I have so many pictures, and interesting objects to share. I am going to start a ‘picture of the week’- it will be an opportunity to commune with people who like history and are interested in our past. For me- this is also a self/family exploration. Thank you for sharing the journey!
Great Uncle Guy in his gas mask outside Hales Cottage- 1918’ish
Half of the day was spent trying to decipher ONE letter from Jane Stoughton ( great great gran) to her sisters at 4 Hales Cottage
Exhibit A:
Does it look like a puzzle to you? My eyes still ache! I remember one university professor explaining this strange use of paper (paleography) as a means of conservation-paper was expensive at this time so people would write in the other direction to save paper- it certainly was not to save the eye! What did the letter say? I’m glad you asked (it only took me 5 hours and many breaks to uncover.)
Here it is- What were they doing in 1856 for Christmas and New Years in Napanee?
Napanee January 2nd 1856
My dear sister
I was truly sorry to hear of your illness particularly at this happy season- but I hope you are now better and that you will all keep well please God- I am happy to say we are all well and I cannot call to mind when I spent a pleasanter New Year – everyone seemed happy and Robert is so very kind to me and affectionate that it seems the Almighty is too good to me- For the fun of the thing I hung up my stocking and made Robert hang up his and next morning lo and behold! There was a very pretty worked muslin habit shirt collar and sleeves to match in it with a pair of baby’s boots-
with a little sugar cupid inside a little sugar box –
sugar box
Robert got a pair of new braces and gloves- you will say what children will go to — all children that day-Yesterday New Years day I received 20 visitors – you will wonder at this but 3 or 4 of them I never knew before- brought by those we did know- George L…is here just now-His —- Town Hall is just about completed and they are talking of passing? Assembly to be …..- The children are well-Francy(12) is out with her aunty and I hope to go out next week for a few days with Louis and Mary(10)- They got some tiny books which Robert had put away since he was last in Kingston- I have a beautiful Martin Victorian _ WHAT IS THIS???
which Robert ordered for me from Montreal – I am afraid to tell you the price- but it was in our drawer- it cost $32- The children went down the street today shopping with their father and Poll? Had a sixpence Liz (7) had a threepenny bit- which they said they were going to spend for grandmama- I laughed when Poll ? showed me her two little toy books in sense as she said grandmamma was very fond of poetry but I will send them to her to make her laugh at their New Years gift- Miss Liz lost hers on the way home- Louis (4) brought back a pair of long boots which his papa got him and he was so proud he could scarcely walk when he tried them on- Robert is at a meeting to —— They are all Election mad just now. I suppose you heard that Henry is to offer Inisself ? a candidate for Sheffield when he was down here last week with Chris Robbins just for —- and advised him to office. I am not altogether sure that he will though. I never saw Henry behave so well as he did last week- We had the Darys and Miss J’s two brothers and Mrs Lander , the parson was in Kingston with Chris and Henry and James to an after supper on Thursday evening- Henry and Mr Dary kept us laughing the whole evening- I must now close with most affectionate love to dear marnmma(grandmother) yourself and dear Mary and must soon to hear from you- and with love from Robert the children to you all
Yours affectionate sister
Jane Stoughton
________
A note about the letter- Jane Stoughton is writing to her two spinster sisters- and laying the domestic bliss on quite a bit. Helen- not yet born until 1863, is my great great gran who bought Hales Cottage 2. Liz, who is mentioned in this letter, and is seven, will die in two years-I’m not certain of what.
One thing I had not realized is how long most of these women who were married- and both spouses didn’t die- were constant baby makers for the span of their fertile life- almost 20+ years. In most cases brothers and sisters were grown up and married before some brothers and sisters were born. I know it happens today- but doing this family research has only made this fact more apparent.
A much older Mary Esson- d. 1880
Jane Anne Stoughton- daughter of Maria Hagerman, had six long living children in the span of twenty years. In 1856 she has been married for about 12+ years- she still sounds happy!
Happy New Year!
On reading “The Robber Bride,” by Margaret Atwood- I knew I would like it- I just didn’t know how much. Atwood is one of the few authors that can weave a tale that will keep you thinking for days- if not years. I still revisit “Alias Grace” ten years after reading it. Her characters are complex- you may hate part of them, or love most of them. Like onions they have layers, as we all do- a complexity-the dark secrets mixed with illumination.
The story is about three university acquaintances: Tony, Charis and Roz, who are drawn into a close friendship through a shared adversary-Zenia. She is a woman who also was at their university, but as time passes- each decade she returns for a pound of flesh from all three. The cost: their men, their sense of control regarding their own lives, their innocence and possibly their own illusion of happiness.
