For information about the parents, Edward Herndon Piper and Ann Blackburn, click this link.
Ann Eliza Piper
Ann Eliza was the third child and first daughter of Edward and Ann Piper. She was born in Crawford County, Illinois, on 15 October 1824. After her father’s death, her mother moved the family to LaPorte, LaPorte County, Indiana, and that is most likely where Ann Eliza met and married John Sutherland in 1844.
Ann and John had two children in LaPorte: Alice J Sutherland, born 5 October 1851 and died 30 April 1878 at age 26 (she married William T Anderson); and William H Sutherland, born in August 1854 and died 2 January 1879 at age 24 and 5 months.
A third child was reported to have been born to Ann and John as actually their first child, Mary M, born in 1846. The source for this is the appearance of a 14-year-old girl named Mary M Sutherland on the 1860 Census with the other two children below her and the parents above, looking like a complete family listing. But an obituary for John says that he and Ann had only two children. If this Mary had lived to adulthood, surely she would have been remembered. Perhaps she died right after the 1860 census, and with her two siblings dying young in the 1870s, they didn’t talk about her. But would John have neglected to tell his second wife about his eldest daughter? It’s possible. And without records, this is all pure speculation.
Ann died 3 September 1874, age 50, and her widowed husband remarried and died many years later.
John B Piper
John B (for Blackburn?) Piper was born 4 November 1827 in Illinois and died 29 December 1850 in La Porte County, Indiana, where he is buried. He was 23 years old. Nothing further is known about him.
Edward Herndon Piper
Edward Jr was born near Palestine, Crawford County, Illinois at his parents’ home on 16 February 1831. He was the fifth child and fourth son of Edward and Ann Piper. When he was 21, he left Illinois and traveled across the Great Plains along the Oregon Trail with a Presbyterian colony, arriving in Oregon in the fall of 1852. He lived in the Willamette Valley near Salem, and as a young, single man, he fought in the wars against the Native Americans of that place in 1855 and 1856. But at the end of 1856 he married Sarah Elmira Grubbs, who was originally from Pittsburgh, then living in Benton County, next door to Lane County where Edward had been living. The couple lived in Butte, Benton County in 1860 where Edward was farming. In 1870 they had a farm in the Lincoln precinct of Marion County. They moved in 1874 to South Salem where they lived for 25 years and where Edward worked as a gardener. Edward doesn’t seem to have stayed with the Presbyterians, as his obituary says he was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Edward died in late January 1899.
The number of their children is unclear. One record says they had four: Mary Piper (1859-1874); May F. Piper (1860-1876); Florence M Piper (b 1862); and Edward Cloud Piper (1874-1955).
The truth is borne out in the surviving records. In 1860 the couple had no children listed on the census, so any surviving children had to have been born later. It is curious that Elmira was enumerated with her husband on this census, but she was also listed in her father’s family on the same census, with her maiden name. Maybe Edward had to be away and she stayed with her folks in the meantime, and the census taker didn’t realize she had a different surname from all those other Grubbs (she was the 4th of 13 children, and even though three had died young, there were still 10 of them).
In 1870 Edward and Elmira had an 8-year-old daughter, Florence M, living with them. In 1880 the daughter is not there, but they have a 5-year old son, E. (Ernest Cloud) living with them. The 1900 census shows Sarah E Piper living alone in South Salem, reporting that she had borne two children and one was living. That clinches it. The gravestone for Edward Herndon Piper and Sarah Elmira Piper has a third face with the name of their daughter, “May F” on it. Obviously Florence May or May Florence had used both names as a main name. She must have died between 1870 and 1880, but no record survives. The grave marker itself was ordered in 1936; the information on it therefore relied on the memories of people who were either infants or not even there when the girl was alive, and such memories cannot be completely reliable, although certainly close.
James A Piper
James A (Asa?) was the sixth child and fifth son of Edward H and Ann Blackburn Piper. He was born 1 March 1833 near Palestine, Crawford County, Illinois, on his parents’ farm. It seems likely that he would have served during the U.S. Civil War, being 28 or 29 and unmarried when the war was just getting going. But he was also a minister, so perhaps he was a chaplain. I haven’t found his military records; there are too many with the same name.
But in 1861 over in Indiana along the Ohio River in Jefferson County, he married Martha Matthews, who was about 21 years old. Their daughter Anna was born the next year, and the year after that a son, Samuel. Their daughter Mary came three years after Samuel. And then Martha died; I wish I could have found the family in 1870, but I haven’t been successful. In 1880 James was a widower with three teenage children.
In November 1882 he married again, to Mary Gray, in McLean County, Illinois. Her parents were from Tennessee, but she had been born and reared in Coles County, Illinois. Mary was about 40 at the time of this marriage, and the couple did not have any children.
