Ancestral Musings

Here we are at the end of October, 2020, still fighting COVID 19, and awaiting Election Day.  Results of the election will probably be delayed as so many ballots are being mailed in.  Here in Washington state, all ballots are mailed in or put in a county lockbox.  We dropped our ballots off this afternoon and then went out to lunch to celebrate.   Week 42's topic is "Proud" and I'll admit as we've moved through this challenge, I'm finding it harder to find people to talk about!  But, my Grandma Belknap (Grace Ethel McDuff Belknap) makes me proud.  She was born in 1895 in or around Olympia, Washington and lived in that area of Washington nearly all of her life, with some time in the eastern part of the state as a young woman teaching in a one-room schoolhouse.  She married Melvin Belknap after only about a year of teaching.  They stayed in eastern Washington at least long enough for my Uncle Dwight to be born, but by 1921 they were definitely ...

It is October 13th, 2020, and we are what?  seven months into this pandemic.  There are some signs of hope for treatment and vaccines, so I'm hoping by this time next year we will be able to return to life as normal, though I suspect we will all have been changed by this experience.  .It has been humbling to be confronted by an illness that spreads so quickly and works so mysteriously.   This week's writing prompt is "Newest."  In contrast to last week's "Oldest" I'm going to go with my newest, most recent contact.  This is another Prewitt/Pruitt connection:  a fellow Gold Star mother whose name I'd seen commenting on various mutual acquaintances Facebook pages over the last few years.  The loss of a child in military service is overwhelming, and for all these years that I've wondered if we were related (I've been told that all of the American Prewitts however they spell their names are descended from Thomas Prewitt), I hesitated to ask b...

Week 40's challenge is "Oldest."  I've looked at a few entries of other folks, oldest relative, oldest artifact, oldest newsclipping.  I think that my interest in oldest would be the oldest ancestor I can find, which I think would be on the Prewitt side so far.   I have no idea of how much credence I can really put in a record that is over 600 years old.  But there is at least a remote possibility that I am descended from Sir Ralph de Neville, 4th Baron of Raby and 1st Earl of Westmoreland born in 1363, and his wife, Joan Plantagenet (illegitimate) de Beaufort, born in 1375.  Better genealogists than I will have to untangle this mess of half-siblings and illegitimate births to figure how it all fits together.  Actually, just looking at the Ancestry hints about these folks, it really requires an historian more than a genealogist.  It's fun to speculate that I might be descended from these people who played major roles in the history of England, and...

Moving right along:  no movie material here that I can tell.  I'm sure there's been plenty of drama, but they tended not to record it, unless they ended up in court.  I don't know if you've noticed, but a lawsuit seems to suck the life right out of a story.  So, I'm passing on the movie prompt for now.  If something comes up, I'll revisit the topic.

 OK, now I'm a month behind but I may just start cheating a bit and move ahead with much shorter entries for a bit.  The pandemic is providing plenty of suspense to this election season (but I feel about politics on this page like Edna in The Incredibles felt about capes:  NO POLITICS).  It's been a bit distracting.  Some things in the pandemic look better, some look stubborn, but I'm living in hope that we will get this figured out.  Meanwhile, I'm making masks for family, friends, and as a small project on behalf of my Gold Star Mothers chapter.  It's a great way to use fabric I love that just won't go in a quilt. So, this week's prompt is "On the Map."  In these days of Google Maps, we seem to hardly look any more at paper maps, but maps have not disappeared, oh no.  As a runner, I look at the map my Garmin watch generates every time I take a run, to see where I was fastest or slowest and to check the distances between the mental checkpoin...