Category Archives: Genealogy

Research As A Motivator

A period of intense research is what led to this book. What will come of this new time of research?

Somewhere, in the back pages of this blog, I’ve said that I love research. I find that it motivates me. But research, I have also found, has a dark side—at least for me it does—in that it can all too easily become all consuming.

Two research opportunities came up recently, and I am trying very hard to resist the urge to dive in fully.

One has to do with genealogy. This month, one of my few book sales is of my genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich. That’s the second of these books sold since I published it in July 2020. Then, a day or so after that sale, I was browsing through my Google Books library, looking for a new download, and saw a copy of a two-years volume of The Essex Antiquarian, a genealogy and history magazine. The volume I downloaded and started reading years ago was from 1898. Of course I had to open it.

But rather than read on, I decided to search the book for “Cheney”, my wife’s maiden name. The family was in Essex County, Massachusetts for a while, some in Ipswich, including Stephen and Elizabeth Cross. I found several hits for Cheney, four of which were for John Cheney of Newbury, the immigrant ancestor of the family.

I’ve done a lot of research on John Cheney, and possibly he and his wife Martha will be the subjects of my next genealogy book. That book, however, is so far down the line that I don’t have dates for writing it. But, I had this opportunity: four items related to him published in a 1898 magazine were at my fingertips on my screen. I pulled up my John Cheney research document, and learned that two of those hits were new information. I dutifully made the new entries and did comprehensive source documentation. Beautiful. A pleasant 30 minutes spent.

That wasn’t good enough. I searched for other editions of that magazine, and found several more, available for full viewing. I did the Cheney search over several volumes, and found additional information about John Cheney that was new. Repeated the entries and documentation. A pleasant 2 hours spent.

The next day I repeated and expanded this, looking for information, not only for Cheney, but for other family names, including Cross.  I also found a longer article about a Newbury man that John Cheney supported in a controversy with the government. Rather than take time to read that (six pages), I made a note of where to find it again. Two more hours spent.

Within a year, these will be going to the University of Rhode Island library. While it will be sad to see them go, it will also be a joy knowing they will be well cared for and properly preserved and available for study.

The other research opportunity came with the many copies of the Stars and Stripes newspaper that I have. As noted in previous posts, these were newspapers that Dad worked on in Africa and Europe during WW2, copies of which he sent home to his parents, to be stored in an old steamer trunk to this day. As I reported earlier, I’m donating them to the University of Rhode Island. I decided to inventory them first, and began that process on Labor Day.

With every Bill Mauldin cartoon I see, I wonder if Dad modeled for that one.

Tuesday, I continued. My inventory method consists of recording the day, date, and edition—also whether the copy has any damage or not. By the end of my dedicated time on Tuesday, I had a total of 70 listed. Only 700 to go. I’m purposely not taking time to look at the newspapers. I will make a couple of exceptions to that as I get further into this.

But, on Tuesday, I saw a headline, “U.S. Woman Writer Held by Russia as Spy”. That sounded interesting, and I read the article. The writer was Anna Louise Strong (1885-1970). She was an American who became a socialist, then found sympathy with the Soviet Union and Communist China. Much of her writing was promoting the economic systems in those two countries. Why the Russians kicked her out is a mystery, but it seems some think it was her cozy relationship with China that was the problem.

Much of that I learned from the article about her at Wikipedia, not in the newspaper.

Anna Strong is a new person to me. I’ve never heard of her before. Thirty minutes of reading gave me the gist of what her views were, views very different from mine. A few quotes of hers made me think of things that need to be said about the capitalist and communist systems. I could easily write something about that, given a little more research.

When I first got Dad’s Stars and Stripes, in 1997, I had dreams of doing war research in them, thinking about the fog of war. How much of what the newspaper reported would prove to be true or untrue? How much does journalism get wrong, requiring history to set the record straight? Alas, after 25 years, the newspapers remained untouched. My research project null and void. I suppose I could pick it up again, but I can see that would require years of research and then some writing. No, I just can’t dedicate that time to that project. So off the papers go to URI. Perhaps students, faculty, or outside researchers will someday use them to good purposes.

More research? No! In the last three days I’ve spent over five hours on research and almost none on writing. That can’t be. I’ve got to find a way to pull away from it and concentrate on the tasks at hand. I have three books in the pipeline, started and unfinished. I need to choose one and get it done.