The character of Zenia will be one of those characters that will take a while to recover from- like a drug to the system or a line of a song that you should know, but can’t remember . She is the symbol of the seductress, a woman who can get anything she wants, but doesn’t want anything she gets. One who constantly wants more. She plays upon the insecurities of women, feeding on every fear and mirroring it back to her victim. Men seem to be the pawns in her personal war with woman- she eats them up and spits them out, only to be paraded as a trophy for her wall of destroyed lives.
What is her motive? What makes her tick? Why would anyone want to do so much harm for the simple joy of the spoils of war? A part of me wanted to hear her side of the story; to explain her logic- as twisted as it might be. Why she did the things she did? No one ever really gets to know the real Zenia. They accept her by her own stories, as we all must do with people we meet. What is her real story? There are so many puzzle pieces left out- was there a real love interest that she did everything for- a typical bad boy? Did she hate men or was it women?
As a conclusion, I didn’t understand the last few chapters entitled “Outcome.” Tony, a historian and one of the main characters, is working on a battlefield of Lavaur in which the heroine is Dame Girtrude. She knows she will lose the battle and many, if not all of her subjects will die, but she still fights on. Is this Atwood giving a nod to Zenia- even if you know you will lose you still must fight on? The three main characters in the story, while destroyed in their own way by Zenia are ambivalent about her. Did she save them from the illusion they had with the men in their lives? The story doesn’t answer the question- it leaves you wondering.
If I were to make a cover of this book it would be of a university photo in which all of the women are present. Roz would be boldly looking at the camera, Tony would be trying to smile, but looking uncomfortable, Charis would be looking dreamily into the camera- attractive, but somewhat vacant from herself. There might be some men in the picture, but I don’t think their face or description matters. Then there is Zenia- she is standing behind these women. Her body is slender, her hair brown, her dress alluring. Too mature for university. Somehow her face is obscured- maybe she moved during the photograph. Knowing Zenia, it probably was intentional- another evasion of the truth. From this photograph you get the distinct impression that had you taken the picture a second before you would have found her staring at the other women in the picture with a look of adversarial rage. Even for all her beauty, she doesn’t fit in. She is a wandering child that somehow has been locked out of a very important room that we all walk through as a right of passage-compassion. Thank you Margaret Atwood!
Doing research on the family- the truth is more tragic than I thought. I am having some challenge finding Great Gran Gamsby’s age. Her parents were married in 1844, and on her marriage announcement she is entitled the eldest daughter of Robert Esson, but I think this must be incorrect. This would make her around 40 when she married Guy Gamsby. I will have to look into this further.
Helen Esson, my great gran, did marry a widower. His first wife, Catherine Amelia Radenhurst, was the daughter of a prominent Perth family. They were married less than four months and she died-pulmonary consumption the register states.
My gran- daughter of a ‘gentleman’ by the Canadian census- one of many daughters who never married-found an eligible man in Guy Gamsby . Was this a gift or a ticket out of a harsher sentence-spinsterhood?
She was educated, she trained as a school teacher-something she would return to when her husband died. His death was all to soon, fourteen years after he married my great gran. He was sixty-one. His children were only four and six.
She must have been a strong woman. One of the first pictures that I have of her with her children, must have been just before her husband’s death- “we are doing fine- everything is okay,” must have been this message.
Married and widowed in fourteen years-in her mid-thirties(possibly forties)- she brushes herself off. She stays with her elderly aunties a 4 Hales Cottage for a few years while she gets back on her feet. They (Elizabeth and Mary Stoughton) possibly can relate to a woman who has attempted to reach for domestic bliss only to be thwarted by death. Were the young children in the house a joy or a challenge? Possibly both.
In a few years my great gran will move a few houses down from her aunties, continue her teaching career and raise her children.
This picture must have been right after or just before his death- my gran looks about four. She is the little flower girl out front. It is a wedding- a little joy in such trying times. Helen Gamsby is on the top right, and her aunts (Mary and Elisabeth) look like twins in the center of the picture.
The dawn is just about to break. Morgan is sleeping-curled up with Byron. The image would make a perfect card.
I have been up for hours importing images from the past into a modern form- scanning them into my computer for posterity, before the delicate paper crumbles more or something else happens to them.
I feel obsessed- there are so many stories to be told here- if only a muse would grant me the means to tell. Where does one begin when the starting line is blurred?
Christmas cards from the late 1880s, a baby’s rattle…
My mother’s baby book: 1926 -Morgan is double her granny’s weight at 4….
Pictures of distant names from the past- what can I do for you? Remember? Share your stories…
Much of the afternoon is spent cooking with Morgan. I’m obsessed with this too: cupcakes, peanut butter fudge, brownies, rum balls, and meatballs. Now I just need to find a small city to share all the food with! Anyone hungry?
Brushed With Mystery 