Saying Goodbye to Dad

On August 9th, around 2:30 AM, my father passed away in his sleep, comfortably and peacefully. The link is to my Dad's Obituary. I still find it very difficult to write or talk about this. I have so many memories of him that they swirl around in my head like a kaleidoscope. Everything I have, I owe to my father.

Here he is in Florida, holding up a nice size Snook. It took us a dozen fishing trips to catch one of these elusive fish. His smile says it all.

I've have been overwhelmed by the caring support of my friends and neighbors. I cannot begin to say how much I appreciate all of you. I received beautiful cards from Chicago Lady, my older brother's in-laws, my mom's niece that lives in Maine, Far Side, Soul Comfort, my dad's first cousin's wife, A Bench With a View, Alice Kay, and Lady Styx and her husband. So many texts and emails I can only hope to answer them all eventually; visits from neighbors, some bearing plates with food, and some marvelous flowers - including one from a client that sits on my office desk beside my keyboard.

On his last day with us, I wheeled my dad out to the porch where we watched the birds at the feeders. We had dozens of visits from Hummingbirds. At the other feeder were Cardinals, Woodpeckers, Goldfinches, Purple Finches, Tuffed Titmouse's, Sparrows, Blue Jays, Catbirds, Mockingbirds, Orioles, and even a Squirrel that the feeder spun off to the ground three times before he or she gave up. It was a calming time for both of us.

I still can't believe he is gone.

A Trip to Cuba

Today is a wintry, gloomy day here in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. It snow flurried briefly this morning - leaving some powdery slippery spots here and there - we've about an inch on the ground (and piles in the parking lots) that is rock solid - it rained briefly and then the temperature plummeted into the teens. I'll be glad to see spring (I almost always am!). I hate the gloom more than the muddy snow mess.

I've not posted anything lately - I've been very busy with moving things from our office of 15 years to my house - I've thrown away tons of dated paper (and paperwork) - and emptied, in order to move them, twenty 4-drawer file cabinets. I've about 3 more cabinets to go. It's sort of like seeing my past life go by ... years of "work efforts" being tossed or shredded - computer-related "stuff" gets obsolete so very quickly - some days I feel obsolete too!

Recently, I logged into Ancestry.com and saw a "shaking leaf" attached to my paternal g-grand-father. Curious, I went to see what it was all about and was surprised to find a record of him and his wife traveling on the SS Northland from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida, arriving back in the USA on February 24, 1928.

Harry Davis Mousley was born on July 3, 1883 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and died at the age of 47 on November 9, 1930. He (hopefully) enjoyed his trip to Cuba that he took about two years before he died.

My dad has no direct recollections of his grandparents - or their journeys - as they were both dead before he was born.

The Peninsular and Occidental steamship line was a part of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad. It leased the SS Northland from the Eastern Steamship Company for the winter travel/tourist season. The ship on the far right is the Northland.

In a strange coincidence, the same day I found this record in Ancestry, my parents called and informed me they were going to the Florida Keys for three weeks this month, and will be in Key West on February 24!

Maybe my dad will sense the ghost of his paternal grandparents there? I have stood at the cruise ship dock in Key West - and seen the remains of the Florida East Coast Railroad in the Florida Keys - many of the railroad bridges are now fishing piers and/or part of a 132 mile long walking trail, of which I have walked about half. Did my g-grandparents ride the the long-gone train (it died in 1934 when wiped out by a hurricane)? I can only wonder.

Two Little Girls Tired of Bread...

Far Side of Fifty spotted an old newspaper article in my mother's old photo display. The story tells of one of my mother's earliest childhood memories. The article is dated March 3, 1941.

Two Little Girls Tired of Bread After Five-Hour Walk With Loaf

There was no place like home for two little girls in Roxbury [a Boston, Massachusetts suburb] last night.

Walking may be enjoyable and bread may be good to eat, but 5-year-old Evelyn Belyea of 8 Kensington st., and her little pal, Lois Bush [my mother], 3, who lives next door, have learned the sad lesson that there can be too much of two good things.

When her mother sent her for a loaf of bread at 11:30 a.m., yesterday, Evelyn took her fox terrier, "Trixie" and called for Lois. After buying the bread, the youngsters decided that a walk would be "just the thing."