Casting About

The Centennial book is done. I have my copies in hand. Full distribution starts on Sunday May 22.

Ack! It’s almost 11 a.m. and I’m just now getting to writing my blog post for today. Something must be wrong with me.

Yes, something is wrong with me. I’ve been too busy. It began last Thursday, when a Zoom meeting about our upcoming church Centennial celebration was still going strong after 2 1/2 hours, and I hit a wall. I couldn’t go on. I abruptly ended the meeting, took a break, and a few hours later got back to the task we had been working on—now alone. Yes, I still work better alone than with someone else.

Not the final cover, but some thoughts I had on a draft. The artist is working on it.

Friday and Saturday are blurs to me now. I know some heavy yardwork and a daily walk were involved. I had a number of e-mails about the Centennial, also about There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Saturday evening was taken up with study to teach Life Group on Sunday morning. Sunday was the usual church, Life group, fast-food takeout. Then we went to the high school graduation reception for our neighbors’ daughter. Through a comedy of errors (which included my not understanding the invitation), that took us a while to even get there. Back home, tiredness set in and I didn’t get a lot done during the afternoon. In the evening I went back to the Centennial work I have been tasked with, and got a little more done.  I also did some in-depth critiquing of a piece send by a member of our critique group. This morning, the first thing I did was finish that critique and e-mail it to her.

Back on TNSTATT, we must finalize the book cover, create the publication files (e-book and print book), decide whether it will be on Amazon only or go “wide” to other publishers. I think it was on Friday that I got most of the final formatting done. Today I re-read a couple of the later chapters and made a few edits. I declared it done around 8:15 a,m. and began the final formatting. This includes such things as adding in a listing of my other books which, for some reason, is never up-to-date. I spent time getting it up-to-date, and creating a system for keeping it up-to-date henceforth.

I have another hour and a half of work on the print book, then an hour or so on the e-book. Then I will be ready to work on something else. What will it be?

I ought to get back to the second of two Bible studies I was writing, as described in this post. I had pulled off the second while waiting on feedback on the first. But last night I learned that the man I sent it to for review never got the e-mail. I re-sent it last night, confirmed he got it, and so now I wait. I may get back to that. The Scribblers & Scribes meet this Thursday evening, and I’d like to have something to share. But what? I’m not sure they will want to review and critique pages of a Bible study.

Or, I may start on something completely new. I don’t want to go into too much detail. Tentatively titled Tales Of A Vagabond, it would be the start of an autobiography. I actually started it when I realized I needed to write my blog post.

Whatever I ultimately do with Tales Of A Vagabond, I know that finishing the two Bible studies will be my next main writing tasks. But after that, what? I’m kind of itching to do some work on a genealogy book about one of Lynda’s ancestors. My two partly-complete and temporarily-abandoned Thomas Carlyle books are starting to look attractive again.  There’s always the next Documenting America book, for which I have completed the research. If TNSTATT takes off, I may hop right on Book 2 in that series.  I just don’t know.

That’s not really the full list. I will be taking time soon to pray about this and see if I get some divine direction. The problem is, God has never given me such specific guidance. He usually leaves it up to me, and I have learned to pray that he would direct my footsteps as I make the best decisions I can. I suspect this will be one of those times.

 

Light and Momentary Troubles, Part 2

Dateline: 24 March 2022

Not too long ago, I posted about the second of three Bible verses that I try to start each day with. This one, 2 Corinthians 4:17, talks about our troubles on this earth being light and momentary, and will result in an eternal glory that far surpasses the troubles. My focus of that post was that I wasn’t experiencing the glory because I wasn’t using the troubles as a spur to personal growth.

This photo doesn’t really show how my workspace was torn apart from moving stuff to get to devices and cables. Will wait a little to everything back in place. Maybe I’ll even organize it a little.

Wednesday was one of those days, when troubles seemed somewhat more than light. The power company was working in our neighborhood and had alerted us that they would be turning off our power for a couple of hours in the morning, and that they would come by and tell us before they did. The day started out normally. I was at my computer by 7:30 a.m., doing writing and stock trading tasks. It was about 10:00 a.m. before the power company came by and gave us a 10-minute warning.  I closed out of all programs, keeping only a couple of Word documents open, closed the lid on my laptop, and left The Dungeon.

