Fishing with my Father

My father, my uncle and my cousin, about 1943.

From my earliest memories, I remember camping by a river or stream, my father would leave the family picnicking by the old pickup truck, converted for camping, while he and my older brother would go off fishing. When I was a little older, my father dragged me along too and let me fish in the best fishing holes. Where I would usually catch a fish or two and then my fishing line would turn into a massive tangle. He would return later and patiently untangle or replace the line. Then off we would go fishing again, till the mosquitoes were biting more than the fish. Once, while it was late my father cast his line and he caught something before it hit the water. A bat had snatch his fly and his line was circling up in the air. It wasn’t till he reeled it in that he found out it was a bat.
























On opening day in the fifties and sixties, my father would wake us up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning where we (sometimes my sisters were invited) would crawl in the car or truck and fall fast asleep, soon to wake up at an eating establishment somewhere near a lake or stream, usually Rockport, Strawberry or Schofield. We would eat an early breakfast where other fishermen gathered on opening day shoulder to shoulder eating a hearty meal. We would then go to a lake, stumbling in the dark over rock-covered shorelines and then shiver as my father would build a small fire. By the time it was light, we would be once again shoulder to shoulder with fishermen and you could walk across the lake stepping from one boat to another.
Sometimes my father would take a shortcut to a fishing place. Once we traveled on the roughest and dustiest road ever (a lumber truck road, with 10" of dust), only to find pavement at the other end.
Whether its fly fishing a river or drowning a worm in a big pond, he taught me to be a good fisherman.
















The week before he died, he tried fishing but was in too much pain. It has been almost 20 years since my father left for a better fishing place. The fish around here are pretty much safe.

Strange Brew

Being a stickler for words when transcribing wills, I came across a group of words my ancestor Elizabeth Cooke ( Transcribed here), had given to her daughter (also my ancestor) in her registered will proved in 1618.






I first read this as ‘a stove of stax and agylefatt’.
It didn’t make much sense, then I thought ‘fove of fax’, ‘fove of flax’ and even ‘stone of flax’ (14 pounds of flax) which seemed to make more sense, but what was an agylefatt? Two months later while reading other wills (which I do quite often) I found an inventory ‘In the brew house a mashefatt and gilefatt’, (well duh, I thought the ‘a’ was connected to gylefatt) now I could determine what the meaning of the words were. It was ‘a gylefatt’: a tub for fermentation of ale. And the ‘stove of stax’ most likely was used to roast grains to make malt or boiling water for pouring in a mashefatt. The mashefatt being the tub or vat where the crushed barley or other grain was soaked. Even if the only malt that you consume is in your ice-cream. It doesn’t hurt to learn a little about medieval practices.

Word of the Week:
Gylefatt, Gilefatt = A fermentation tub for ale.

DNA Proves Illegitimacy-A Family Portrait

I Always Eat Peas With Honey

A little saying my mother used to say:

I always eat peas with honey.
They may taste funny.
But they stay on my knife better.

The Letter P with the Crossed Tail

In old hand writing the letter ‘p’ sometimes had a cross on its tail this was the abbreviation for pre, per, par and pro.




Above is a sentence from a parish register in 1620, ‘Frances the daughter of Robert Coop(er) was baptised the 21 of August’. Notice the looping cross on the tail of the ‘p’.




Here we have p(er)formed from 1579, p(er)fect from 1683, and p(ar)te and p(ar)cell, 1683.
Notice the loops are all clockwise in direction. Next is a ‘p’ with a counterclockwise loop:





The word is p(ro)vided from 1683.

The pro abbreviation can sometimes be distinguished from the pre, per and par abbreviations. However, like in all old handwriting rules, sometimes there is no difference, in which case the content of the words around and the sentence is useful to solving the mystery of the crossed ‘p’.

Word of the Week:
Bed presser = A lazy and slothful person (something that I have been too much lately).

Exceeding the Speed Limit

California Alligator Farm, Cir. 1910
















My grandparents probably picked this up on one of there many trips to California.

A Pocket Full of Posies

A pocket full of posies was used to warn others of a plague-infested victim. The posies might not keep you safe from swine flu or the plague, but there is a genetic variant, CCR5 Delta32, which may keep you from dying from the plague. For several years now geneticists have been studying the Delta32 variant. It is now known that if you have Delta32 you probably won’t die of the plague, if you have double Delta32 you may not even get sick. About 14% of Europeans and North Americans have the gene variant. The variant has 32 DNA base pairs missing, which causes the plague bacillus from binding to the receptor on white blood cells’ CCR5 protein coating.

One of my ancestors who may have had the Delta32 variant was George Iddenden (Eddenden) whose son Edmund Edenden settled in Boston/Charlestown, MA. When the plague struck Cranbrook, Kent, England in 1597, George’s first wife and three daughters and possibly a fourth daughter all died of the plague. Leaving everyone else in his house dead from the plague and yet George survives, giving the possibility that George may have had Delta32.
The following records were extracted from the Cranbrook parish records:

BAP Martha dof George Iddenden 9 Aug 1590
BAP Sara dof George Iddenden 24 Dec 1592
BAP Hester dof George Iddenden 20 Apr 1595
BAP Elizabeth dof George Iddenden 1 Aug 1596
BUR Sara wof George Iddenden 31 Jul 1597 plague
BUR Elizabeth dof George Iddenden 15 Aug 1597 plague
BUR Martha dof George Iddenden 16 Aug 1597 plague
BUR Sara dof George Iddenden 31 Aug 1597 plague

As you can see above, the plague struck hard in Cranbrook in the late summer of 1597. George survived, remarried and had an additional four more children.

I don’t even know if I inherited Delta32. The standard DNA test doesn’t give you that information. Delta32 will probably not protect against the swine flu pandemic, because it is a virus, while the bubonic plague is bacterial.

"Bring out your dead!"-Monty Python

Reference: Cranbrook PR FHL-ENG#1473753


Word of the Week:
Hoke = Hole

Rush Me to the ER

Abbreviated ‘er’

Abbreviation of ‘er’, ‘ur’, ‘or’ is used quite often in old wills and parish records. They are mostly an upward sweeping hook or a zigzag superscript character.
Examples of the zigzag:




‘Butter’ from the 17th century.




‘Manner’ from the year 1646.

Examples of the upward sweeping hook:





Once again we have the word ‘manner’ which can be transcribed as ‘mann~’ , ‘mann(er)’ or ‘manner’.





This word from 1683 is ‘every’, likewise transcribed as ‘ev~y’, ‘ev(er)y’ or ‘every’. Consistency is important in transcribing. However, using italics in these cases may not be as good. Sometimes when you copy and paste, some of the letter format is lost.

A combination abbreviated word with a superscript ‘t’ and the ‘er’:





Here is the word ‘whatsoever’ also from 1683, transcribed as ‘wtsoev~’, ‘w(ha)tsoev(er)’ or ‘whatsoever’.

Content of the surrounding words is also important to determining the actual word.
When p~using an old will or lett~, you will s~prise y~self when you discov~ your first ‘er’ word.

Word of the Week:
Fyrth = Forrest