Their little legs carried the kiddies more than two miles, to Forest Hills, before protesting. The the two tired girls started the dreary trek homeward. Long before patrolman Daniel J. Crowe of the Jamaica Plain station sighted them at Egleston sq., about 4:30 p.m., and recognized them as "the missing kids," they had tired of their day-long diet of bread and felt the "prodigal's" proverbial yearning for fatted calf.

I wonder what's become of my mother's friend?

In search of old memories...

I have, in the past, written about my "honorary" Aunt Bea.

Aunt Bea was one of my paternal Grandmother's friends - she grew up "around the corner from the church" they both attended. Later on, when my dad served his 2 weeks a year in the Army Reserves, my mom stayed with my dad's mom with my older brother (who was a one year old) and got to know Aunt Bea too - and the three of them became "best buddies" and they all went shopping together. Aunt Bea moved out west to California with her second husband (the first one died suddenly) and has lived out there for more than 40 years (the second husband died too, of cancer). When my parents had their 50th wedding anniversary she came back to the east coast to join the party and has become very active once more with our family.

This June, she turned 90 years old and asked me to locate her second husband's younger brother.  I have tried a number of times to "find him" but have had no luck so far.  His name is (or was) Richard Donald Kane, born July 19, 1930 in Chester, PA.

While I was searching for him, I rummaged through the box of stuff my grandfather left behind and found this photograph, dated circa 1941..

It shows my dad between two recently made US Sailors.  The man on the right is an "unknown" but the man on the left is Philip Lewis Hallworth (Jr.); MOMM2 (Motor Machinist 2nd class) US Navy World War II (22 Oct 1919 - 13 Oct 1963), my Aunt Bea's first husband.  My eye was caught by the navy hats (you may recall my recent "acquisition" of my great-uncle Marshall's WWI sailors hat.)

I was just a toddler when Philip passed away - and do not recall ever having met him.  Everyone that knew him (that remains with us today) speaks very highly of him, and recalls he went deaf while working in the engine rooms of the various ships he worked on.  Today he rests in the Beverly National Cemetery, in Beverly, NJ (Section X Site 3315).  My Aunt Bea plans to join him there someday.

The mystery man seems to be hauntingly familar, as if somewhere in my past, I encountered him - but nothing more that the vaguest of shimmering thought surfaces to the forefront.  Perhaps, some night, it will come to me - that elusive memory.  Looking at the photograph, he seems to have been a nice guy.  My dad has no memory of this "photo op," and says the events of the time (the outbreak of the war) and his um... unfortunately timed, flying of a Japanese Flag out his bedroom window and its aftermath are all he can recall.

Another photograph sends me down memory lane...

First Cousin - 3x Removed - Part Three (and last for now)

The man that found Marshall's sailor cap mailed it to me - and I am thrilled beyond words to have it in my hand.  A 95 year old family heirloom, reunited with it's family.  I found yet another mysterious address in the cap headband.  I will go bald pulling my hair out to figure out what "the story of the hat" really is...

I found this in Franklin's notes and diary, my notes in []:

Marshall Mousley   Born: June 10, 1900 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [- Died 1991.]

Enlisted in the Navy at the outbreak of World War 1 and served at Cape May Barracks, U.S. Naval Home and on the USS Sappho. 

After the war was in the Merchant Marine on vessels trading with France, Italy, the Adriatic, Mexican Gulf, and the Pacific.  He was in Livorno, Italy with his brother [Elmer], Uncle [Harry McIlvaine], and his cousins Howard and Horace McIlvaine, Charles West, and Danny [Daniel Webster] Bennett at the time the Black Shirts, led by Benito Mussolini, were battling the Reds [Communist circa 1921.]  They were all in port at the same time but on different vessels.

Marshall was aboard the "U.S.S. George G. Henry" when that tanker burned in France. [It had been hit by a torpedo from a German U-Boat with several men killed.]  He was the Assistant Group Engineer on the Laid Up Fleet in James River, VA.  Engineer on "West Ira" bound for China but was injured in New Orleans and left the vessel.

He later entered business with his father [Thomas Charles] in charge of Howard Street Foundry [believed to be sometime just before 1930, the year Thomas Charles retired.] Sold interest in foundry in 1946 and retired [at age 46].