Sure enough, the power soon went off. I took the occasion to make my weekly grocery run to Wal-Mart. Normally a Tuesday task, a long meeting then had caused me to delay a day. I went and did my shopping, for a change finding everything on my list. At the self-checkout, all worked well.

The man at the self-checkout station next to me had some unusual items in his cart: a dozen cans of salt and that many gallon bottles of vinegar. That seemed strange, and I did something I never do: I started a conversation with him, asking him about the oddity of his purchases. Understand: I never do that. If at all possible I go through the store and consider it a good time if I don’t have to talk with anyone.

Although, earlier in this trip, I did talk briefly with a woman shopper in the pharmacy section. A rock and roll song was coming over the loudspeakers and I was humming it. This woman and her adult daughter came in my direction and the woman was singing it. She caught my eye and stopped, embarrassed. Then I started signing it and so she started again. Three seconds later we had passed each other, on with our shopping.

Back to the man and his cart of salt and vinegar. I assumed he was buying for a restaurant, but he said no, it was for his concoction of killing weeds in his rock yard. He told me his formula. Since I have the same problem and have considered hiring a lawn service to spray deadly chemicals on it, I was interested. I learned something from this conversation, this impromptu, hard for me to start but easy to continue conversation.

Back to light and momentary troubles. When I got home, the power was still off. The power company had said two hours, and we weren’t there yet. So I went to the sunroom and read. The temperature was 40° out and the sunroom was getting cold with the space heater not working. I was about done with my daily reading quota in this particular book when the power came on, just shy of three hours since it had gone off. The power company had said it might take as long as that if they ran into any problems.

All was good. The trouble of no power was indeed light and momentary, and I thought I had redeemed the time well. A brief lunch, and downstairs to The Dungeon to resume my activities, only to learn…no internet. No problem. I rebooted the modem; still no internet. I rebooted the router; still no internet. I waited then repeated those two steps. Still no internet. I finally found a number for our internet provider. They did a remote reset of the modem; still no internet. I got on a text chat with a rep of their company. He did various things. I tried to explain the situation. Two hours of texting; still no internet.

I took note of the steady light showing on the modem and the all-lights-flashing status of the router, assumed a router failure, and texted a friend who is an IT guy in his job and arranged for an evening call. I wondered if the router experienced a power failure when it came back on. I also considered that the internet provider had sent an e-mail a week before, saying they had increased speeds and I would have to reboot the modem to take advantage of that. I hadn’t done it yet, but the power shutdown was actually a forced reboot. I now have 866 mbps speed—but no internet. Could it be that this old router was incompatible with the higher speed?

This trouble was turning out to be worse than light and not all that momentary. I found other things to do, mainly going through an old genealogy research notebook and getting rid of a bunch of stuff I no longer need. I read the instructions for the air fryer we’ve had for three years but never used and planned to cook some veggies in it. Supper came and went, and I had the call with my friend. We talked through the internet problem. He agreed with me that it sounded as if the router had gone bad. Based on our set-up, he talked me through a work-around, and poof! we had internet.

From there the conversation rolled into other areas to fill the hour. Technology, internet, CATV vs streaming, cost increases, even a little into politics. We ended when he was expecting another call to come in. It was a good hour.

So how would I describe these technology troubles. Light? Momentary? In hindsight I would guess so, though it didn’t seem like it at the time. But since the time was redeemed, and redeemed well, I would have to say they were indeed light and momentary, and that God used them toward the goal of eternal glory.

Hunkering Down

[Note to self: Don’t hit the browser back button when typing a post if you haven’t hit “save draft”. Maybe the second time will be a charm.]

This is looking up the street from our house on Thursday 2/11. It is sanded (actually gritted). I believe I could get up it if I tried.

I’m looking out The Dungeon windows to a light snowfall. It’s just condensation due to the cold, 14°F. We were supposed to be in Texas this weekend, watching the grandkids while their parents were at a church event. Wednesday last was our departure day. But we woke up to a winter glaze on the roads, a freakish ice storm overnight. It had been predicted then removed from the forecast. After a quick survey of the situation, I postponed the trip a day.

If not, perhaps I could get down the hill then loop around the circle and go up the next street which, last time I checked, was free of ice.

