls round,—mistrust it not,— Befalls again what once befell; All things return, both sphere and mote, And I shall hear my bluebird’s note, And dream the dream of Auburn-dell.
And it’s time to start thinking about what movie(s) you will watch on Friday to celebrate John Wayne’s 116th birthday (1907)! Also keep in mind when making your selection that there may be multiple viewings of John Wayne movies over the upcoming Memorial Day three day-weekend! If you are in Fort Worth, go to the The John Wayne: An American Experience exhibit in the historic Fort Worth Stockyards, TX for lots of special events!
You never know who you might run into.
And news flash, there was a bear sighting in Festus, Missouri, 35 miles south of us on Tuesday. It was a big bear! It was hit and killed by a car on I-55 later that night. Can you imagine hitting a bear while driving your car? Zut alors! We are going to have to be on the lookout when we go to our favorite winery!
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, And Your faithfulness every night…
Psalm 92: 1-2
How was your weekend? We enjoyed another sunny, beautiful weekend in flyover country with plenty of patio sittin’.
On Saturday daughter #1 and I attended a special Flag Day luncheon at my DAR chapter. We both are officially members now, she in Jefferson City and I in the local Olde Towne Fenton chapter where you will recall I gave a talk about the Santa Fe Trail back in November. I knew not a soul when I joined, but I am enjoying this group of patriotic, history-loving women. My daughter, having been an active member of her college sorority, is even more at home in this organization. It is all new to me–the rituals etc–but I am learning the ropes.
Our becoming members was facilitated by my grandmother having been a member, since she had done all the work researching our patriot, Moses Wheeler. All I had to do was fill in the intervening years since she joined in 1938. I am looking forward to finding out more about our other family patriots, notably in the Carnahan, Putnam, Stanley, Tukey, Sargent, Chamberlin lines. (The Houghs were Quakers–I assume they didn’t fight in the Revolution, although some Quakers did participate, notably Thomas Paine and Nathanael Green.) It is good to have a project! Hopefully my DP will get involved as well.
The rest of my weekend was relatively quiet. I stayed after church on Sunday to attend the training class for VBS volunteers. Yes, you read that correctly. I volunteered to help with the Vacation Bible School being held the week after next. There will be 225 little kids (!) there, so they were desperate for volunteers! I heeded the call. I am the crew leader for a group of 4/5th grade girls. Zut alors! I hope I can handle it. Also it occurred to me (belatedly) that it will no doubt be 100 degrees in the shade and we will be outside the whole time…Pray for me.
Meanwhile, dear Katiebelle celebrated her 2nd birthday and I was sad to miss being with her…
…but we FaceTimed. We’ll see her in three weeks!
The wee laddie went with his dad over to Illinois across the river to the first ever Nascar race in that state. They even had pit passes. He was, of course, in hog heaven…
Christmas draws nigh and if we aren’t ready now, we’ll never be. Relax. Everything will be fine.
Today would have been our Aunt Susanne’s 97th birthday. She was our mother’s older sister and the Grand Dame of the family.
She was very different from our mother…
…as you can see in this picture taken in about 1930 (with their older cousin Marjorie). But they loved each other very much. When she was dying, it was Susanne who “understood” her best. After all, they had the most history together.
Of the three sisters, I think I am the most like Susanne, who also was a timid child. She played no varsity sports and she was not an intellectual like our mother. But she liked poetry and was a devoted church lady who endeavored to cultivate the fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control). She also liked a glass of spirits at the end of the day. When she died, her house was in order. As her son wrote me a few years after her death in 2000:
My mother saved everything (well, almost everything), and when the time came to settle her estate and move her belongings, I thought, “Maybe it’s important to save the things she thought were important to save.” So, I packed almost every item I came across.
Our attic and my workshop are stacked full of identical boxes that are just the right size for moving–not too big, not too small. Each one is labeled with its contents.
Periodically, I open one and try to make a decision to keep, or pass on, the items inside.
He is still working on it, all these years later…So tonight I will toast these devoted sisters and also our dear Aunt Donna, the remaining Cameron girl, who is 88.
Xmas card circa 1936
In other news, I finally watched the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol, the one with Reginald Owen. Some people actually think this is the best version. I can’t imagine why. It was not good, especially when compared with the close-to-perfect 1951 Alistair Sim version. I could go into detail explaining why it is not good, but suffice it to say, do not waste your time watching it. Indeed, the Muppet version is much better.
To recap, besides the three versions of A Christmas Carol I have viewed this month, I have watched White Christmas (1951), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), The Bishop’s Wife (1947), The Santa Clause (1994). And I confess that I jumped the gun and watched 3 Godfathers (1946). I just couldn’t wait until Epiphany–mea culpa.
Can you blame me? I am holding off on a few Christmas favorites at the request of daughter #1 who will arrive home later today.
Speaking of movies, this was an interesting article about movies that were filmed in our flyover hometown. I found Harold Ramis’s back-pedaling about the scene he filmed in East St. Louis to be hilarious.
Merry Christmas!
O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind;
let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, place me with ox, ass, camel, goat, to look with them upon my Redeemer’s face, and in him account myself delivered from sin;
let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart, embrace him with undying faith, exulting that he is mine and I am his.
In him thou hast given me so much that heaven can give no more.
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
Since returning from our trip to Colorado, I have been re-reading The Old Santa Fe Trail by Colonel Henry Inman, a classic memoir of “the Old Trail” which was, as Buffalo Bill described it, “the arena of almost constant sanguinary struggles between the wily nomads of the desert and the hardy white pioneers.”
It always helps when reading history (especially a primary source such as this) to be able to picture the location.
(Stagecoach ruts in the Comanche National Grasslands)
Since most of the Symposium we ostensibly attended consisted of lectures on topics not of particular interest to me (“The origins and history of the Spanish saddle used on the Santa Fe Trail from 1820-1830”) and which surely included much editorializing, we chose to skip them. Likewise we chose not to join the bus tours of points of interest, but re-visited on our own places we had been before (Bent’s Old Fort, Boggsville)…
…and also some places we had never been before (Bent’s New Fort site, Las Animas, Lamar)…
We attended the two award ceremonies (2020 and 2021) and chatted amicably with the legion of “living historians” (John C. Fremont et al) also in attendance–not to be confused with re-enactors (i.e. men who like to wear costumes). I met a nice couple who had retired to West Pueblo, Colorado after having owned the Best Western in Las Animas for 40 years. They told me that all the movie stars stayed there when the mini-series Centennial was filmed at Bent’s Old Fort in 1978, but that things had quieted down a lot after that. After dinner we cut and ran and drank the wine we had purchased at the local liquor store which we had found after two friendly locals pointed the way.
Mostly, it was just “being there” that mattered to me. I hope we can return someday, maybe with a grandchild or two in tow. No Disney princesses live there, but something much better does. I feel it is my duty to try to impart to them a love of history and appreciation of their ancestors’ part in it.
“We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable.”
dual personalities 