In 1950, organized the "Circle Realty Company."

Member of American Legion; P.O.S.A [Patriotic Order Sons of America - they maintain the cemetery near the Thomas-Neely House in Washington Crossing, PA]; 32 degree Mason [my g-grandfather, Harry Davis Mousley was also a Mason], member of Frankford Lodge No. 892; Lulu Shine, Philadelphia; Benjamin Franklin Consistory (Scottish Rite); and the Northeast Shrine Club.

He married in 1936 and had no children.


Iggy's Research Notes:


Franklin's notes and diary stop in 1951 although Franklin lived to a ripe old age and died in the early 1990s, also childless.

The Cape May Barracks was a Navy "boot camp" established for the training of newly enlisted men in an "old wooden, resort town hotel."  The facility was later handed over to the US Coast Guard.

The United States Naval Asylum opened in 1831 on the east bank of the Schuylkill just above Gray's Ferry. It functioned as a retirement home for naval officers and housed the government Naval School before the founding of the United States Naval Academy in 1845. In 1879, the Asylum became known as the U.S. Naval Home. Under the command of the Philadelphia Naval Yard Commandant, it was in operation until the 1970s.

The first USS Sappho (SP-1427) was a United States Navy ferry transport in commission from 1918 to 1919.

Sappho was built in 1886 as a wooden-hulled commercial ferry steamer SS Sappho at Bath, Maine, by New England Shipbuilding Company. The U.S. Navy acquired her from her owner, William C. Sproul of Chester, Pennsylvania, for World War I service on 6 August 1918 and commissioned her on 20 August 1918 as USS Sappho.

Sappho was assigned to the 4th Naval District for local transport duty, providing transportation between the Philadelphia Navy Yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and nearby ports in New York and New Jersey.


Just five days after Sappho was commissioned, SS Delaware accidentally rammed her on 25 August 1918. Repairs were complete by 20 October 1918, allowing Sappho to resume transport service.  During this time of repair, I believe Marshall went to France and back on on the "Anna C. Moore" - The "Anna C. Moore" was sunk off the coast of England by a German U-boat during WWII.

Sappho was decommissioned at Philadelphia on 18 February 1919, and returned to her owner the same day. Her Navy crew was returned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard by the tug USS Triton (YT-10).

Marshall was discharged on 19 February 1919 a day after the USS Sappho was decommissioned.

 The USS Ohio was placed in reserve in the Philadelphia Naval Yard in mid-January, 1919 and later decommissioned in 1922).  Marshall may have "picked up" the cap sometime during this period and may or may not have actually served on board.  Franklin's diary is remarkably detailed, but does not mention the USS Ohio at all.

The "West Ira" was also later sunk by a German U-Boat during WWII in the Caribbean Sea.

I wonder what Marshall thought of German torpedoes...

First Cousin - 3x Removed

Recently, I came across an interesting item while "Googling" one of my grandfather's 1st cousins (and Franklin Mousley's brother), Marshall Mousley ( 10 June 1900 - September 1984).  His WWI sailor's hat was found in a flea market!  I don't know who the women are - the names are not clearly legible.

A "fellow" blogger, Jacqi prompted me to do this search "just for the heck of it"!  You never know what you might find! I goggled the address in Trenton - it is now the "Reading Senior Citizen's Center. I'm going to try to find out what was there in 1919.

History isn't about dates...

This morning on my way to work, I was in a long train of cars and trucks. The vehicle in front of me was pleasing to the eye. I'm no great fan of invisible fences since two of the dogs I grew up with found ways to slip out. One would wait for the snow plow to come and leave a mound of snow over the wire that triggered the warning collar, and simply walk out over the distance-keeping hill of snow. The other was a bounder, he could leap like a deer, and easily cleared 5-6 foot fences on the fly. He did this one day, bounding over the warning of the invisible fence, and came back in my older brother's arms, dead from being hit by a car.

But I digress...the two yellow labs sharing the stick they obviously want someone to toss, pulled me out of my rambling thoughts.

I had been thinking about ... history and how it isn't about dates, it's about people. And how I've been reading lately about people that were "much more personal" to me - which made history more ...personal.