I spent time chopping and clearing ice, spreading rock salt and sand. I was able to get the already-loaded van up to the end of the driveway. Once the City truck came by spreading grit on the road, I probably could have made it up the hill. But reports on conditions elsewhere indicated the trip would be difficult. Thursday morning was not much different. Radar showed light, frozen precipitation along our route. I delayed the trip from morning to afternoon. By noon it was clear things were no better. Reports of accidents along our route said it all. I cancelled the trip.

So were are unexpectedly home. The forecast now calls for 6-10″ of snow Sunday-Monday, with temperatures like we have now or lower. After a trip to Wal-Mart today (hopefully) for fresh items, we will hunker down. I made a large pot of soup yesterday. We have enough frozen, canned, and boxed food to get by a long time should the W-M run not be possible. I plan to write in the church anniversary book. I plan to begin the editing process in The Teachings. I will read C.S. Lewis and other things. On Sunday I will teach Life Group from home. And I will walk outside a little but get my main exercise on the elliptical. I might even get a little genealogy research done.

I realize that the last paragraph is all about me. “I plan…I will…” Obviously I will do that only by the grace of God and the strength and abilities He has given me and continues to give me.

Oh, in the last half-hour we learned that the church event have been postponed due to…weather.

2020 Writing Recap

The 5th story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca – Unconventional CIA Agent series. Published in January 2020, I’ve sold one copy.

Ah, 2021 is starting out good, with January 1 falling on Friday, my regular blog post day. I always start a new year here by summarizing the year just ended and making some goals for the year just starting. I’ll do that today with a recap of 2020. On Monday I’ll put some writing goals for 2021, assuming, that is, that I formulate some goals between now and then into a publishable state.

Retired from my day job (for the 2nd year), cooped up due to the corona virus pandemic, you’d think I got a lot of writing done, right? You’d be wrong. I’ve said all this before on the blog, but let me go through it again.

In January I published “Tango Delta Foxtrot”, the next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series. That was written in 2019 and passed through my critique group. It all came to January and I published it then. So far I’ve had one sale. Yippee.

Also in January, I continued work in the next novel in my church history novels series. Begun in late 2019 and tentatively titled The Teachings, it falls chronologically between Doctor Luke’s Assistant and Preserve The Revelation. The action takes place during the first Jewish war of 66 to 70 A.D. I got a few chapters in, running them by the critique group, when I bogged down on making my story fit into the historical events. I spent a lot of time reading in source materials, adding a little text, setting it aside, and going back to the sources again. By mid-March I had about 21,000, or between 20 and 25 percent of the intended length. Feeling frustrated with it, I decided to stop my major work on it.

Stephen Cross was quite a character. Frequently in court, involved with a pirate, taking part in two military excursions, he left a lot of footprints that I’ve been able to follow.

Instead, I pulled out some genealogy work I had begun some time ago. This was the lives of Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney. Elizabeth is a gr-gr-whatever-aunt of Lynda’s. I began studying them two or three years prior and realized I had enough material on them to make a short book. I organized the material back then and wrote the beginnings of a book. I picked up that work again and saw that yes, I could make a book out of their lives, but I really needed to do more research. I worked on that the second half of March, making good progress.

Then Lynda went into the hospital on April 3. I couldn’t go in to see her, of course, so to keep myself busy, instead of going back to The Teachings, I focused on Stephen and Elizabeth. By the time Lynda got out on April 21 I had most of the research done and was back writing the book. My labor on it continued after Lynda came home. It all came together around the end of May, I edited and formatted in June, and published it in July. Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Newbury has—wait for it—one sale so far. That’s fine. This isn’t intended to be a best seller. Hopefully some day a few Cross and Cheney researchers will find it.

From there I moved to decluttering/dis-accumulation work at our house. I dug into boxes of papers left behind by my mother-in-law. That caused me to also look at our own boxes of papers and begin culling. In the process I found our Kuwait years letters. I collated them, indexed them, and then decided to transcribe them. This took up some of July, all of August, and some of September. Someday I will add photos and make it a book for the family. For now, it will sit in the cloud.

During this time, I occasionally picked up The Teachings and did a little work on it, either research or writing. I added 500 words here and there. But I still couldn’t focus on it.

I updated my first Documenting America book for conditions in 2020: correcting typos, correcting formatting, adding new text for 2020.

In September, I think, I decided to re-publish my first history book, Documenting America: Lessons From the United States’ Historical Documents. I published it first in 2011 and decided it could use some updating for conditions in America in 2020. I think it was September to early October that I: re-read it; corrected a few typos; and added text to each chapter for what’s going on now. I also had to improve the formatting because, in 2011, I didn’t know much about print book formatting and made some errors. I completed this work in mid-October and re-published it.

