visiting

  I spent several hours yesterday visiting the past to escape the present. The news today is upsetting to say the least. There is also little I can do about any of it and find myself standing alone quite often these days. It's unsettling but not unexpected. The younger generation always feel like they have the answers, I was that generation once, although not as prone to acceptance of the "new" way. Of course I did embrace technology as it came along. I'm all for making things easier and more efficient. I have no desire to labor harder and longer but, it was the moral and ethical behaviors I was often at odds with. Yes even those behaviors that were quite appealing back in my teenage years. I was there in the sixties and seventies. Woodstock, rock and roll, free love and flower power. Yes, it sure was "freedom" that was being promoted. Magic mushrooms, mary jane, ludes, and acid for the really hard core ones. I skirted all of that, stayed old school for the most part, bourbon and beer where the intoxicants of choice. Over time that became known as being a redneck. Then the rednecks discovered smoking pot and were now cool. The old school moral high ground began to shift. Hank Jr., Waylon Jennings, Willie and Johnny Cash all became outlaws, and outlaws were cool. Their appeal? The were cool while upholding traditional American values. The things that used to be done in private, because we knew it was wrong, was now being done in the open. And by doing private things in public that makes it alright. And the degradation of American society in general began to take hold. That brings us to the present. Today I'm hearing that censorship is a good thing and being dependent is a right! If you can not function in society, society should just support you. It's not your fault.

 But I took a stroll in the past yesterday. I went back in time to look at my ancestors. I don't always make discoveries, learn things I didn't know, records are cold analytical things. Facts are just recorded. I look often to the census were you can find names, residence, occupation, family members and sometimes more. It really depends upon what year census you are reading. In the beginning it was just a simple count. How many people lived here? They were broken down into categories, men, women, and children. That was divided into age groups. In the first ones, that is pretty much all there was. Later on they became far more detailed asking about income, property owned, education level, race, and more. There was a census for invalids and yes, idiots! Good thing we don't record that on the census today! But I'll set that aside. 

 I spent some time browsing old newspapers yesterday. It's an amazing thing really, all the old newspapers archived and searchable. I enjoyed a paid subscription for a short time but felt it not worth the expense. The vast majority of newspapers I feel would be relevant to my ancestry are available online free of charge. It was in those papers that I did discover a few things yesterday. My first discovery was an obituary for my second great grandfather. I had always recorded his name as James Bishop Terry. I'm not certain how that came to be, on all the census records, on his civil war draft registration card, and other records it just lists his middle initial B. But there it was, at the top of his obituary, James Buckley Terry! I did a great deal more searching before drawing the conclusion that Buckley must be his middle name. Surely the newspaper wouldn't get that wrong. It was quite a long and extensive obituary, one I'm certain was provided by his widow and daughter. Both of those individuals were living in the town where that paper was published. They surely wouldn't have made a mistake. And so, although I lack any official documentation, I have changed that in the record. James Buckley Terry it is.

 In all of that researching I made a couple more discoveries. James Buckley Terry had a son he named James Buckley Terry, Jr. Not often recorded that way though, being a Jr. myself I understand that as I seldom include that information with my signature. It isn't on my drivers license. No reason, just forget to tell them that. Anyway in July of 1887 that son passed away. I don't know the cause of death, only that he passed away. The loss of a child is always a traumatic thing to a parent. Reading that I did feel sad. I found his name, on the mortality list published in the newspaper. Apparently that was a common practice in years past, every year a mortality listing was printed for all to read. So, I read further down the list and another shock. The same James Buckley Terry, my second great grandfather, had also suffered the loss of a daughter just one month after losing that son. Sarah E Terry is recorded as an infant, died at birth. That was the very first time I had ever heard of such. James did go on to live until 1917. 

 I learned a great deal about great, great, grandfather Terry yesterday. I knew he was a veteran of the civil war, I knew he was a weaver and a nurse. I had known about his other children, he had ten. I even knew he built the house my great grandfather lived in in 1898. But yesterday I learned more about the man, about the human side of this ancestral figure. A slight built, rather sickly sort of man. Perhaps it was his years of service during the civil war that had a lasting effect on him. He was listed as being in the hospital although I can find no mention of any wounds he received. It was there he learned his nursing skills. He served with the 127th NY volunteers and was at Fort Sumter when the Union forces recaptured that. He returned to his home and worked in a cotton mill for a number of years. He married, had children and by all accounts loved by the community as a whole. He also suffered from a nervous breakdown at one point in his life. That is mentioned in his obituary. The timing of that is not explained. Perhaps it was simply the strain of living that brought that on. Was it the loss of his son and an infant daughter within a month of each other? I can't know. I do know that in October of 1891 he also lost his daughter Laura Rose Terry. She was just sixteen years old. From an old photograph I have of her she appears pregnant. I have never found a marriage listed for her. What happened to Laura Rose? That's another piece of the past I will try to recover.  

 After a few hours I had to leave that past and return to the present. The mind does get confused with facts, names, dates, and determining what they all mean. That is the fascination for me, the why of it all. I do need the names, dates, relationships, events and the context of history to try to piece that all together. It's sometimes hard for us to remember they were just people like everyone else. They lived there lives as best they could. Snippets of that life can be discovered in those old records. I also discovered that he was buried in the Springs, in the town of East Hampton. I do not know what cemetery it is though, my guess would be Green River. His wife survived him and lived until 1931 passing away in the very house that he had built. The place of her burial I do not know. I will continue to follow the trail of James Buckley Terry and his children. His daughter Lucy, my great grandmother, gave birth to my grandmother Clara. My grandmother Clara passed three days after giving birth to my father. She was just twenty years old in 1924. Agnes, wife of James Buckley Terry was there when that happened. I have a photograph of her sitting with her daughter, Lucy mother of Clara, taken sometime after that happened. Makes me wonder what those two ladies were talking about, the sorrows they surely shared. It has been said a picture is worth a thousand words. I can't know for certain but I think I could write a thousand words looking at that picture now. 

                                                                 Agnes on the left, Lucy on the right