One Big Tree Monday, Sep 26 2016 

Historical Events acairfearann 19:19

We are still wandering about in the wilds of Connecticut in an empty flood control reservoir. When they built it, they cleared out a village and, along with the village, some very, very big trees.  This was an elm, growing as elms like to do, right above the river in the flood plain.  The man is a bit over six feet tall. The tree is an easy four plus feet in diameter when measured across the top of the cut. It must have been a magnificent tree, and a lovely river bank, for both sides of the stream were lined with these elms, all the way down through the old village.

018-1024x768

 

It is not Wednesday, Oct 21 2015 

Historical Events acairfearann 19:50

‘Back to the Future’ Day (though it is a classic movie) for most British Empire historians

It is the commemoration of Trafalgar: 210 years ago today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar

 

Of calendars Sunday, Aug 9 2015 

Historical Events , acairfearann 16:08

I was struck the other day by the relative significance of dates: in part how what may be a very important date for us may be an ordinary day for others, but also how even a day that has attained a solemn timelessness was once just an ordinary day….and may become so once more. All is vanity.

This line of thought was raised by looking at some construction photos taken on November 11th, 1915 here in Connecticut, on a somewhat rural but rather important (to the people of Hartford, Ct) construction site.  11-11. A fairly young group of men, many of whom would go elsewhere in about eighteen months time, largely halting construction.

Already a great conflagration burned in Europe. But it was not yet a matter of remembrance. And no one knew that it would become something so terrible; there may have been a rumour or two, but nothing to be believed, not yet. It probably wasn’t a topic of great concern at the work site, any more than the wars of today are. The likely topic was the job for the day and how best to wrap it up to wait out the winter.

For me, November 11th is Armistice Day.* It is likely a working day, an ordinary day, but still the grave yawns for me, if only for a glimpse at the strike of 11. For the men in the photograph, Armistice Day wasn’t even an idea. The dates and the monuments of our lives, in their great solemnity, are creations. We remember for a time, but there are few dates that can remain for generations, which is perhaps as it should be. Men lived before us, men will live after us. It is not the dates that remain forever, nor the names, nor yet the places; but the spirit and the life. The hate and the love, the joy and the sorrow.

*It is Armistice Day.

 

Historical Excerpts Wednesday, Dec 3 2014 

Historical Events , acairfearann 10:23

A random division back to 1880 and William Webster Ellsworth, with his young family, living in New York City:

“Street cars, with horses straining at their collars when the car was crowded, ran down Madison Avenue, and some of them turned the corner at Astor Place and stopped at Broadway, directly in front of my office at 743. Omnibuses lumbered down Broadway, with straw on the floor in winter, very unsanitary but some of us are still alive. The driver, always red-faced and looking like a character in Dickens, sat high up, outside, and you handed him money; if you needed change, he gave it to you in envelopes, marked 10, 25, 50 cents, and $1, through a little hole that was just behind him. It was not expected that you would require more than a dollar; buses were not for millionaires. You tore open the envelope and dropped a nickel into a lighted box which the driver could look down on. You passed up money for ladies and handed them the envelope and then dropped in their nickel. A strap ran from the door around the driver’s foot and when you wanted to get out you pulled the strap and he lifted his foot so that you could open the door. Horse cars had conductors however.”

A far cry from Uber!

 

Bzzzzz Sunday, Jul 27 2014 

Esperanza and Historical Events , acairfearann 13:58

There is one problem with New England summers…as illustrated in the guestbook from 1878!
IMG_9538

 

June 22, 1900 Saturday, Jun 21 2014 

Historical Events , acairfearann 21:05

From the Guest book on June 22, 1900:

IMG_9695

“Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.”

The next visitor on the page was Mabel Hyde Kittredge. She was an author of various housekeeping texts, she was probably a guest of Fannie Smith (who also wrote a book on that theme) rather than WWE, though his knowledge of publishing was likely welcome. She was also one of the founders of the hot school lunch program in NYC, so something of an activist as well.