Meanwhile, I had been dissatisfied with some formatting and illustration quality in the Cross-Cheney book. I tackled that in October as well, substituting some figures, improving the pixel quality of others, and re-published it. I still wish they were better than they are but at least they are better than they were.

Writing related, but not new writing, was taking part in two week-long on-line seminars about using Amazon advertising to boost book sales, once in July and once in October. I saw an increase in sales as a result, though the ads really are not paying out. I’m still within the budget I set, so I’ll keep the ads running. I’ll take the challenge again this month, then see where I go with it.

Finally, in the second half of December, I was ready to return to serious work on The Teachings. Over the last few days of the month I added over 5,000 words, bringing my total to just short of 33,500. I have much of the rest of the book planned, and should be able to make good progress, so long as other things don’t get in the way.

Here’s where my Church History Novels series stands. Working on that “gray” one.

Things such as a new short story, or deciding to transcribe more letters, or let decluttering overtake me again.

Was it a productive year, writing-wise? Perhaps. I wish I had more to show for it. May 2021 be better.

Self-Determination: A Defining American Characteristic

My first characteristic of what makes the United States of America different than most other nations is the concept of self-determination. In other words, we chose our own form of government and our own leaders, and have maintained that for over 230 years. Actually, the choosing of our government goes back much further than that.

The residents of Waterville Vermont wrestled with choosing leaders and setting the tax rate in the mandatory annual town meeting. How interesting it was to read those records.

From the moment that Europeans came to these shores in the early 1600s, selection of leaders through voting has been a part of our nature. The form of government was at first based on what the colonists knew back home, or what was imposed on them by the terms of the charter by which the colony was established. However, slowly, the form of government changed and settled into a pattern.

First it was pure democracy at the local level, with a fledgling republic at the colony level. By the time of the revolution, when the colonies considered themselves states, republican form of government was well-established. At the local level even, a mini-republic had mostly replaced democracy. Some vestiges of democracy remained, but for the most part the form of government was a republic.

Of course, a republic requires active participation of its citizens in terms of voting. At regular intervals, from as short as six months to as long as two years, the people chose their leaders. In doing so peacefully, the people were saying, “We are satisfied with this form of government. All we are doing now is choosing those who will lead us, either returning those already in leadership or voting new ones in.” Election after election, for more than a century before we were a nation, this process took place from New Hampshire to Georgia. Those eligible to vote chose new leaders and kept their form of government.

The colonies did well governing themselves, until the King of England tried to impose new government on them. Resistance to that became the seeds of the American Revolution.

Self-determination. We will govern ourselves. How different this was than in the Europe they had left! England had a monarch, a king or queen, who ruled. In the 17th Century the parliamentary system was flexing its muscles and growing in importance. England went through three revolutions (one bloody, two peaceful) and one counter-revolution. All other European nations had much the same. The monarchy was a coercive power. The people didn’t choose it so much as the king ruled by “divine right”. France, in a bloody revolution that would eventually lead to a worse dictatorship than the kings ever were, would throw off that monarchy thirteen years after the American Colonies declared their independence. Other nations would eventually follow suit. But it was the bloody American Revolution that set much of that in motion.

As I researched my first genealogy book, Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West, I had occasion to look into town records of Waterville Vermont, where Seth was born and raised until he was 13. It was interesting to see the notices of the town meeting on the last Saturday in March (right in the middle of maple sugar harvest no less) and having all voters required to attend. I read how they set the tax rate: “Voted to establish the rate at $X” or “Voted a rate of $Y to construct a fence around the cemetery.” These people were governing themselves at the local level, deciding big issues as a democracy but electing representatives to lead the municipal republic the rest of the year. I “watched” as new towns were formed, Waterville carved out of Bakersfield because the Waterville residents couldn’t cross the snow-covered mountain in March to attend the town meeting. Self-government in action, the form of government chosen by the people and maintained year by year, decade by decade, century by century.

As I researched my second genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich, I saw the same thing from a much earlier period, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the years 1647 to 1710. I actually went back earlier than that, as I was simultaneously researching an earlier ancestor in the Cheney family, the subject of a future book. I saw the same thing with the town, and more so at the county and state level. One rabbit-hole I went down with my research that took place during Stephen’s and Elizabeth’s lives was the change in colonial charters forced upon the colonies by the king of England. This did not go over well. In fact, the seeds of the American Revolution were sown right here, as people, who had chosen and maintained a form of government they liked—self-determination—had a form of government and leaders forced on them—a coercive power—who served at the whim of and benefit of the monarch, not the people. Ipswich was a hot spot about this and some consider it to be the cradle of American independence.

Now, in 21st Century America, we have a hard time conceiving what the world was like during our colonial days. Oh, we know from studying our history what the colonies were like, and may have a vague understanding of England, from whence most of those settlers came. But I think we need more study of just how different the government was in our world. And to what extent the people had, not just the right, but the obligation to maintain that government through votes and taxes. We had our faults back then, and took far too long to address those faults. Compromises would eventually be forged that would keep us as one nation rather than several regional federations, compromises that later would almost tear us apart.

Yes, I believe self-determination is a defining characteristic of the United States of America. Other nations now have it. Yet many other nations only dream of it. It defines the USA. How long can we keep it?

About To Re-Start

I’m not talking about the U.S. economy, about ready to begin emerging from the business shutdown to help slow the spread of the corona virus. I’m talking about me.

April was kind of a blur. I worked on and finished the genealogy/family history book. I did yard work. I did massive decluttering, getting rid of piles of paper, a score of empty boxes, five old computers. Some of that stuff is still in the garage, awaiting re-opening of the technology recycling center.

I took my wife to the hospital on the third, bringing her home on the 22nd after two operations and a difficult recovery. Now I’m her caregiver, though she is getting stronger each day and will be somewhat back to normal soon.

Now it’s May 1, my regular blogging day as well as the first of the month. It’s time for me to report on how I did on April goals and set some goals for May. But given how April was, I feel like I need to totally re-start things. I don’t know  what the new normal will be, either in the world or in my life. Thus I’m not really ready to set new goals for my writing life. I guess, however, I can report on April progress.

  1. Blog twice a week. I think I missed one day. Otherwise, I continued this through the unsettleness of the month.
  2. Get as far as I can with the genealogy book. I finished this book. Yesterday I did a few tweaks. I still need one last proof, plus one last check to see that I have all events in the people’s lives covered. Plus I need to check the formatting to make sure the graphics insert properly. I may do that this weekend. Then, I head to publishing steps.
  3. Spend at least some time in The Teachings. I should set a word goal. Let’s say 3,000 words is my goal for the month. All I did on The Teachings last month was re-read the first few chapters. Since the genealogy book consumed me, I kept this set aside. Maybe today and this weekend I’ll get back to re-reading the whole thing, and back to new writing next week.
  4. Give my talk to the Village Lake Writers & Poets on April 8. This was to have been a virtual talk due to the ban on gatherings of over ten people. However, this was the day when Lynda was at her lowest in the hospital, and I found I couldn’t give it. I told the organizer I was willing to do it, but she said no, given the circumstances she would do something back-up and reschedule me.
  5. Do some research into the next Documenting America book. Maybe it will just read the document I found. Maybe it will be to peruse the site that document came from and note other documents for use and at least skim them. I did nothing on this.

So there you have it. I’m not ready to set goals for May. Maybe I will be ready by Monday, or maybe not at all. As the U.S.A. looks to turn back to something normal, perhaps a new normal, so it is with me. Right now decluttering will take a higher priority than writing.

Look for my post on Monday. Perhaps I’ll have some clarity by then.

Finding Something New Through Research

The Port Royal expedition was short, close at hand, and successful. The Quebec expedition was long, arduous, and conducted much too close to the harsh Canadian winter to be successful. Click on the image to see it larger.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I pulled away from my creative writing to work on genealogy research and a genealogy/family history book. I suppose it is really more of a biography.

The subjects are Elizabeth Cheney and Stephen Cross, who married in Ipswich Massachusetts in 1672. Elizabeth is the youngest daughter of John Cheney of Newbury Massachusetts, who is my wife’s immigrant ancestor in her paternal line. Over the years I’ve gathered a lot of information on John and finally decided I should write a book about him. What the book would look like crystalized in 2015. It would be about him and his ten children who lived to adulthood. I decided I would start gathering data with the youngest child, since published sources I looked at had less about Elizabeth than her siblings.