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This is all of the story of Edward Herndon Piper and Anna Blackburn Piper and their children. It is a story of an ordinary couple of the nineteenth century and of their ordinary descendants; nothing thrilling, but somehow I still find myself interested in their stories, in looking beyond the bare facts of their lives to figure out the mysteries and something of who they really were. People are endlessly interesting.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Friday, April 26, 2019
Edward Herndon Piper and his descendants, part 2
For information about the parents, Edward Herndon Piper and Ann Blackburn, click this link.
Orlando Ficklin Piper
Orlando was the eldest child and son of Edward Herndon Piper and Anna (Ann) Blackburn Piper. He was said to have been born 12 February 1822, but his next brother William Chauncy was said to have been born only one month later, 12 March 1822, which clearly doesn’t work. I don’t know whether Orlando was born in 1821 instead, or whether William Chauncy was born in 1823 instead. Either would work with the parents’ marriage date and with the birth of the third child in late 1824.
Orlando married Mary A Hawkins in LaPorte, Indiana, in July 1844 when he would have been about 23 years old. He was a merchant and farmer, and then he became an Indian Agent for New Mexico, though their permanent residence was in Macomb, Illinois. He and Mary had 8 children, only 4 of whom were living in 1900:
William Chauncey Piper
William Chauncey Piper was the second child and second son of Edward and Ann Piper. He was born 12 March 1822, or maybe 1823. He and his older brother could not have both been born in 1822 a month apart; if only I could find something to tell me which birth year is the wrong one.
William married Mary Lavinia Sims on 7 May 1857 in Jessamine, Kentucky, when he was around 35. He had been a farmer, a school teacher, and sometime was a preacher. He died in November 1879 in Kentucky, at the age of about 57. His wife, Mary, died in 1903.
William and Mary had six children in Kentucky, where they lived all their lives:
Orlando Ficklin Piper
Orlando was the eldest child and son of Edward Herndon Piper and Anna (Ann) Blackburn Piper. He was said to have been born 12 February 1822, but his next brother William Chauncy was said to have been born only one month later, 12 March 1822, which clearly doesn’t work. I don’t know whether Orlando was born in 1821 instead, or whether William Chauncy was born in 1823 instead. Either would work with the parents’ marriage date and with the birth of the third child in late 1824.
Orlando married Mary A Hawkins in LaPorte, Indiana, in July 1844 when he would have been about 23 years old. He was a merchant and farmer, and then he became an Indian Agent for New Mexico, though their permanent residence was in Macomb, Illinois. He and Mary had 8 children, only 4 of whom were living in 1900:
- Edward S Piper, born 19 April 1845; died 18 July 1863 in Coffee, Tennessee (a casualty of the Civil War—Company C, 84th Regiment Illinois Volunteers), age 18.
- Alice B Piper, born 10 September 1847; married David S Blackburn on 26 Dec 1872 and had a son (Jesse M, b 1875 and d 1891); died 24 Mar 1927 (age 79) in Ventura County, California.
- Mary Cornelia Piper, born 24 April 1850; married Arthur Moore on 10 Sept 1873. Lived in Illinois; widowed about 1900; married in 1910 in DeWitt County, Illinois, to James McMillan.
- Ann J Piper, born 4 August 1852; died 1 November 1856, age 4.
- Walter L Piper, born 19 March 1856; joined the Presbyterian Church in June 1882; married Ella S Riddick on 24 January 1884; died August 1886, age 30.
- Charles Webster Piper, born 3 March 1862; died 29 August 1879, age 17.
- Louis H Piper, born 24 May 1865. Cannot find anything else about him, but he must have been one of the four children still living in 1900, so that means he is hiding from me . . .
- Orlando Hawkins Piper, born 21 May 1870; married Mary Louise Ralston in 1904 and had a daughter, Nellie; died 22 July 1950 in Ventura, California, age 80.
William Chauncey Piper
William Chauncey Piper was the second child and second son of Edward and Ann Piper. He was born 12 March 1822, or maybe 1823. He and his older brother could not have both been born in 1822 a month apart; if only I could find something to tell me which birth year is the wrong one.
William married Mary Lavinia Sims on 7 May 1857 in Jessamine, Kentucky, when he was around 35. He had been a farmer, a school teacher, and sometime was a preacher. He died in November 1879 in Kentucky, at the age of about 57. His wife, Mary, died in 1903.
William and Mary had six children in Kentucky, where they lived all their lives:
- John G Piper, born 13 April 1858 and died at the age of two months on June 1st.
- Augustus Bowman Piper, born 13 July 1860; married Lucy W Hammond on 8 Jan 1884; had ten children, all of whom reached adulthood; died 12 March 1919, age 58.
- Lucy W Piper, born 1 January 1862; married Milton Elliston on 9 Feb 1887; had a son (Milton) in 1890; died 2 Feb 1896 at the age of 34.
