We went down to Mr Crommons office to see if Starry would come in on the train but he did not show up. We went down to the fraching [?] plant and had dinner and stoke the levels we ran to the north yards they came back to town Im at Billie O’Callaghans

*****

I’m pretty sure that Clem should have used quite a bit more punctuation! But, other than the “frashing” plant, I think I caught the gist of most of this entry!

Feel free to offer your ideas on what the term “frashing” refers to or if it really is “frashing”. Maybe there was too much Labatt’s at O’Callaghan’s!!

Last night was the 4th and final in a series of presentations on genealogy and family research at the Wilbraham Public Library. Without a doubt, this was the best turnout I’ve had yet.

Two things struck me:

1) Except for the last night (the Monday after the “Nemo” storm) there were more and more participants as the weeks went by.
2) Everyone seemed to pay close attention, asked meaningful questions, and took notes!

I hope to be able to repeat the series in Wilbraham sometime in the May–June timeframe.

We covered all sorts of subjects: Vital records, census records, name variations, reading “ancient” handwriting, city directories, ship’s manifests, dozens of genealogy websites, what records to trust and what records to take with a “grain of salt”. I was able to share a few of familly relics that don’t seem like much, but mean a lot to me because of how I came about acquiring them. For example, my Grandmother and then my Aunt Gert had a very old velvvet box full of spoons. The family myth was that they were crafted from the silver buckles of the Plymouth Colony pilgrims. Well, 2 problems with that. It is unlikely that the buckles on any pilgrims shoes—if they had buckles—were not made of solid silver! Secondly, they are stamped “1848” along with the name of the silversmith who manufatured them. But there’s a neat story here. In the box of ephemera, there’s a letter written in 1887 from “Auntie Perham” to “Frankie”. I cannot pin down the exact identity of “Auntie Perham”, but “Frankie” was certianly my 2nd great grandmother, Frances (Bailey) Tuggey. Auntie Perham was very upset about the spoons that she sent to Frankie on the express train and she hadn’t heard back from Frankie as to whether she had received them or not. She had heard of a train wreck in West Springfield and, at the time, was convinced the spoons were on that train and possibly lost forever. Well, I looked at Genealogy Bank for a train accident around that time frame. Sure enough, a week before the letter was written, there was a horrible freight train wreck in the freight yards in West Springfield. There were several injuries and one death, according to the article. I don’t have the response from “Frankie” back to “Auntie Perham”, but I do have the spoons!

Shipped to Enfield, Massachusetts from Oswego, New York in 1887

I was directed to this by a friend of mine today. It’s a “rewrite” of a slightly more famous psalm that you may recognize!

Genealogy is my Pastime by Wildamae Brestal

Genealogy is my pastime, I shall not stray.
It maketh me to lie down and examine half-buried tombstones.
It leadeth me into still courthouses;
It restoreth my ancestral knowledge.

It leadeth me in paths of census records and ship’s passenger lists for my surnames’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the shadows of research libraries and microfilm readers,
I shall fear no discouragement,
For a strong urge is within me.

The curiosity and motivation they comforteth me.
It demandeth preparation of storage space for the acquisition of countless documents.
It annointeth my head with burning midnight oil;
My family group sheets runneth over.

Surely birth, marriage, and death dates shall follow me all the days of my life;
And I shall dwell in the house of a family-history seeker forever and ever.

Ok, the best laid plans…. I’ve got a great new APP on my smartphone to snap a scan of the page directly out of the diary without having to put it on the flatbed scanner and risk hurting the spine. It converts the image into a PDF of JPG so I can file it and then upload it here for everyone to see. Well, my smartphone got “dumb” today, so I can only do the transcription unless I can get “Genius Scan” reinstalled and make it work. OK, here it is!

“Lest We Forget” Wednesday, February 12, 1913

Wednesday, February 12, 1913
“Lest We Forget”

This afternoonI went to a moving junctur shop and I in the evening I went to a play after the lies.

The last sentence sounds a little disoriented but that’s how it reads. I really can’t wait to get this page scanned and up to the blog. First, I can’t believe I figured out what he’s talking about here. He mentions “Cullerne” frequently and it sounds like he’s one of the crew chiefs or supervisors. We’ve got the first mention of “Starry” or “Storry” and another mention of “Art”. Art is the one who didn’t send the spreader on Tuesday. I guess it doesn’t matter, at least for now. And the word “lies” at the end certainly doesn’t mean anyone was lying, I don’t think. I just have a sense that it refers to laying the railroad ties and rails. It sounds to me that after that work was done, he went to to see a play. Lots of entertainment up there 100 years ago! Who knows how far he had to walk to get there. But when you think about it, you’ve got crews of construction men working their collective tails off. What a great opportunity for anyone to open a place for these guys to get a meal that wasn’t cooked over a campfire and a little entertainment.

One of the followers of this post (and a BU “classmate”) offered a suggestion. I’ve resisted putting the diary on a flatbed scanner for fear of damaging the spine. However, just a few days ago, I download an APP onto my smartphone called “GENIUS SCAN”. Not being a “genius”, I was understandably hesitant but willing to give it a shot. I’ve been playing around with some other documents but the suggestion gave me the impetus I needed to try it out on Clem’s diary. The results are below. So, now you’ll see the original with my transcription. If I misread a word, feel free to offer a suggestion!

Tuesday, February 11, 1913 “Lest We Forget”

Tuesday, February 11, 1913
“Lest We Forget”

I went up town in the after noon to the show. In the evening I went to Empire to a vod [vaudeville?] show it was very good. We stopped in Harry’s room.

Arr at Edmonton at 9:30 Cullerne and I had breakfast and went out to stake out a crossing in town, worked about 1 hour. Then we went down to the [–?–] Office and stayed till dinner time. after dinner we lazed around the offfice. I fixed Louis’s lamp for the blue print.