Janice Williams Loves Austin

May 30, 2011

Pissy People, Part 2

Filed under: Cemeteries,Family,Genealogy — Janice @ 7:50 pm

I need to write a more lengthy report on the life of Bernard Cunningham, because I have learned a lot since the last time I wrote. I need to ignore the pissy people and be grateful for the kind, sharing, helpful people.

After not hearing from the pissy woman, I turned to my new obsession, ancestry.com, to see if there might be something about the young doomed couple I wrote about. I found a private family tree that appeared to have some photos associated with it. I didn’t know what the photos might be, so I wrote to the owner of the tree and she was gracious and opened it up for me to see. What a treasure trove! It turns out that the young bride, Annie, died of pneumonia in early 1918 while the couple were living in Fort Worth. He was not off in battle, he had not even enlisted. He moved back home with his parents after her death and soon enlisted. He trained and shipped off to France and was killed after 3 months in battle.

Not in the actual obituary, but in a story attached to the family tree, so probably a handed-down tale, she wrote that Bernard was in battle in France and there was a cease fire as the soldiers of each side went out to bring back their dead. During this cease fire, Bernard was shot by the enemy and killed.

Included in this trove were 3 pictures of the actual funeral. You can imagine how much attention a funeral of a war hero would have in a small town. Apparently it was a full military funeral. Here is one picture from her photos:

I looked closely at the other pictures to see if I could recognize my family members among the mourners. My grandfather was only a little younger than him and I expect he was probably at the funeral.

There is no “more” to the story, but I do need to write this all in more detail and file it where people can find it. I thought it appropriate on this Memorial Day to include the only member of my family that I know of from World War I. My grandfather enlisted and I have a photo of him in uniform. Of course, with my great filing system, I have no idea where it is in my computer.

May 24, 2011

Pissy People

Filed under: At home,Cemeteries,Genealogy — Janice @ 6:31 am

I don’t like when people get pissy. It makes me pissy.

I got an email from a findagrave.com contributor today that asked me to take down a memorial I had put up. On findagrave.com you put up “memorials” or the info about a grave. It isn’t necessarily someone you knew or loved… I have put up many graves I’ve just seen and taken pictures of in cemeteries. She asked me to remove one I put up for the wife of a cousin of my grandfather’s. I had not seen the grave, I was going by information that was in a printed book at a library that transcribed graves in a certain cemetery and I took it to be accurate. Her email was rather terse and said that she was not buried there. I responded and thanked her and asked if she could help me with the correct information because I am curious about this couple. She has not responded.

The story of this couple is interesting. First, the husband, Bernard, was the second child of his parents. They had the first grandchild in the family and I’m sure little Edna was the pride and joy of the entire family. When she was born, she would have had 6 aunts from age 6 up to 21… no shortage of babysitters in that family. Sadly, little Edna died when she was only 5 years old. The next year, the couple had Bernard and he was their only child. When Bernard was 20, he married a girl from the community, Annie. I don’t know how much after they married he was sent off to France in World War I, but that is where he died in July of 1918. Also sad, Annie had died just 2 days before he did.

When I first read the information about their deaths when I was just a teenager, I had it all romanticized and even sadder that Annie had died  – possibly in childbirth? — and when the news got to Bernard he lost the will to live and charged into battle, saving his fellow soldiers in the process with his bravery, and was killed. Of course, as I grew older and was able to think it through a little more I realized that he probably died in France without ever knowing that she had died at home. Communications were not what they are today or even what they were in WWII. Also knowing what I know now and knowing what 1918 was around the world, it is quite likely they both died of the flu epidemic.

The woman that wrote the email was not truly pissy, just terse and unhelpful. I have since found a website that she put up that is full of information about a Texas county. I admire people that put up websites that share a lot of information, but I also don’t know why people put up websites that look so terrible. Bright colors, terrible fonts. I am no graphic artist and I realize my website is no prize winner, but there are some things everyone should at least be able to see.

I think what really started me on this rant though (besides being tired, hungry, and cranky) was where she has her name at the bottom of her page, she follows her name with her degrees. La-di-frickin’-da, as Chris Farley’s character Matt Foley used to say. And, if you’re going to list your master’s degree, why bother listing the bachelor’s? Now, if the website were related to her degrees — for instance, this was about history so if she had a degree in history or genealogy, then, yes, I can see why she might want to highlight that information. But she has a degree in education, she is a teacher.

So anyway, I’m just rambling and pissy, as I said, and not the internet isn’t connecting so you may never even see this entry.

May 18, 2011

Stymied

Filed under: Cemeteries,Family,Genealogy — Janice @ 11:09 pm

I really hate being stymied in my writing. I want to write in my blog. I want to be read and commented on. And I have plenty of stuff to write about. So why do I wait until midnight to open up the program to write?

I am better. I just reread about being sick and there has been a definite improvement over the last 3 weeks and my appetite is back in full force, that’s for sure.

I still want to write about Decoration Day and put pictures of cemeteries. Now I can also add to the list my nephew’s graduation from Baylor University on Saturday. What a proud day that was for us all! And I need to write about the awesome dinner we had at our book club on Monday night.

