The fish tank lights are working. The fish are fine. I got a little work done.
Tomorrow I’m planning to really bear down and get going.
We’ve had glorious weather: 72 to 85 degrees daytime, in August, no less. I went out and watered everything, just because I could. Our koi have about doubled in size since we got them, and they have begun tracking us around the pond…where we walk, they go, in hopes that food will fall off our fingers.
Jane got a bunch of plants while I was gone: dahlias, various others. But one of the surprises is alyssum. If we turned it loose, it would take over.
And since going through the family photos my mother had, and getting some more names, I confess I’ve been a little diverted by the desire to incorporate those new names into the family tree.
Here’s a kicker: turns out one of the new ancestors is Peregrine Smith…who claimed to be the son of Captain John Smith and Pocohontas. Hmmn. I’m amazed.
But back to my normal pace tomorrow. The weather is going to hold like this. That’s good.
And we did get with Lynn yesterday evening, the third member of Closed Cir. She’s had a rough time; so have I; Jane’s had a rough time coping with both of us; and we are now resolved we are getting down to work and getting things going.
Well, sometimes getting back to work can be its own sort of therapy. I know it was when my mother died.
Glad the fish are doing OK, and the weather is holding. I live in a Phoenix suburb. Last week at this time, the temperature was 118 degrees. Today, it was maybe only 105. I took one of my horses for a ride in the desert, and it was wonderful!
Can’t wait to learn more about Peregrine Smith, sounds pretty interesting… Cheers!
I am so glad to hear that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was very worried for you with all the difficulties happening in your life of late.
Good luck in all.
Ooh, can I tell you how much I love the name Peregrine?
Good to hear that life has a middle ground. Nothing exploding is a Good Thing.
Frankly, I think it was Peregrine Smith’s wishful thinking—there is no record that Pocohontas ever had a child with John Smith. She believed he was dead, and married another guy, then traveled to England and found out the truth. Her only child was with the other guy, as I recall. You have to watch genealogical records, where they are one thin strand of a claim versus what all other observers report.
That’s ok. I’m sure Peregrine Smith is going to prove interesting.
And I’ve got many more interesting ancestors.
Edit: ha! I think I’ve got Mr Smith cornered. He was the son of Dorothy Cotton and Reverend Henry Smith, who seems to have been a nice sort of Reverend, all told. Reverend Smith got the heck outa Dodge, because he supported King Charles, I, and fled with his family to the vicinity of Boston, in the Colonies: their furniture and household goods didn’t make it, but they did. Peregrine Smith, one of numerous children, was born 1627, ten years after Pocohontas died, and himself died in 1648, aged 21, likely in the Americas, though not 100% certain where. His descendants are in the US. But he died quite young, the year before they beheaded King Charles, right in the middle of the Second English Civil War (fought between king and parliament,) so it’s remotely possible that he got himself involved in that. The king’s side, of course, lost.
Well, maybe Mr. Peregrine Smith just liked to embellish. Made for interesting tea time chat since they couldn’t watch TV. 😉
Lol! Well, Mr Peregrine Smith, had he known it, had a more interesting set of ancestors than Captain John Smith. But then the family was probably scared to mention that, considering the possibility the Cromwellian lot would extend their head-lopping activities to the Colonies…that was a real, real scary prospect for some.
LOL, yes, I suppose it would have been! Best he keep his mouth shut and just talk about the weather! 🙂
You learn an amazing amount of history doing genealogies. What I know about the Nevilles, the Vanes, and Peregrine Smith’s lot reinforces an observation that a whole lot of English well-to-do families sold out and bought passage to the Colonies, hoping to try again, some for a quiet life, some for political power, some just to wait out the situation with Cromwell and go back to England.
And it wasn’t a case of youngest, unlanded son declaring he would seek his fortune in the Colonies: in my family’s most common landing spot, Isle of Wight County, VA, the interrelations between families has a common theme. Whole families immigrating. Several families in a single village/hamlet immigrating together, or one coming over and other families following. This wasn’t fortune-seeking: this was a wholesale flight from war and threat. And it happened in the trades, and among the gentry.
I think it may cast an interesting light on the division between Whigs and Tories in the Colonies, leading up to the Revolutionary War. I’m not sure we entirely understand the relationships between these families-in-exile, whose daughters and sons went back to England to marry, then quickly came back again, to have their children and be buried in the new world. It’s more than political choice: it’s a political choice you could be saddled with because of what your uncle did, or argued in parliament. Etc. Just a thought.
Interesting thought. My ancestors were shipped Down Under and first settlement by Europeans wasn’t until 1788, very late in the game.
One of my ancestors was a puritan who came with his mother, his grandfather and three young brothers from near Oxford via Holland after his father, a preacher, died shortly before setting sail for Massachusetts with other like minded colonists, seeking refuge from religious persecution. The father had preached in Holland for 20 years before the family came west. One of the sons returned to England and has been lost sight of – the life was too hard for him apparently, according to the family lore. Then about the time of the Revolutionary War our line came south – we don’t know if that was because they had turned Quaker and they hoped to avoid the war, or if their loyalties were to England despite the family history and they hoped to avoid the revolutionaries- which I think is evidence for your point. That was a tangled time.
NB, the grandfather, who was also a preacher and who even in his elder years had a penchant for very young wives (seriatum of course), may, with his youngest wife, have been the inspiration for The Scarlet Letter.
Mine tended to be rabidly and often notoriously on the anti-Puritan side of things, except one Quaker family, who tried to be as pacifist as you could manage in those days. One of the sons was a colonel in the revolutionary militia fighting the English. Although as I recall he had fought with the English in the French and Indian wars, and may (I can’t remember) have held a commission in the British Army at one point—not an uncommon situation. Several of the family joined him in his actions. His devout father was, I am sure, not pleased.
One of my ancestors was on the Mayflower. When I tell this story, many people say, “Really? how cool!” Then I tell the rest. He ambushed a fellow colonist from behind a tree on the edge of town, leaving him dead in the forest.
He was caught, tried and hanged, the first Englishman to be executed in the new world.
And his son, Francis was known as the “bad boy” of the Mayflower. He nearly blew up the ship making fire crackers with gunpowder poured into feathers and sealed with candle wax. Imagine a candle in the black powder hold at the bottom of the ship! He had taken a small pile of the powder to make the fire crackers, but had ignited it. The fire followed the trail he had dragged from the main pile and the ship would have exploded had an adult not heard the Pop! pop! pop! and rushed into the hold at just the right moment.
Francis recalled the beating he got that day much later in a letter.
You learn about all kinds of people doing genealogy, saints, sinners, kings, crusaders, horse thieves.
Yep, I’ve got several saints to my credit. Saint Begga, Saint Doda, etc, plus some real scoundrels. Not that I don’t think some of the saints are, shall we say, mostly noted for not be being as bad as the rest of the family. That, or having done something really rotten, they established and supported a church.
I wonder if your mischievous ancestor hadn’t a plan involving exploding pens. Everybody who kept records needed a supply of goose quills, and I’ll bet that he stole the captain’s supply! No goose-feathers, no log book.
Maybe! Another ancestor of mine, Count Fulk Nérat in what is now the Normandy coast of France used to ride with his men through his own towns raping, and pillaging. Then he’d get all sorry and build a church or some such charitable institution (with the pillaged money, no less) as penitence.