- Edward Sims Piper, born in April 1865; married Elizabeth E Davison about 1892; no children; died 19 Feb 1936 in Portland, Oregon, a little before he was 67 years old.
- Richard Rickets Piper, born 10 February 1869; married Carrie Bell Adams on 19 Sept 1891; had five children; died 31 January 1937, ten days before he was 68 years old.
- Frances “Fannie” Ann T Piper, born 5 October 1872; married Telford Newton Burrows on 22 June 1892; three children; died 30 October 1953, age 81.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Edward Herndon Piper and his descendants, part 1
Mirinda’s Elusive Aunt Ann
In her Memoirs, my great-great grandmother Mirinda Piper Andrews remembered that in 1854, “Father’s brother’s widow, Mrs. Ann Piper from South Bend, Indiana, spent a few days with us. I never saw her but that one time, her husband had been dead some years, his name was Edward Piper.” I got to wondering about that family, so I started looking things up. Here is what I found about Edward and Ann and their family.
Edward Herndon Piper was an older brother of my ancestor Beverly Bradley Piper. Edward was said by family records to have been born in Russelville, Logan County, Kentucky in 1793, but I found no official records to corroborate that information. The Findagrave record says April 4, 1792, but April 4 was also his death date, and maybe the creator of the Findagrave memorial decided he had died on his birthday. The photograph of his gravestone, which looks like an original stone, shows that he died April 4, 1835 and was 43 years old.
I think Edward probably served in the United States military during the War of 1812. In the Records of Men Enlisted in the U.S. Army Prior to the Peace Establishment, May 17, 1815, number 759 is Edward Piper, a private in the Infantry Volunteers under Capt. Nathan Stanley. Nothing was entered in the spaces for physical description, age, birthplace, or occupation, but his enlistment date is January 1, 1813 and the term is one year. The notes say that he was present for the roll call on April 3, 1813, but then “Receipt Roll reports him dead. Not borne on rolls for May and June 1813. Suspension case.” I’m not sure what this means, whether this is not our Edward after all, or whether it is and our Edward deserted.
Surely another Edward Piper was recorded in 1815 as having been given a U.S. War Bounty Land Warrant, Vol 1, page 503; Section NW 27, Township 2N, Range 10E, Warrant 24447. This could have been our Edward; at least we do know that our Edward survived the War of 1812. A veteran soldier was eligible for a War Bounty Land Warrant only if he had served five years. Thus I think our Edward did serve his five years and probably was not the one who went missing from Capt. Stanley’s company. He would have been granted 160 acres in his choice of Missouri, Louisiana Territory (present-day Arkansas), or Illinois. We know that our Edward lived in Illinois, so this Warrant would have been for Illinois if this is our Edward.
In 1816, we find our Edward H Piper buying 160 acres of land in Illinois. He might have sold his original warrant in order to buy this piece, or maybe he had the money to buy this piece to add to his original warrant. Here’s the data from Ancestry.com:
Name: Edward H Piper
Section: SE
Price per Acre: 2.00
Total Price: 320.00
Date: 30 Nov 1816
Volume: 086
Page: 170
Type: FD
Sect: 24
Township: 05S
Range: 09E
Meridian: 3
Acres: 160.00
Corr-Tag: 0
ID: 157949
Reside: 097
With land of his own, Edward could afford to go courting. He fell in love with Anna Blackburn, a young lady who had reputedly been born in Kentucky in 1798 or 1799, who was then probably living in western Indiana, not far from Edward. They were supposed to have been married in March 1820 in Indiana, but I cannot find any official record to corroborate this date and place.
Ann Blackburn Piper somehow eluded most record-making places in her life. There is nothing about her birth or her parents. No marriage record exists. No death record exists. The information we have about her comes from family traditions, supplemented by the meager amount I found.
In 1820, the Census taker found Edward and his wife living in Crawford County, Illinois. Edward was then about 28 and Ann 21. Accordingly, the columns for “Of 25 and under 45 years” and “Of 16 and under 25 years” are marked for their respective names. There’s also a female under age 10 living with them; since Edward and Ann were married on March 28th of that year, she probably was not a daughter (and indeed, no record exists of an eldest child being a daughter). She was probably a younger sister or something of one of them.
In 1823, Edward and Ann bought more land. Here is the Ancestry.com record information:
Name: Edward H Piper
Issue Date: 15 Sep 1823
Place: Crawford, Illinois, USA
Meridian: 2nd PM
Township: 007n
Range: 011W
Aliquots: NE¼
Section: 27 Accession Number: CV-0080-471
Document Number: 1414
In 1830, the Census taker found them in the same place. They appeared to have 4 little boys, two between 5 and 10, and two under 5, and one little girl under 5. This does not agree with other records, which show that they should have had just three boys and a girl at that time. Maybe the woman who lives with them, whose age is just younger than Ann, is the mother of the stray boy. Otherwise, maybe Ann and Edward had another son who died young and is otherwise unrecorded.