Let me explain. My dad's side of the family, largely came to this country around 1850. There are 5-6 generations that, by and large, lived entirely within a few blocks-square area in downtown Philadelphia (with trips to the New Jersey beaches). While Philadelphia is the home of the Liberty Bell and the signing of the Declaration of Independence...the people that did that, and lived through that time, weren't "my people". So the history becomes a bit dusty and remote...

My mom's mother's family immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts from Scotland around 1895. Again, Boston is one of those "a lot of things happened there" towns of old, but it wasn't "my people" that were involved with dumping the tea in the harbor, or listening to Paul Revere shout the "British are coming!"

My mom's Daughters of the American Revolution application and the research that went into it, however, has changed things. History has become much more personal.

My mother's father's family tree for the country that was to become the United States of America is extensive. More than extensive. One branch goes back to John Bush (1590 - 1624) who is my 8th great grandfather. He came to Virginia with Lord De La Warr.

Thomas West, 3rd (or 12th) is often named in history books simply as Lord Delaware. He served as governor of the Jamestown Colony, and the Delaware Bay was named after him.

Suddenly, history takes on a buzz.

John Bush's great-grandsons would travel with Daniel Boone through the Cumberland Gap in 1775.

Johannes Michael Schmidt, my 7th great grandfather, came from Germany in 1737 with others fleeing religious persecution. He entered this country in Philadelphia, lived in Germantown, and later moved to Virginia. 110 years later, my dad's side of the family would come from England and live on Germantown Avenue... Again, something begins to resonate within me...

Philip Peter Visinand, my 8th great grandfather, who born on 10 Apr 1684 in Heilsbruck, Switzerland, came to America in 1731 and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He is buried in a cemetery I've driven past dozens of times without a thought or care... It's so very different now.

Back north, the town of Salem, Massachusetts was having a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft, between February 1692 and May 1693. Henry Herrick Sr., my 10th great grandfather and his family were deeply involved.

My mom is deeply ashamed by this - I grant this wasn't the world's "finest hour," but it happened.

Does the name David Stern Crockett ring a bell? Perhaps you remember the Alamo? Ancestry.Com tells me he is the uncle of my 4th great grand aunt, Sarah Elizabeth Crockett's husband.

Lost in the fabric of time... and deep in thought, I want to learn more about what have become special to me events in history... the Alamo, the Salem Witch Trials, the settling of Jamestown, and something terrible...

...the damages done to the family during and after the Civil War - where "my people" fought... on the "losing side" near Shelbyville, Tennessee...

..when I look up and see two friendly dogs staring back at me...and soon thereafter I arrive at work once more.

Der brth I tak up time to drop you few lins..

Recently, Jacqi over at "A Family Tapestry" sent me a link to a new (to me) genealogy resource. It allows one to search books of biographical material.

Thanks to Jacqi, I uncovered a few gems. If you don't know Jacqi, this is what her profile says:

"It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference? I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands."

I get goose bumps just reading that.

---- ...And these are my strands. ----

One of the gems I found has the rather lengthy title of "MOUNT HOPE - A history of Cole, Shipman, and allied families: Abercrombie, Allen, Anderson, Bailey, Bennett, Bryson, Carson, Channell, Curtis, Hemphill, Hutchins, Keith, Munday, Nixon, Owens, Stephens, and other families, of old Buncombe Co., N.C, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and elsewhere." It was written by Pauline Callaway Sheriff and is copyrighted 1982.

On page 189, I found this regarding my Mother's great-grandfather:

John Madison Shipman, son of George Shipman and Margaret Hefner, was born on December 22, 1844 in Georgia. He married Paratine Avary on January 15, 1867. She was born in 1847-8 in Alabama, the daughter of Wilson W. Avary, b. 1824-5 in South Carolina and Tabitha Jane b. circa 1826-7 in Alabama.

In the 1880 US Census, Wayne County, Tennessee, John Madison Shipman and family was listed living next door to the W. W. Avery family. Included in the census were the following children: G.W., a son 11 years old, M. J. a daughter 10 years old, and D.P. a son, 5 years old.