Another time sucker I’ve gotten myself involved in:  Ancestry.com. I have finally fallen victim to their advertisements and their many many endorsements from friends and relatives that use it. So I signed up for their 14-day free trial and fully expect I’ll be roped in for at least a year. And yes, I’ve found things in the last 24 hours that I didn’t know to look for, really. The WWI registration for my Papa Hallford and great-grandpa Couch. The grave of my Puckett ancestor that died in the Civil War…  He’s buried with a beautiful stone by a Civil War Confederate Memorial and the works. I had no idea.

The thing I am not so keen on on ancestry is how easy it is. I know that sounds funny. And I don’t want genealogy to be hard, I really don’t. But I do think there is something to be said for at least copying-and-pasting the information to your own software program or writing it in your own notebooks. Ancestry makes it easy to go, “Hmmm, that census must be my ancestor,” click, and you’ve easily entered him and his entire family into your tree without having to even consider the names of the children or their ages and how long the couple was married, etc. I guess that’s fine for some, but I do like to ponder and dwell on these ancestors a little more.

I was looking at the census with this Puckett Civil War soldier in the years before the Civil War. He was a farmer, of course, but his wife had “sewing” listed as her occupation. I had never seen that on a census before (“housekeeping” is most common). I thought that was cool until I saw that just about every woman in that neighborhood had sewing listed as their occupation. There were a couple of “spinning” occupations, too, though.

I don’t really remember filling out the details on the census last year, but I assume I put down my occupation. I wonder if someone will look at it in 150 years and wonder what in the world a “music designer” is? I still haven’t quite figured it out myself.

May 5, 2011

Hodge Podge

Filed under: Music — Janice @ 10:30 pm

After being away from my blog for this long, I’m sure I can’t put together a cohesive, well-thought-out post, so you get what you get.

I’ve been sick for a month, since I wrote the entry “Sickness,” and I sure hope to get better soon. Without going into the gross details, the doctor thinks I have a parasite, the kind you get when you drink well water or out of a stream. How I got it is anyone’s guess. The doctor is quite sure that’s what it is, but he wants the test to come back positive before he prescribes the strong antibiotics it takes to kill it. So far, no test results and there is a good chance it might be inconclusive. We will have to see. I have had more of an appetite this week, which is good, but I’m still exhausted a lot of the time and pretty cranky, too. I’d like all that to be over soon.

But what I started to write . . .   I just noticed that Bryan Adams, the old rocker who sang Summer of ’69 and other forgotten rock songs of the 80s, is a father for the first time at 51 years old. I’m surprised he is that old. I thought he was a lot younger than me when he was up-and-coming. I guess he had been up-and-coming longer than I knew.

News stories like this remind me of all sorts of little stories that relate to that news maker. The first that came to mind was a story from my aunt’s preacher. Now I can’t even remember why I was having a casual conversation in Eldorado, Oklahoma, with my aunt’s preacher in the first place, but I was. I had just been to see Bryan Adams in concert in Amarillo and somehow that came up in the conversation. The preacher nodded and said, “Yes, I know Bryan Adams, he visited our church recently.” Well, you hate to tell a kind, old Baptist preacher, “Uh, no he didn’t,” so I just smiled and began to change the conversation to something safer. But then he went back to the story. He said that the kids in the church would often turn in visitor’s cards in the offering plate from Micky Mouse or celebrities and the preacher would have to think quickly as the cards were gathered and delivered to him and he greeted the visitors by name from the pulpit. He would have to sort through them on the fly and toss the obvious frauds. But he said on the previous Sunday he did not know the name Bryan Adams so he graciously welcomed “A visitor from Canada, Bryan Adams is with us this morning,”  until he noticed the high school kids trying to keep a straight face. So he truly DID know who Bryan Adams was when I mentioned him and he had been a visitor at their church — sort of.

The other story I associate with Bryan Adams …  I went to that concert with a great date, a guy I was super infatuated with. I guess that was our first date, as a matter of fact, because I just happened to run into him days before it after not having seen him in ages, and I asked him to go. Before the concert there was a meet-and-greet with several people from the media and Bryan Adams. As I recall it, we were actually all seated comfortably in a room (rare for a meet-and-greet) and having a nice conversation. My competitor on the other morning show in town was there with his wife. She asked Bryan what was the most memorable city on his tour so far. He said that he had had an amazing crowd in Omaha and the kids there just really were a great audience to play to. Her response was something to the effect that “I guess those potato farmers don’t get a whole lot of entertainment there.” You could see the incredulity in his face and he moved on to another topic. My date, who was originally from Iowa, was just completely livid about her and her assumptions that Omaha (a city that is bigger than Amarillo, I believe) was a “farm town.” And, of course, thinking “potatoes” instead of “corn” when it came to Nebraska. I ran across that woman again a few years later in my career and determined that she was not just stupid that night, she was truly one of the least intelligent persons I have ever met.

So that’s what I thought about when I read Bryan Adams’ name online tonight. The End.

One of these days I might have to backtrack and tell about going to a cemetery for Decoration Day last weekend, getting up at 4 in the morning to watch my friend the Prince of England get married, and, oh yes, the death of the most evil man that has walked the planet in my life. It’s been a newsworthy week and I write about Bryan Adams. Maybe he’ll Google his name and find me, his old pal Janice.

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