Week 42: #52 Ancestors – Adventure By Eilene Lyon Part 1 Emily Sets Sail The steerage passengers on the Emily "... were divided into messes of ten men each and had 6 pints of water including our tea and coffey … ½ pound of bread ½ pound of flour whitch we made into what we call... Continue Reading →
Wrong-Way Emily – Part 1
Week 39: #52 Ancestors – Map It Out By Eilene Lyon Note: This three-part series is adapted from my California gold rush book. Sources will be listed at the end of Part 3. Background The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848 set off the largest mass migration to a single destination up... Continue Reading →
Smiths vs. the Wilderness
Week41: #52 Ancestors - Context By Eilene Lyon Take a look at a Google Earth image or map of central Indiana today. It will be hard to imagine that two hundred years ago it looked like this: Tall trees covered the whole country with their wide-spreading branches, depending to the ground, and the shrubbery below... Continue Reading →
Lewiston Peaches
Week 40: #52 Ancestors – Harvest By Eilene Lyon My great-grandfather, Charles Edward Smith, never had much success as a farmer. He began in Missouri, then moved to eastern Washington. The farm in Washington entailed dryland farming, because water was scarce. Once the family moved to Moscow, Idaho, around 1910, he engaged in other businesses... Continue Reading →
The Slide Years: Stylin’
By Eilene Lyon The Slide Years is a series in which I select an image my dad took from 1957-1982 with Kodachrome slide film, then I write a stream-of-consciousness essay – a sort of mini-memoir. The French must have had a little influence on Mom's style during the time we lived there in the early... Continue Reading →
Not Kissing
Week 38: #52 Ancestors – Cousins By Eilene Lyon I have a scarcity of first cousins – exactly five. Even though I rarely see them, I would know them instantly if I ran into them anywhere in the world. I’ve met a number of my dad’s cousins since taking up the family historian role. I... Continue Reading →
Rio Grande Headwaters
By Eilene Lyon South of the South Fork of the Rio Grande that flows down from Wolf Creek Pass, the campers (many of them hunters) were thick as late-summer flies. We spent one night on Park Creek as a waypoint between the Conejos River (two nights) and the Rio Grande headwaters, west of Creede, Colorado.... Continue Reading →
History Repeats
Week 37: #52 Ancestors – Mistake By Eilene Lyon Thomas Harvey Ransom, the only son of Dr. William C. Ransom to reach adulthood, emulated his father quite readily. Unfortunately, W. C. Ransom was not a good role model. Harvey (as he was known) took the mimicry a step too far, and it cost him dearly.... Continue Reading →
The Slide Years: Sometimes Bad Is Bad
By Eilene Lyon The Slide Years is a series in which I select an image my dad took from 1957-1982 with Kodachrome slide film, then I write a stream-of-consciousness essay – a sort of mini-memoir. You may be looking at this photo and saying "What the...?" When Dad got the box of slides back from... Continue Reading →