From 2015 to 2016 I began that process. I found that there was actually a lot of information about Stephen Cross, Elizabeth’s husband. It’s unfortunate that, in the era they lived, the women didn’t leave as many footprints as the men. But there were a lot of footprints to find and assimilate. In a couple of months of occasional work, I had the part about Stephen and Elizabeth up to 60 pages, and I wasn’t really done.

Woah! Sixty plus pages for one of John’s children. That meant a possible 600 pages about the children. Add that much or more for John, and I was looking at a monster, 700 page book. That wouldn’t work unless I did two volumes.

Ipswich, on the north shore of Massachusetts, is an interesting study. It’s been nicknamed the Birthplace of American Independence for the stand many of its leading citizens took against the heavy-handed government of Edmund Andros.

I had another thought back in 2016. The Stephen and Elizabeth material could be expanded into a stand-alone book. I put this on my list of writing to-dos, then, my research fervor having been stated for the moment, I went back to my creative writing work, knowing someday I would get back to Stephen and Elizabeth, and later to her siblings.

“Someday” was March 25, 2020. I dusted off what I did in 2015-16, realized I had much more research I could do, and got into it passionately. When I research a topic the work tends to consume me. From the research I made three discoveries that, so far as I can tell, have been overlooked—or maybe “not found” is better—by other researchers.

First, Stephen was a coastal mariner. He bought a boat and plied the coasts from Maine to Connecticut, hauling freight. That has always been known by researchers. So has his part in the colonial naval assault against Quebec in 1690 as part of King William’s War. But researchers have missed that he was also part of an assault against Port Royal, Nova Scotia, two months before the Quebec expedition. Smaller, closer, shorter than the Quebec expedition, the Port Royal expedition was a huge success. Stephen Cross was part of it, not as a mariner, but as captain of a company of foot soldiers.

This seems to have been missed by all researchers. My research has turned up Stephen in close to twenty published works, sometimes as a “bit player” in a genealogy but sometimes as a key figure in a Cross family book, story, or major website. I’m not even sure how I found out about his Port Royal adventure. I suppose it came from researching the disastrous Quebec raid, which I learned was shortly after the successful Port Royal raid. Searching a narrative of that must have turned up Stephen’s name. It didn’t take much digging to confirm his participation and role.

The fact that he led foot soldiers at Port Royal caused me to question the nature of his participation at Quebec. Every researcher I’ve found said he captained the ketch Lark in that raid. However, in original sources about the Quebec expedition, his name doesn’t show up as the captain of that vessel. Instead, it shows up because he attended a war council the evening that they anchored in the St. Lawrence just down river from the city. Of the thirty-odd people who attended that conference, only two were among those listed as captains of the thirty-some vessels in the expedition. That conference was for the officers of foot soldiers!

This also seems to have gone unnoticed by other researchers. Of the seven captains of foot companies at Port Royal, five attended that Quebec war council, including Stephen. My conclusion is he was he again a captain of foot soldiers, not a captain of a vessel.

So why have other researchers thought otherwise? In Perley’s History of Salem is a statement “In August, 1690, the Salem vessels joined the rest of the fleet which were at Nantasket to sail for Canada…. The ketch Lark of Salem, commanded by Capt. Stephen Cross, had been in the expedition to Canada, and had returned to Salem this year, and the arms on board were deposited in Mr. Derby’s warehouse.” Perley’s source for this is the Massachusetts Archives, volume 36, leaf 33.

Alas, to sort this out I would have to see the folio in the archive. It’s possible that Stephen simply piloted the ship from Boston back to Salem, since he was an accomplished coastal skipper. Or maybe he took over the vessel at some point during the expedition and his name didn’t get added to ship captains. It’s possible that the portfolio would tell.

At this point I believe I’m right about Stephen leading a company of foot soldiers at Quebec.

The other thing I discovered seemingly not found by other researchers is less adventurous. About the time of his marriage, Stephen bought a sloop, the Adventure, and hauled freight and passengers in it. He had a partner, Samuel Cogswell, who died three years later. All of this is well-known and is included in other accounts of Stephen. What is new is that, after Cogswell’s death, Stephen took on a new partner, John Lee (or Leigh) of Ipswich. The relationship is clearly spelled out in some court cases beginning in 1678 and extending into the 1680s. Accounts of Stephen’s life prepared by others mention the Adventure and Cogswell’s role in it, but not Lee’s.

I must end this. The post is much too long and probably of interest to me and no one else. I just wanted to let you know how good it felt to research a topic—in this case a person—and break new ground, find something no one else seems to have found.

It’s a wonderful feeling.

A Day Late, But Hopeful

I won’t write much at the moment. I’m a day late with this post. While my wife is in the hospital and I’m unable to see her due to the corona virus outbreak, I’m keeping myself very busy so as not to go crazy. On Thursday, between the elliptical and the trails in our area I walked almost four miles. Yesterday I took a new trail near the house and walked three hard miles. That was after an hour and a half of yard work.

I was quite tired after that and didn’t accomplish much the rest of the day. I read and re-read portions of the genealogy book I’m writing, still not able to let it go and get back to my novel. I’m decluttering, but that means I have more clutter than ever. It will all come together when I finish deciding what to get rid of, but not yet. Actually, I can see some progress. Things are better organized if not eliminated.

Lynda is doing better. She had at least five or six complications from the surgery and general health issues and has slowly, with the help of an excellent medical team, worked through them. Right now the remaining problem is her stomach not draining. Some kind of blockage, perhaps in the small intestine, is preventing that. She’s had to have an n-g tube in for days now to drain her stomach otherwise she has extreme nausea from gastric fluids building up. Today they are supposed to do a test to see where the blockage is so they can do a treatment for it.

Keeping busy prevents me from going crazy with worry. I have prayed much, read much, worked much. I think it was Monday evening that, after an extensive time in prayer, I had a wave of peace come over me. I knew in that moment that Lynda wasn’t going to die in the hospital, that she would be coming home to me.

I must now get back to my work. I found on the table in my office a book I read but didn’t review on this blog. It’s a book I’m not going to keep, so I need to review it and take it to the donation/sale pile. Look for it on Monday.

2020: March Accomplishment, April Goals

Here’s what I had for my March goals and how I did relative to them.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this. Once I did a “can’t write much today” post, and once I didn’t get my Friday post in till Saturday, but I got them done.
  2. Make significant progress on The Teachings, my novel-in-progress.  I need to make this measurable, so I’ll set 20,000 words to be added this month. That means, at the close of March 31st, I should be at 32, 122 or better. Failed miserably on this when my genealogy book and research took over practically all my waking hours. I ended the month with around 23,250 words. Not awful, but not what I hoped for.
  3. Make a final decision on what Bible study to work on this year. I decided this: it will be Entrusted To My Care: A Bible Study of 1 & 2 Timothy.
  4. Attend three writing group meetings this month, two for Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista and one for Village Lake Writers & Poets. Due to the corona virus outbreak, two of these three meetings were cancelled. The first one, on March 4, we did at the Rogers library. The 2nd Wednesday Noon group will meet as a Facebook livestream followed by a Zoom conference this month, and I’m the speaker.
  5. Spend a little time going through the genealogy book I started over two years ago. My goal is to make a judgment of how much work would be involved and whether I could publish it this year. I haven’t talked much about this on the blog. I’ll have to do a post or two on it. I accomplished this—big time. I’m working hot and heavy on the book, to the detriment of all other writing tasks, and it’s coming along well. Up to 88 pages and the end is not yet.
  6. Republish the two stories in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series I didn’t get done last month, to add my current list of published works (and correct any typos I might find). Did this! All five Sharon Williams Fonseca stories are re-published with most recent data on my published works, as well as a correcting a few typos in each.
  7. Continue reading for research in the next Documenting America book. This will include searching for available documents. I have a few already chosen, but more are needed. This month I may be searching for documents more than reading them. I don’t know if I can claim having done this or not. I found some new on-line sources and skimmed one and bookmarked the site. I guess I can claim it.

So, what about April? I’m somewhat uncertain due to this genealogy obsession that has to run its course before I can get back to other work. Thus I think my goals will be modest this month.

  1. Blog twice a week.
  2. Get as far as I can with the genealogy book.
  3. Spend at least some time in The Teachings. I should set a word goal. Let’s say 3,000 words is my goal for the month.
  4. Give my talk to the Village Lake Writers & Poets on April 8.
  5. Do some research into the next Documenting America book. Maybe it will just read the document I found. Maybe it will be to peruse the site that document came from and note other documents for use and at least skim them.

That’s all for April. It will be a busy month, just not in the things I had on my master 2020 list.