 

 

May 1857 Sunday, Jun 15 2014 

Esperanza and Historical Events , acairfearann 20:21

From Julie to Morris, excerpts from a typical letter, bouncing from the practical to the philosophical:

“I think the twentieth of June very early for our projected trip, but if you say so I will be in readiness. I have a very pretty traveling dress in process of completion, it will be done next week and my traveling hat. And by the way don’t dare to come on without a box of powdered sassafras to make gumbo. I must have some. I expect to go out on horseback next week with Jamie Smith to make myself certain that I can acquit myself creditably before I shall have the pleasure of riding with My Lord. There is a chill in the air yet but it is getting tolerably warm and pleasant, still velvets are not at all uncomfortable.

….

I almost wish you would not stop at Brockport but I shan’t say much about it. I feel in a desperate hurry to see you. Remember you have been gone since last October, which is not a short time, at least to me, but I know man’s love and woman’s love are very different. I found that out long ago but I have not got quite reconciled to the fact yet. Man’s love is of his life a thing apart, tis woman’s whole existence.

…

Good night. I can print better than you. But you are my darling all the same.”

 

New Orleans to Hartford Wednesday, Jun 4 2014 

Historical Events acairfearann 12:25

(a non gardening post for once!, looking back before Esperanza was created here)

Morris, Julie’s husband, spent most of the winter, and sometimes year, in New Orleans. How did he go back and forth to Hartford? In the early years of the 1840’s and into the 1850’s, he had to take the long route by ship up and around the coast, unless he wished to go by overland stage: uncomfortable and long.  He may also have taken a riverboat as far up the Ohio as possible, then connected to overland stage-routes, as his business did have offshoots in the Kentucky/Ohio/Tennessee region.

However, in 1855 a rail line to Cairo was completed.   It was now possible to travel by train on the Illinois Central to Chicago or on the Ohio and Mississippi to Cincinnati.  From both cities rail lines had been built that connected to New York during the 1850’s.  Judging by comments in his letters, Morris regarded the trip back to New York/Hartford as a matter simply of catching a boat to Cairo and hopping on a train. Nor was Morris alone in this view, business traffic from New Orleans and the Mississippi were solidly tied into the northern system of railroads constructed during the 1850’s.  This traffic was going around the south on both sides and the great coastal cities of the south were no longer stopping points.  Cairo, Cincinnati, St Louis, and Chicago however, those were the new stopping points….  Something that became rather important in the following decade…

 

Another View Wednesday, May 28 2014 

Esperanza and Historical Events acairfearann 20:09

of Esperanza, from 1918. A portrait of Eileen Creevey Hall* partaking of a common activity here.  Still common, even if a fair bit of the reading occurs in virtual libraries here and there!

I am not sure who Corey Ford was, aside from being confident enough to sketch in the guestbook. I like the sketches, I wish more of the visitors had done so.

Eileen and the artist clearly had a difference of opinion on whether it was or was not a portrayal, she was eight at the time.

IMG_0060

 

 

Love Letters Thursday, May 15 2014 

Historical Events , , , acairfearann 20:21

Because I was looking for a random letter between Julie and Morris* and this one caught my eye.

April, 1857 from Julie to Morris:

“I have been today, in consequence of lighting by chance upon one of those interminable yellow letters, comparing the present with the past, and cannot help wondering if we are really the two beings who wrote thus to each other. Now Dearest, I see you as I saw you then though a haze of uncertainties, when I never thought to look upon your face again. I have today lived over the days when I wrote those letters at the table in my little room, and so on to the time of your coming, when (how I can’t now conceive) the object of your visit never occurred to me, the Sunday Evening on the sofa, and so on to the Tuesday evening, and so on to the night in Syracuse, and so on to the winter in New Orleans, the first parting, the utter sinking of heart I felt aboard ship and so till little Fanny’s breath touched my cheek, and so on through all our sad partings and joyful meetings, the happy days, the evening amusements, the concerts, the operas, the book-talks, the love and joy and peace, which has filled all our days and nights, and I can’t help believing that we have had full our share of life’s pleasures since we spent that first day together in the parlor of the Graham house so long ago.

….I wish to say this now because I should not like to say it only on paper, but you will never, never know how dearly I love you.

I did not intend to write such a letter but what is writ is writ. I can’t say now as I used to do, ‘you have no power over me’; now you have all the power, I have none, I am all yours.”

 

*We have lots of letters between other people, it is just these are conveniently transcribed and printed up….

**Twitter lacks somewhat, does it not?!

 

Next Page »

%d bloggers like this: