Family Pet Friday: Tiger Lily awaits her favorite holiday

Three and a half years ago, a little tortoiseshell kitten showed up unexpectedly at our door. Here’s the post announcing her arrival and another one showcasing her big personality.

The morning she showed up at our door with her little suitcase

Tiger Lily, the Indian girl. Oliver Herford, “The Peter Pan Alphabet”, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1907, page I (Public Domain due to copyright expiry)

Taken after she was given the name “Tiger Lily” after the Peter Pan character

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I’m happy to say she is still with us, still chugging along, still keeping us entertained. Like most “torties,” she is very chatty and makes her wants known… Her favorite holiday is fast approaching, so I thought I would let you all see how grown up she is now. She still has an amazingly soft coat of fur. Her eyes, once orange, are greenish now.

It’s sure hard to imagine life without this perky, mischievous family member. We’re glad she chose us.

The afternoon nap…

Ready for action!

October 2019: Preparing to celebrate her favorite holiday

Some Boles cousins, Christmas 1927

Below is a newly noticed photo of Newton Boles (left) with my grandfather William Boles (center). Their respective fathers, Benjamin (1871-after 1943) and Edward (1855-1940), were the youngest and oldest of James and Jane (Payne) Boles’ eight children.

The photo was taken on a snow-less Christmas Day, 1927, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. We don’t know who the gent on the right is.

Almost a year before this, Newton’s first wife had died in childbirth, after emigrating with her to Canada from Ireland. Newton (‘Newt’) and my grandfather were very fond of each other; Newt was 5-6 years younger and supposedly was inspired by his older cousin to leave Ireland in search of opportunities in the US/Canada.

For a couple previous posts featuring Newt, click here and here.

Mom’s doll collection, January 1927, age 4

So many were added to her collection on Christmas Day in 1926 that she (and her Mom) decided a photograph was needed to mark the occasion.

A Florida Friday: The Murals of Lake Placid

Murals are popping up all over these days, and in most cases, I would say they are a welcome addition. The town of Lake Placid (FL)—population roughly 2,200—is no exception, and here, this south-central Florida community seems to be taking things to a whole new level, with 47 murals so far. We traveled through there not too long ago, during the “off season,” so few people were around. In the snowbird months, the place would be bustling with all sorts of activity; there’s even an outdoor movie area downtown (see murals with white space in center). And, by the way, Lake Placid is also known as the “Caladium Capital of the World”—my sister has been to their Annual Caladium Festival several times and always brings back all sorts of fantastic bulbs that, after planting, emerge in pink, green, and white swathes to liven up the slow summer months. I hope you will enjoy these scenes; perhaps they will encourage you to stop by this historic little Florida town when you are next in this part of the world.

G. S. V. Wills book now available on Archives.org

GSV Wills Family – image from my copy of the Jubilee souvenir book

Just a quick heads-up to let folks know that the book A Jubilee Souvenir: The Work of G. S. V. Wills and the Westminster College of Chemistry and Pharmacy is now available for viewing on Archives.org.

Some may recall that I uploaded all the pages to this blog a number of years ago. I guess I am free to delete those pages now!!!

For past posts on the George Sampson Valentine Wills family, please use the search box or click on “Wills” in the left column under “Surnames.”

 

 

 

Four Brodhead Brothers: Charles, Daniel, Garrett and Luke

Luke W. Brodhead‘s article, “Early Frontier Life in Pennsylvania. Efficient Military Services of Four Brothers,” appeared on pages 194-200 of The American Historical Record: Volume 2 by Benson John Lossing, January 1, 1873, published by Chase & Town. Here is a link to the publication. Perhaps, Brodhead descendants who haven’t yet stumbled on the article will learn something new about these four sons of Daniel Brodhead and Hester Wyngart. I especially enjoyed reading the personal letter from Daniel (the son) to his “brother” (brother-in-law) Nicholas (“Nicky”) Depui.

Antique Photo: Rogersville High School, Senior Class of 1925

I happened upon this photo in an antique store today. From what little I have researched, this high school was in Rogersville, Missouri. In white print below the photo, it says “Senior Class of 1925”. I’m publishing it here in the event it ever assists someone with their research. Happy Labor Day Weekend, and stay safe everyone on the east coast here in FL and on up to GA, SC, etc.

Rogersville High School Senior Class of 1925

Dad’s good friends lost during the invasion of Bougainville

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=401360

The landing at Empress Augusta Bay, Island of Bougainville, British Solomon Islands. By Unknown or not provided – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53319

My Dad’s memoirs, which he wrote while in his early seventies, include some details of his service with Company A, Third Marine Division. Here he talks about Bougainville: Orders came for an invasion of Bougainville, British Solomon Islands. So we started to hustle once again, packing gear, cleaning weapons, etc. We all went aboard a LCVP (landing craft vehicle personnel) hove to the beach. There were dozens of them to accommodate our entire division. The staging area for the operation was a few hundred miles north of Guadalcanal. Our firepower consisted of two battleships, 1 heavy cruiser, 3 destroyers, a supply ship and a hospital ship, plus many landing craft. We were offshore from Empress Augusta Bay. At around 0500 the Navy began shelling the beach. At about 0700 we all went over the side on cargo nets to the waiting boats below. We landed on Cape Torokina. We experienced light opposition while some of our division down the coast by the Piva River ran into stiff fighting. The entire division consisting of approximately 10,000 men was involved in this operation. My very good friends “Tiny” Owens (Congressional Medal of Honor winner), Jimmy Carrick and Carl Martin were all killed at Piva River. Also Teofilo Romero—one heck of a nice guy. Of the estimated 28,000 Japs on the island, only about 300 surrendered. The rest were either killed or committed suicide. Ten days after the landing, Bougainville was considered secure.

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The names of my Dad’s lost buddies stood out to me, of course, and I wanted to see what information I could find out about them. For three of them, I only found Find a Grave entries recording their burial places. Not surprisingly, much more can be found about Sgt. Owens. I can’t begin to imagine how deeply their loss was felt, not just by my father (then 22), but by all of Company A. They were so young, and gave all. May they — and my Dad (d. 1992) — rest in peace.

Sgt. Robert A. Owens (September 13, 1920 – November 1, 1943) – age 23 – hometown Drayton, SC; nicknamed “Tiny”, but there was nothing tiny about what he did at Bougainville on November 1, 1943. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously, his father accepting the medal on August 12, 1945, at the family home from Major General Clayton B. Vogel, Commanding General at Parris Island at that time. Here is Sgt. Owen’s story. He lies in rest at the Manila American Cemetery. Other links:

• https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/2722
• https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=19842
• https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Robert_A._Owens
• https://www.goupstate.com/news/20091108/medal-of-honor-the-four-spartanburg-county-heroes

PFC Carl Osteen Martin (May 29, 1924 – November 2, 1943) – age 19 – buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Mt. Olive, North Carolina.

PFC James Purcell Carrick (August 19, 1925 – November 20, 1943) – age 18 – buried in Section 34, Site 1131, Arlington National Cemetery.

PFC Teofilo Romero (March 7, 1925 – November 1, 1943) – age 18 – buried in Puerto Rico National Cemetery in Bayamon, Puerto Rico (Section F, Site 2856). Teofilo appears in the front left of the below photo my father had in his photo collection.

“Rocking Cradle” — An update on my Mayflower Society membership “quest”

L0057479 Savoyard baby’s rocking cradle, 18th century, viewpoint show
Credit: Science Museum, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
Savoyard baby’s rocking cradle, 18th century, viewpoint showing the inside of cradle, graduated grey background.
Published: –
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I had an email the other day from someone representing the local chapter of the Mayflower Society, asking me how things were going with my attempts to link my third-great-grandmother Wealthy Ann (Cushman) Jaques with Mayflower passenger Mary Allerton.

I had not worked on this since before my mother fractured her leg two years ago, and I recalled that there had been some formidable-looking brick walls to hurdle. I advised her of such and then spent a day refreshing my memory and retracing my steps to see if I had missed anything or anything new had surfaced online.

Pretty much everything was as before with the remarkable exception of the appearance of Eleazar Cushman’s 1795 will on Ancestry.com. As you may recall, my theory has been that this Eleazar Cushman was the son of Seth Cushman and Abiah Allen, baptised on 17 July 1768 in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and that he and his wife Mercy (Marcia) Toocker are Wealthy’s parents. (See my previous posts on this topic by typing “Mayflower” into the search box.)

Eleazar (Eleasur) died on 9 August 1795 at age 27 and is buried in the Center Church Ancient Burying Ground in present-day downtown Hartford, CT. Per the Mortuary Notice, Connecticut Courant, Mon., 10 Aug 1795, he was a ship carpenter and died suddenly of “…drinking too freely of cold water.” For an interesting post “Drinking Cold Water and Other 19th Century Causes of Death,” which cites a famous doctor’s observations from 1805—not long after Eleazar died, click here.

Eleazar’s estate’s executors were James Hillyer and Joseph Toocker. This Joseph Toocker was either Mercy’s father or brother, both named Joseph, probably her father.

The materials include a statement submitted by Mercy:
“Hartford April 2nd, 1796 / This Certifies that it is at my request and desire that James Hillyer of Hartford should undertake as Administrator of the Estate of My husband Eleazar Cushman Late of Hartford (illegible word) witness my hand. Mercy Cushman”

The Administrator’s account of the estate, dated April 9, 1796, is not entirely legible to me. It includes an inventory page and an expenses page.

The inventory, which contains 26 items valued at £8.46, includes “one feather bed. under bed and pillows,” sheets and pillowcases, “one old jacket,” “one pair old shoes,” “one old cotton jacket,” “one cravat,” “eight earthen plates”, “stone jugg,” “frying pan,” “shovel & tongs,” “looking glass,” “one set of silver teaspoons,” “chest of drawers,” “9 knives & forks very old,” “iron teakittle” and a few other things.

The expenses page includes items totaling £8.46: burial and grave digging (90 p.), coffin (£1.90), 60p for one doctor and 36p for another, and what appears to be monies (£4.06) for “household furnishings allowed the widow” and “provisions for the family.”