About this same time, Edward made a further purchase of government land. This time he bought 80 acres for $1.25 per acre. This land was in Section 35, Township 07N, in Section E2SE of the state. It is on the 2 Meridian, 11W Range.
Name: Edward H Piper
Section: E2SE
Price per Acre: 1.25
Total Price: 100.00
Date: 29 Apr 1830
Volume: 291
Page: 036
Type: FD
Sect: 35
Township: 07N
Range: 11W
Meridian: 2
Acres: 80.00
Corr-Tag: 0
ID: 133122
Reside: 017
Edward Herndon Piper died five years later, on April 4, 1835, and his grave in Crawford County, Illinois is memorialized on Findagrave and BillionGraves. I don’t know what killed him at the young age of about 43, but it could have been an accident, any of the numerous infectious diseases, an inherited problem like heart disease, or anything. All I know is that Ann was left in something of a predicament, with a farm and seven children under the age of 13, and one on the way who would be born the next September.
Ann may have had at least one brother who helped her out. Certainly by 1840 when the Census taker found her, Ann had moved with the children to LaPorte county, Indiana, where two residences away lived Alexander Blackburn and his young family. With Ann were children whose ages correspond to her sons William, John B, Edward H Jr., and James, and her daughters Ann Eliza and Margaret. Only her eldest son, Orlando, is not with her. At the age of 18 he was probably working elsewhere to support himself, and perhaps (if he were frugal and lucky enough to be making enough,) sending money home to help out.
Ann and Edward’s children were:
I cannot find Ann in 1850, but in 1854 we know from Mirinda’s account that her Aunt Ann came to visit them from South Bend, Indiana (South Bend is next door to LaPorte County). In 1860 Ann was living with Alex Blackburn, surely her brother, and what remained of those at home for his family. Her family were all settled elsewhere. This was in Chalmers Township, McDonough County, Illinois, on the west side of the state. I wonder, though, given that Aunt Ann was said to be living in Indiana in 1854 and also to have died in the same place in 1867, whether or not she was on an extended visit to her brother in 1860 and thus was counted with his family in the census.
Ann Blackburn Piper was said to have died 7 May 1867 in LaPorte, Indiana. I cannot find a record of her grave.
I will post more on each of their children over the next few days.
In her Memoirs, my great-great grandmother Mirinda Piper Andrews remembered that in 1854, “Father’s brother’s widow, Mrs. Ann Piper from South Bend, Indiana, spent a few days with us. I never saw her but that one time, her husband had been dead some years, his name was Edward Piper.” I got to wondering about that family, so I started looking things up. Here is what I found about Edward and Ann and their family.
Edward Herndon Piper was an older brother of my ancestor Beverly Bradley Piper. Edward was said by family records to have been born in Russelville, Logan County, Kentucky in 1793, but I found no official records to corroborate that information. The Findagrave record says April 4, 1792, but April 4 was also his death date, and maybe the creator of the Findagrave memorial decided he had died on his birthday. The photograph of his gravestone, which looks like an original stone, shows that he died April 4, 1835 and was 43 years old.
I think Edward probably served in the United States military during the War of 1812. In the Records of Men Enlisted in the U.S. Army Prior to the Peace Establishment, May 17, 1815, number 759 is Edward Piper, a private in the Infantry Volunteers under Capt. Nathan Stanley. Nothing was entered in the spaces for physical description, age, birthplace, or occupation, but his enlistment date is January 1, 1813 and the term is one year. The notes say that he was present for the roll call on April 3, 1813, but then “Receipt Roll reports him dead. Not borne on rolls for May and June 1813. Suspension case.” I’m not sure what this means, whether this is not our Edward after all, or whether it is and our Edward deserted.
Surely another Edward Piper was recorded in 1815 as having been given a U.S. War Bounty Land Warrant, Vol 1, page 503; Section NW 27, Township 2N, Range 10E, Warrant 24447. This could have been our Edward; at least we do know that our Edward survived the War of 1812. A veteran soldier was eligible for a War Bounty Land Warrant only if he had served five years. Thus I think our Edward did serve his five years and probably was not the one who went missing from Capt. Stanley’s company. He would have been granted 160 acres in his choice of Missouri, Louisiana Territory (present-day Arkansas), or Illinois. We know that our Edward lived in Illinois, so this Warrant would have been for Illinois if this is our Edward.
In 1816, we find our Edward H Piper buying 160 acres of land in Illinois. He might have sold his original warrant in order to buy this piece, or maybe he had the money to buy this piece to add to his original warrant. Here’s the data from Ancestry.com:
Name: Edward H Piper
Section: SE
Price per Acre: 2.00
Total Price: 320.00
Date: 30 Nov 1816
Volume: 086
Page: 170
Type: FD
Sect: 24
Township: 05S
Range: 09E
Meridian: 3
Acres: 160.00
Corr-Tag: 0
ID: 157949
Reside: 097
With land of his own, Edward could afford to go courting. He fell in love with Anna Blackburn, a young lady who had reputedly been born in Kentucky in 1798 or 1799, who was then probably living in western Indiana, not far from Edward. They were supposed to have been married in March 1820 in Indiana, but I cannot find any official record to corroborate this date and place.
