Posts Tagged ‘sense of place’
Annual Occurrences
The smell of blueberry pancakes and delicious breakfast sausage frying on the outdoor grills lingered in my senses all day long yesterday. Under a beautiful blue sky, we mingled with locals, leisurely devouring the sweet maple goodness while enjoying one of the great storytellers I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Tom Sherry owned “Best Built Fence” when we moved here, and he and his wife, Sue, helped us design the layout of our paddocks and pasture fence lines.
Tom is one of those people who radiate the fullness of life with dramatic tales about his many adventures. He will always define, in my mind, our experience of moving to rural Pierce County, and what it is like to live here. I always feel better about being here after spending time with him.
Another annual event kicked off yesterday as our neighbor to the north plowed the field adjacent to our property.
Asher was barking up a storm over the presence of the highly revved big tractor slowly making its way back and forth on the other side of our natural fence of piled tree limbs. I spotted the son following along on an ATV, picking rocks, and saw it as an opportunity.
When Raymond stopped to survey his progress, I hollered to him, and he trudged across the field to appear friendly. I see him as being the opposite of Tom in terms of storytelling. Getting information from Raymond requires a sweet-talking effort, and even then, the responses sound a bit like forced confessions.
He tells me he intends to plant alfalfa in the field this year, but he seemed to feel it was unlikely to happen. I gather it had something to do with how wet the field is. There was no concern about the value of the fieldstone his son had collected. My place was as good as any other to dump the small wagonload he had amassed.
I hope the threat of possible thunderstorms tomorrow doesn’t result in us experiencing one of those downpours that wash his freshly tilled soil over Cyndie’s perennial garden again.
The first forest wildflowers of spring are showing up. The annual blooming of Bloodroot blossoms is always a fun accent to the orchestra of greens emerging after the ground truly thaws.
Just a few hours later, with the sun dropping lower into advancing clouds as the day was coming to an end, the flowers were folding up their glory.
The speed of growing grasses and leaves is picking up, and soon that patch of bloodroot will be a carpet of large leaves dominating the vicinity. Watching it all unfold in a few days’ time is one of the many rewards of walking a dog multiple times daily through our woods. Daily throughout the twelve months of changing seasons is a pretty great perspective to gain about a lot of things.
Nature’s annual occurrences are always fascinating performances to witness in person.
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Another Family
Giddy with excitement over discovering my 2nd-great-grandfather Stephen once lived in the same area as we do now, my immediate focus narrowed to primarily his family during those years. After additionally coming upon the land records of a William Hays –of whom I had no previous knowledge– I decided to revisit the Pierce County census records for 1880 to see if I could find an entry for this man who had purchased multiple plots of land.
That search resulted in two surprises. First, that I came up empty on any additional Hays families in the 1880 census for this county. It’s certainly possible that the William Hays family was no longer here by the end of the decade when the counting occurred.
It’s frustrating for the puzzle builder in me. I end up searching for pieces that don’t exist. Genealogy is so much more complicated than jigsaw puzzling.
Minnie Church, date unknown.
The excitement that resulted from my second surprise made up for the lack of evidence I was hoping might clarify the mysterious William Hays. In the very same 1880 census where I found my 2nd-great-grandfather –just five “structures” away from him on the list– I came upon the family of my great-grandmother Minnie Church.
If you can keep track of this, Stephen’s oldest son, my great-grandfather John W. Hays, married Minnie Church in Minneapolis in 1888. Minnie’s family lived in Pierce County, Wisconsin!
Now I need to go back to the courthouse to investigate land records for her father, Charles F. Church, to see if that might clarify a question of whether they were actually near “Esdaile” or “El Paso” at the time of the census.
Although, at this point, the significance of the actual locations is fading for me.
Cyndie and I decided not to bother going for that drive yesterday to explore the area where we think Stephen’s property was located because I figured out I have already been riding my bike past there for years. It’s near 450th Street as it descends into the Rush River valley on the way to Vino in the Valley restaurant.
The surprise of discovering two different families of my ancestors have lived in Pierce County has imbued a sense of belonging that I find comforting. At the same time, it also complicates recent contemplations about the possibilities of putting this land up for sale and moving somewhere else.
My inclination continues to lean significantly toward living here. I’ve got roots!
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Relative Something 