One other thing in the inventory, which really caught my eye, was “rocking cradle” valued at 30p. Could this be the cradle in which my third-great-grandmother spent her earliest of days???

The “quest” continues… It’s not something that keeps me up at night by any means, but I do hope to connect the dots someday for the sake of the young ones in the family and those in my family tree who back in the 1930s tried, but failed to link their great-grandmother Wealthy Ann Cushman to the famed Mayflower passenger.

For sale: Depuy family farmhouse, built in 1700s in Monroe Co., Pennsylvania

Scene from Luke W. Brodhead’s book The Delaware Water Gap, published 1870

One of the oldest homes in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, is for sale. Built on the 3,000 acres of land Nicholas Depuy (Depui) purchased directly from the Minisink Indians in 1727, the roughly 3,500-square-foot stone house has 4 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms and is listed for $299K.

According to Landmarks of Historic Interest along the Lackawanna Railroad, published sometime in the 1930s (p. 13 references an event on January 10, 1930; otherwise, I did not see a date), this home, known then as “Croasdale Manor,” was purchased by Aaron Depuy (1714-1785) in 1745 from his father Nicholas (m. Wentjen Roosa). (Note: Aaron Depuy’s niece Elizabeth Depuy (daughter of Samuel and Jane Depuy) was married to General Daniel Brodhead.)

To view the listing and accompanying photos, click here.

Upon further investigation, I learned that the house entered the Croasdale Family in 1837*.

Page 20 of Landmarks of Historic Interest along the Lackawanna Railroad (pub. 1900)

The above-mentioned publication states (see screenshot inset) that the then (1930s) owner was a Mrs. Clementine Croasdale. I pulled her birth and death dates from the Social Security Death Index on Ancestry: 1896-1981. Baptism records on Ancestry show that her parents were Louis Rupprecht and Rose Schlos, and that her husband was Lee Croasdale, born in Stroudsburg in 1895 and died in Georgia in 1951. I don’t think she was the then owner because the 1930 census shows her living with her parents and her son William at 130 Lackawanna Avenue, an ordinary home in East Stroudsburg, PA.

Another source**, which I believe to be correct, says that when in 1931 the famed nearby Kittatinny Hotel burned to the ground, the Croasdale house belonged to Mrs. Elenora Croasdale. Elenora Davis Brodhead Croasdale (1862-1950) was the daughter of Luke Wills Brodhead (1821-1902; historian and collector of Indian artifacts and manager of a resort at Delaware Water Gap) and the wife of Howard Andre Croasdale (1857-1923). They had two children: Harold T. Croasdale (1889-1978; see below) and Laurence Croasdale (1885-1913); died of pulmonary tuberculosis at age 27).

Croasdale Manor swimming pool, postcard from 1936

“Croasdale Manor,” which had also been used through the years at various times as a resort and an inn, remained in the Croasdale family until Harold T. Croasdale (d. December 1978; predeceased by wife; no living children) willed the home and adjacent property to Lafayette College for use for cultural events and to support cultural events if ever sold. Eventually the house was sold*** to a  jazz trombonist and his musician wife.

Harold Croasdale had graduated from Lafayette College in 1911, and the January 1979 college alumni newsletter (PDF link below) that carries his obituary stated that his “consuming passion, beginning in 1964, was reconstructing Croasdale Manor, which had been destroyed by fire in 1939. […] He had it rebuilt, stone by stone, pegged board by pegged board, following drawings he had made after the fire. He and his wife, Anna May Brooks, who died in 1975, had discovered a wrought iron chest in a sealed fireplace in the old home. In the chest were two deeds—one from William Penn, granting land to Croasdale’s forbears; the other, dated 1727, was the original deed for the land, which was purchased from the Indians.”  These two deeds support historic events: Nicholas Depuy was forced to buy the land again after the transaction with the Indians was deemed illegitimate.

So evidently the house stood in ruins from 1939 to 1964, when Harold took it upon himself to rebuild and restore the home to its former glory. Perhaps, he’d have liked to have gotten started sooner with the restoration, but funds weren’t available? Yes, that appears to have been the case. Look up “At Croasdale Manor A Dream Takes Shape,” The Pocono Record, June 17, 1967, available on Newspapers.com. I got a “Free View” — no idea why. The article discusses the renovations and other details. 

Let’s hope the home, which appears to need a little TLC, finds a new owner and continues to be loved and preserved for generations to come.

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*”Harold T. Croasdale ’11, longtime Class Correspondent, dies at 89,” Lafayette Alumni News, January 1979.  digital.lafayette.edu/collections/magazine/lafalumnews-19790100/pdf

**”Fire Which Destroyed Kittatinny Ends Full Century of Hotel Life,” The Morning Sun, October 31, 1901. https://www.poconorecord.com/assets/pdf/PR1570430.PDF

***”Restrictions on Gift Home Are Disputed Monroe County Mansion Was Donated to College,” The Morning Call, August 9, 1988. https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1988-08-09-2652445-story.html

“At Croasdale Manor A Dream Takes Shape,” The Pocono Record, June 17, 1967. (viewable on Newspapers.com as a free view)