Ann Blackburn Piper somehow eluded most record-making places in her life. There is nothing about her birth or her parents. No marriage record exists. No death record exists. The information we have about her comes from family traditions, supplemented by the meager amount I found.
In 1820, the Census taker found Edward and his wife living in Crawford County, Illinois. Edward was then about 28 and Ann 21. Accordingly, the columns for “Of 25 and under 45 years” and “Of 16 and under 25 years” are marked for their respective names. There’s also a female under age 10 living with them; since Edward and Ann were married on March 28th of that year, she probably was not a daughter (and indeed, no record exists of an eldest child being a daughter). She was probably a younger sister or something of one of them.
In 1823, Edward and Ann bought more land. Here is the Ancestry.com record information:
Name: Edward H Piper
Issue Date: 15 Sep 1823
Place: Crawford, Illinois, USA
Meridian: 2nd PM
Township: 007n
Range: 011W
Aliquots: NE¼
Section: 27 Accession Number: CV-0080-471
Document Number: 1414
In 1830, the Census taker found them in the same place. They appeared to have 4 little boys, two between 5 and 10, and two under 5, and one little girl under 5. This does not agree with other records, which show that they should have had just three boys and a girl at that time. Maybe the woman who lives with them, whose age is just younger than Ann, is the mother of the stray boy. Otherwise, maybe Ann and Edward had another son who died young and is otherwise unrecorded.
About this same time, Edward made a further purchase of government land. This time he bought 80 acres for $1.25 per acre. This land was in Section 35, Township 07N, in Section E2SE of the state. It is on the 2 Meridian, 11W Range.
Name: Edward H Piper
Section: E2SE
Price per Acre: 1.25
Total Price: 100.00
Date: 29 Apr 1830
Volume: 291
Page: 036
Type: FD
Sect: 35
Township: 07N
Range: 11W
Meridian: 2
Acres: 80.00
Corr-Tag: 0
ID: 133122
Reside: 017
Edward Herndon Piper died five years later, on April 4, 1835, and his grave in Crawford County, Illinois is memorialized on Findagrave and BillionGraves. I don’t know what killed him at the young age of about 43, but it could have been an accident, any of the numerous infectious diseases, an inherited problem like heart disease, or anything. All I know is that Ann was left in something of a predicament, with a farm and seven children under the age of 13, and one on the way who would be born the next September.
Ann may have had at least one brother who helped her out. Certainly by 1840 when the Census taker found her, Ann had moved with the children to LaPorte county, Indiana, where two residences away lived Alexander Blackburn and his young family. With Ann were children whose ages correspond to her sons William, John B, Edward H Jr., and James, and her daughters Ann Eliza and Margaret. Only her eldest son, Orlando, is not with her. At the age of 18 he was probably working elsewhere to support himself, and perhaps (if he were frugal and lucky enough to be making enough,) sending money home to help out.
Ann and Edward’s children were:
- Orlando Ficklin Piper, born 12 February 1822, but this conflicts with the next birthday.
- William Chauncey Piper, born 12 March 1822, which clearly doesn’t work. I can’t figure out which one is wrong, yet.
- Ann Eliza Piper, born 15 October 1824.
- John B Piper, born 4 November 1827.
- Edward Herndon Piper (Jr), born 16 February 1831.
- James A Piper, born 1 March 1833.
- Margaret Jane Piper, born 28 August 1834.
- Sarah Elizabeth Piper, born 29 September 1835.
I cannot find Ann in 1850, but in 1854 we know from Mirinda’s account that her Aunt Ann came to visit them from South Bend, Indiana (South Bend is next door to LaPorte County). In 1860 Ann was living with Alex Blackburn, surely her brother, and what remained of those at home for his family. Her family were all settled elsewhere. This was in Chalmers Township, McDonough County, Illinois, on the west side of the state. I wonder, though, given that Aunt Ann was said to be living in Indiana in 1854 and also to have died in the same place in 1867, whether or not she was on an extended visit to her brother in 1860 and thus was counted with his family in the census.
Ann Blackburn Piper was said to have died 7 May 1867 in LaPorte, Indiana. I cannot find a record of her grave.
I will post more on each of their children over the next few days.
Saturday, April 13, 2019
Adjusting Down: a Becoming Theme
I finally got the chance to buy and read Michelle Obama’s Becoming, and I think it’s a wonderful book.