Through the courtesy of Louise Shipman Fields, we have a copy of part of an old letter that was written by John Madison to his brother, Rufus Monroe, called "Babe", and to his parents, George and Margaret [Hefner] Shipman. Over the years portions of this letter had worn out on the folds, and some sections were missing:

"Wayne Co. No (missing)
Pap & mother

... leaves us in common ... they may find you all ... not heard any speshal in some time I want to see you all very bad and did expect to before this time but on the account of gethering my crop and sickness I can't get off yet awhile my crop is now gethered I have got a part of my wheat sowed I think when I get done sowing wheat and my cotton hawled off and sold surely will get to come We have had some sickness this fall but nothing verry serious Gerge Wilson first had the sore throat he was sick about two weeks then little Perry about two weeks with fevor and worms supposed to be then Pairentine had the sore throat about one week we only had the doctor one trip we have all been puny this fall my crop turned out tolerable well except my cotton it was verry sorry I think I have gethered about 200 bu (bushels) of corn 11 or 12 hundred lbs of cotton in the seed I think I have shoats (young pigs) enough to make meat if they don't die there is a great many hogs dying in this country

(the bottom part of the letter is missing, then this on the back side:)

...so Babe I supose you are come out to Wayne if you can do any good would be glad you would do so if it suits you to come now you can come out with John Avary well Babe I don't know of anything now that would pay you much. You can come and look round for your self and if it don't suit you can do like other has done you can go back to Winston so if you want to come don't wait on me.

J.M.S

"When this you see remember us I want you all to write soon"

On the bottom of the letter, in a very different handwriting, very hard to read, was:

"Winston County, Ala January 18 1877
Der brth I tak up time to drop you few lins to in forme you that we are wel at pres hop th finds every one of you well"

The above letter was written in Nov 1876 and the reply at the bottom started Jan 28, 1877 by Rufus or a sibling.

---- I then found this: ----


On the back it is labeled, [Daniel Perry Shipman] on the right. I think this is John Madison Shipman with his two youngest children Hurbert and Daniel Perry, taken somewhere in Fannin County, Texas, circa 1880.

Digging around further, I find what appear to be the memories of Carlos Raymond (C. R.) Shipman. I hope you will clicken to enbiggen. :)


It says in part: "I am Carlos Raymond Shipman born June 28, 1899 attended at birth by Dr. J. A. Lannius in a two-room log house built by my father and his neighbors a little over 17 miles northeast of Bonham on a 40-acre government lease at 10 cents an acre per year for ten years. The doctor came out in a one-horse buggy about 17 miles at five miles per hour.

I married June 15, 1921 Annie Mae Matthews in Bonham. We have one daughter and seven sons all living at present. She passed away January 24. 1974. My father Daniel Perry Shipman was born in Wayne County, Tennessee September 1874. He came to Texas in a wagon with his parents, John and Paratine (Avery) Shipman, at the age of eight years. His father died when my father was 12 and he lost his mother two years later. He had to run the farm and support his mother and sister Maggie [Note: my great-grandmother] and brother Hurbert. His older brother George was married and had two children at the time. My father was helped some by his Uncle Billy Morrison of the Stoolgrub community a few miles away. My father also helped at times on other farms at 35 cents and 50 cents a day. He made cross ties at six cents each for the Texas and Pacific Railroad. He became a good farmer and owned and operated close to 900 acres several years. Later he farmed less and operated a meat market and general merchandise store, also a wood yard. In his last working years he cultivated 11 acres in vegetables to sell on his place on South Center Street in Bonham.

His uncles, Luke, Downs and Charlie Avery, lived in the Telephone and Lamaso communities north of Bonham. Luke and Downs moved to Lubbock to farm. My father came to Texas, I was told, in a wagon from Tennessee. Five wagons started but only three made it. They traveled 15 to 25 miles a day depending on the hills and road conditions. Most newcomers to Fannin County stopped along the Red River for water and land that would grow fruit and vegetables. At 19 my father married Fannie Mary Terrell who was age 20. There were five children born of this marriage: Ruby, Raymond, Homer, Carrol and Mattie Gorgie. Carrol died in 1960 on a farm north of Bonham. Carroi's oldest daughter Caroline Shipman Brady now owns and operates the farm. My father lived in Fannin County 66 of his 76 years."

-- "Fannin County Folks & Facts" Page 238.

It is 550 miles from Mount Pleasant, Wayne County, Tennesee to Honey Grove, Fannin County Texas. The wagon trip must have taken them about a month.