Michelle Obama has inspired me with her own characteristic goodness. But more than that, she inspired me by how she was able to overcome the negative voices that she internalized as a girl that suggested she might not be “good enough”—she was able to rise above questioning herself to the point that she committed herself to showing all children, especially the disadvantaged, that she believes in them, that all are “enough” in an innate way, and that she personally believes in them. I love that she has followed up on whole groups for years and keeps involved.
I love her commitment to her family, both her original family and hers and Barack’s. I love how she invested herself in his extended family as well. I love how incredibly bright and insightful she is about how to balance the needs of very different upbringings and styles.
These themes and one more made me want to write my own experience relating to them.
Adjusting Down
This theme in Michelle Obama’s book Becoming was what played out when she realized she didn’t like her career and made the jump to something she really believed in doing, with the result that she had to adjust to living on half her previous salary. She makes the point that because she had grown up making cents count, this wasn’t as hard an adjustment as it might be for people who grow up with rich privilege.
I didn’t grow up quite the same way as the Robinsons, nor were we in the privileged class. We were comfortably off, but my parents were both pretty strict with money. We kids didn’t get an allowance. We had to ask for whatever we wanted, and we learned very early that if there wasn’t a very good case for the want, then forget it. I became used to evaluating my wants against the usual lecture and deciding whether it was worth the risk to even ask. I tried never to ask for anything but something that was a certain “yes.”
What wasn’t fair about this system was that my brothers were encouraged to get paper routes and other jobs as early as they could so that they had spending money to do with as they wished. But the girls in the family were not allowed to do this. Usually my parents weren’t sexist, but this is one case they were extremely, irritatingly so. I got so angry about this, to no avail. They weren’t going to let me get a job, except babysitting, and I hated babysitting. I didn’t know the first thing about babies, so I was quite frightened deep inside by the idea of being left in charge of a baby of any kind. What was easier to do was to claim that I didn’t like little kids and stick to that story.
I did babysit a few times in my later teens. I didn’t discipline much, opting instead for taking the role of Chief of Imaginative Games. I led my little charges in piling all the cushions and pillows in the house in one room to make a huge fort from which we all fired all kinds of weapons at imaginary enemies; or lining up the dining room chairs to make a paddle boat in which we navigated huge rivers with waterfalls and rapids and every kind of water monster we could think of; or building islands all over the house and claiming that all the floors were quicksand. My method of getting them into bed was to tell them they could stay up until their parents got home, if they would help me out by getting into pajamas so we could play until then, and then they had to agree to dive into their beds at the first noise of the car in the driveway. That worked almost every time. I got asked back a lot, and mothers told me their kids loved me. I bet they did. I wonder what stories they told their parents about our adventures.
My first job was cleaning house for a lady who was dying of cancer. I did that every week until I moved away, and she died not long after I moved. I was sorry I had to quit before she was gone. She didn’t pay me much, but I did gain a real appreciation for fine things. She had a lot of money in the things in that house, and I loved working with her things, keeping everything just the way she liked it. I used to pretend that I was a rich lady and that I had all these fine things. It never occurred to me to pretend that when I was a rich lady I would hire a housekeeper. Oh no, I would clean everything myself, naturally.
Then I got a job folding tee shirts and packaging them in a silk-screen factory. The silk screener would put the newly screened tee shirts on a conveyor belt that ran through an oven-type dryer out to me on the other end. I grabbed the shirt by its neck, flipped it flat on my table, and whipped it into a neat, trifolded square. I slipped it into the plastic bag and stapled the labeled top onto the bag. One, two, three. I was very fast. We did more than a shirt a minute sometimes; I got paid 4¢ a shirt until the silk screener quit and a new one came on. He was one of the part-owners of the factory, and he reduced my wages to 3¢ a shirt. I bet now that the other two owners never knew he did that, and I was too timid to protest, although I was mad inside. I got paid in cash, you see.
Finally I developed some backbone. I was no longer living at home and had to make my expenses. I got another job at a temporary agency that sent me to work for a computer company that made floppy disks and hard disks. Floppy disks had been reduced from 8-inch diameter plastic to 5-inch, and two years after I started there, the new 3-inch disks began being made.
By this time I had decided I didn’t want to be a factory worker all my life and needed to go to college, so I was saving as much as I could. My parents couldn’t help me, they said, so I was on my own. I had to make my little salary stretch for rent, food, and other expenses. I tried to reduce “other expenses” to near zero. I rode my bike everywhere, knowing I couldn’t afford a car. My entertainment budget was zero, so if something cost, I didn’t do it. I did have friends with cars, so we went to the beach a lot and other places that were free. I thought I was doing pretty good, learning to live frugally.
But being a college student was a different reality. I had made enough money to pay for my tuition, rent, and food for the year. But books and supplies were more expensive than I had thought, and there always seemed to be other expenses that I was expected to cover. I ran out of food money about two months before the end of the school year. I had stocked up on ramen noodles and a huge bag of carrots, and that’s what I ate for those last seven weeks. People kept wanting to give me treats and lend me money and offered to pay my way, but I wouldn’t let them do anything. I was determined that I was going to do this myself, and if I had made a mistake, I was darned well going to suffer its consequences myself.
The next year I worked three months longer and delayed going back to school until I had enough. Then I got on-campus jobs the rest of my school career and by declaring myself financially emancipated, I qualified for grants-in-aid and other ways of covering school expenses. I didn’t have to take out any loans for my undergraduate degree, but graduate school was way more expensive, so I took out loans, as small as I could manage on, and was able to repay them all right afterward.
Skipping over my years of employment, adjusting downward became a theme again after I had to quit working for health reasons, and after my husband had also retired. Now we don’t have the income to indulge in whims. We don’t have the income to eat out every week. We don’t have the income to fix everything that breaks, or to replace things. We have had to make decisions between things we want to do and sacrifice one thing for another. Because of ever-rising health care costs, exacerbated by last year’s Republican party tax cuts that actually raised our taxes a good deal (a repeat of what happened back when Pres. Reagan and the Republican Congress overhauled the tax code in 1986), we are now cutting into our food budget, because there are no other budget items we can cut now. Right now this is not a terrible thing—we are no longer eating snack foods, processed food, red meats, and other junk that we are healthier without. We shudder to think what we are going to have to do when we can no longer afford medical insurance. Part of the family is on Medicare; I am not old enough yet, nor am I disabled.
I wish I could write a book that would sell well, but I’m no Michelle Obama! And I’m not someone who can write good fiction either. Ah well! I’ve learned, like Michelle, that I’m “enough”, and I have confidence that I will always find a way to have enough.
Michelle Obama has inspired me with her own characteristic goodness. But more than that, she inspired me by how she was able to overcome the negative voices that she internalized as a girl that suggested she might not be “good enough”—she was able to rise above questioning herself to the point that she committed herself to showing all children, especially the disadvantaged, that she believes in them, that all are “enough” in an innate way, and that she personally believes in them. I love that she has followed up on whole groups for years and keeps involved.
I love her commitment to her family, both her original family and hers and Barack’s. I love how she invested herself in his extended family as well. I love how incredibly bright and insightful she is about how to balance the needs of very different upbringings and styles.
These themes and one more made me want to write my own experience relating to them.
Adjusting Down
This theme in Michelle Obama’s book Becoming was what played out when she realized she didn’t like her career and made the jump to something she really believed in doing, with the result that she had to adjust to living on half her previous salary. She makes the point that because she had grown up making cents count, this wasn’t as hard an adjustment as it might be for people who grow up with rich privilege.
I didn’t grow up quite the same way as the Robinsons, nor were we in the privileged class. We were comfortably off, but my parents were both pretty strict with money. We kids didn’t get an allowance. We had to ask for whatever we wanted, and we learned very early that if there wasn’t a very good case for the want, then forget it. I became used to evaluating my wants against the usual lecture and deciding whether it was worth the risk to even ask. I tried never to ask for anything but something that was a certain “yes.”
What wasn’t fair about this system was that my brothers were encouraged to get paper routes and other jobs as early as they could so that they had spending money to do with as they wished. But the girls in the family were not allowed to do this. Usually my parents weren’t sexist, but this is one case they were extremely, irritatingly so. I got so angry about this, to no avail. They weren’t going to let me get a job, except babysitting, and I hated babysitting. I didn’t know the first thing about babies, so I was quite frightened deep inside by the idea of being left in charge of a baby of any kind. What was easier to do was to claim that I didn’t like little kids and stick to that story.
I did babysit a few times in my later teens. I didn’t discipline much, opting instead for taking the role of Chief of Imaginative Games. I led my little charges in piling all the cushions and pillows in the house in one room to make a huge fort from which we all fired all kinds of weapons at imaginary enemies; or lining up the dining room chairs to make a paddle boat in which we navigated huge rivers with waterfalls and rapids and every kind of water monster we could think of; or building islands all over the house and claiming that all the floors were quicksand. My method of getting them into bed was to tell them they could stay up until their parents got home, if they would help me out by getting into pajamas so we could play until then, and then they had to agree to dive into their beds at the first noise of the car in the driveway. That worked almost every time. I got asked back a lot, and mothers told me their kids loved me. I bet they did. I wonder what stories they told their parents about our adventures.
My first job was cleaning house for a lady who was dying of cancer. I did that every week until I moved away, and she died not long after I moved. I was sorry I had to quit before she was gone. She didn’t pay me much, but I did gain a real appreciation for fine things. She had a lot of money in the things in that house, and I loved working with her things, keeping everything just the way she liked it. I used to pretend that I was a rich lady and that I had all these fine things. It never occurred to me to pretend that when I was a rich lady I would hire a housekeeper. Oh no, I would clean everything myself, naturally.
Then I got a job folding tee shirts and packaging them in a silk-screen factory. The silk screener would put the newly screened tee shirts on a conveyor belt that ran through an oven-type dryer out to me on the other end. I grabbed the shirt by its neck, flipped it flat on my table, and whipped it into a neat, trifolded square. I slipped it into the plastic bag and stapled the labeled top onto the bag. One, two, three. I was very fast. We did more than a shirt a minute sometimes; I got paid 4¢ a shirt until the silk screener quit and a new one came on. He was one of the part-owners of the factory, and he reduced my wages to 3¢ a shirt. I bet now that the other two owners never knew he did that, and I was too timid to protest, although I was mad inside. I got paid in cash, you see.
Finally I developed some backbone. I was no longer living at home and had to make my expenses. I got another job at a temporary agency that sent me to work for a computer company that made floppy disks and hard disks. Floppy disks had been reduced from 8-inch diameter plastic to 5-inch, and two years after I started there, the new 3-inch disks began being made.
By this time I had decided I didn’t want to be a factory worker all my life and needed to go to college, so I was saving as much as I could. My parents couldn’t help me, they said, so I was on my own. I had to make my little salary stretch for rent, food, and other expenses. I tried to reduce “other expenses” to near zero. I rode my bike everywhere, knowing I couldn’t afford a car. My entertainment budget was zero, so if something cost, I didn’t do it. I did have friends with cars, so we went to the beach a lot and other places that were free. I thought I was doing pretty good, learning to live frugally.
But being a college student was a different reality. I had made enough money to pay for my tuition, rent, and food for the year. But books and supplies were more expensive than I had thought, and there always seemed to be other expenses that I was expected to cover. I ran out of food money about two months before the end of the school year. I had stocked up on ramen noodles and a huge bag of carrots, and that’s what I ate for those last seven weeks. People kept wanting to give me treats and lend me money and offered to pay my way, but I wouldn’t let them do anything. I was determined that I was going to do this myself, and if I had made a mistake, I was darned well going to suffer its consequences myself.
The next year I worked three months longer and delayed going back to school until I had enough. Then I got on-campus jobs the rest of my school career and by declaring myself financially emancipated, I qualified for grants-in-aid and other ways of covering school expenses. I didn’t have to take out any loans for my undergraduate degree, but graduate school was way more expensive, so I took out loans, as small as I could manage on, and was able to repay them all right afterward.
Skipping over my years of employment, adjusting downward became a theme again after I had to quit working for health reasons, and after my husband had also retired. Now we don’t have the income to indulge in whims. We don’t have the income to eat out every week. We don’t have the income to fix everything that breaks, or to replace things. We have had to make decisions between things we want to do and sacrifice one thing for another. Because of ever-rising health care costs, exacerbated by last year’s Republican party tax cuts that actually raised our taxes a good deal (a repeat of what happened back when Pres. Reagan and the Republican Congress overhauled the tax code in 1986), we are now cutting into our food budget, because there are no other budget items we can cut now. Right now this is not a terrible thing—we are no longer eating snack foods, processed food, red meats, and other junk that we are healthier without. We shudder to think what we are going to have to do when we can no longer afford medical insurance. Part of the family is on Medicare; I am not old enough yet, nor am I disabled.
I wish I could write a book that would sell well, but I’m no Michelle Obama! And I’m not someone who can write good fiction either. Ah well! I’ve learned, like Michelle, that I’m “enough”, and I have confidence that I will always find a way to have enough.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
“I wandered lonely”
It is time for my usual yearly tribute to English Romantic poet William Wordsworth and one of his most famous poems:
I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
(—William Wordsworth, 1804-1807)
The poet and his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, were walking around Ullswater one April day in 1802 when they came upon a long stretch of daffodils beside Glencoyne Bay, on the southwest side. Ullswater is one of the most beautiful of the lakes in the English Lake District, 9 miles long with a 20-mile hike all the way around. A couple years later the poet drew from his sister’s journal description of that day to compose the first version of his poem. Later he added the second stanza and revised a word here and there. His wife, Mary, he credited with the lines “They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude” in the final stanza.
The first daffodils opening in my yard signal the beginning of spring to me. They were several weeks later this year than last year, but last year was a very dry and warm year, unusually so for us. I planted a lot more daffodil bulbs last fall and am waiting for them to bloom. The first year blooms are always later than those from bulbs that were planted years ago. Early spring can stretch for another month.
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
(—William Wordsworth, 1804-1807)
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| Daffodils beside Ullswater Photo by Janet Wedgwood, see Ullswater.com |
The first daffodils opening in my yard signal the beginning of spring to me. They were several weeks later this year than last year, but last year was a very dry and warm year, unusually so for us. I planted a lot more daffodil bulbs last fall and am waiting for them to bloom. The first year blooms are always later than those from bulbs that were planted years ago. Early spring can stretch for another month.
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