Edith Roberts Luck visited her son and his family every year for Christmas (as well as many Easters, plus the birth of every baby to help out). She would take over the cooking and had quite often sent ahead, through the mail, a big box of cookies and sometimes gifts in with them. She would package the cookies tightly in the plastic tubs that you could get ice cream in, or sometimes they were just loose in the package. (That was dangerous- open the box and cookies for the grabbing and stuffing in the mouth were right there- no opening of tight lids to slow down a family hungry for Grandma’s cookies.) She would use popcorn to cushion the cookies- those were the days before styrofoam pellets, and besides, popcorn would be food-safe, right? Sometimes it would make the cookies smell/taste like popcorn, but hey, she was a farmer’s daughter, and grew the best corn in her garden that I ever tasted.

I always wonder if these recipes were from her mother, Ella V. Daniel Roberts. They cooked for tables full of farm workers at harvest time, and packed a lot of calories into those meals to keep the workers going. These sugar cookies would have helped with that.

Making these sugar cookies and using the cooky cutters passed down has always been very special, especially with our own children, niece, and nephews. It is a family tradition to be thankful for; having such an excellent grandmotherly-type grandma is something I am very grateful for too. One of the best compliments I ever got was from my brother who said that I would make a great grandmother. With Grandma Edie as a role model, I do hope that will be true.

Here is Edith Roberts Luck’s recipe, typed on her old, well used typewriter:

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Family treasure chest of pictures and recipes.

 

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I recently read a great post that was linked on the Oct. 12, 2014 GeneaBloggers Daily by Gordon Belt: Scrapbooks: the Original Social Media. The article is by Katherine Hoarn, and her premise is intriguing:

“As a means of creating and communicating self, … scrapbooks operate in much the same way that popular forms of social media do for students today.”

Ms. Hoarn continues in her article to discuss how scrapbooks served the same purpose years ago as Facebook does now- to allow communication between family and friends and give a sense of who the person was at a certain point in their life.

Scrapbooking- and by extension the paper ephemera passed down that we family historians so cherish- is also an act of curation, Ms. Hoarn explains.

She compares this collecting of text and images to Pinterest and Tumblr sites that showcase interests, passions, and events. Whether neatly organized onto boards on Pinterest or into a scrapbook, autograph book, photo album, diary, or even a shoebox, most of what we have inherited has been culled through generations to be the most important ephemera of a life. If we are lucky, we may even have commentary attached to give us more insight into a life.

Instagram, of course, is today’s electronic version of the photo album and if we are REALLY lucky, our old images will also be “tagged” with names, dates, and places.

A caption can touch our hearts or give us a giggle- sometimes both at the same time.

As one who laments the passing of paper and worries what treasures will be left for the next generations to cherish in their even more ephemeral electronic world,  I truly treasure the scrapbook, photo albums, and shoe boxes of photos and papers left by our ancestors. I am so glad that we do have ways of sharing the old-timey via new technology, though, so all can gain a bit more insight into those who have gone before.

 

Notes, Sources, and References:

1)  Geneabloggers Daily: http://paper.li/geneabloggers/1306385546

2) In the near long ago, boys graduated to long pants as they matured- a rite of passage that was longed for by many, much as our generation cannot wait until we can drive.

3) While searching for appropriate pictures for this post, I found the above image of Mabel- we have a younger picture of her that until this moment we thought was the only one- see Mystery Monday: Mabel Mulhollen. She may be more important in our family than we realized since there is more than one photo of her. We can also use this photo of her at an older age to compare to other family images from the same time period that include people we do not know. Is she family or part of the FAN Club? More research needed.

4) FAN Club= Friends, Associates, Neighbors; researching these folks can help us learn more about our ancestors.

5) The Newton (Iowa) High School Class of 1892 included Lillie Brown, Ella Clarkson, Marie Hass, Henry Jasper, Fred Kennedy, Belle Lambert, Artie McKinley, Willie McMurray, Hettie McCord, Fred Meredith, and Lillian Patten.

Quick- who is Elizabeth Cady Stanton?

No, she is not a relative of mine. (I wish!)

You may have dozed off during the maybe two minutes of your high school history class that focused on her and the movement which she helped found.

If you are female in America, or African-American (male or female), you owe many of your rights to her tireless work for suffrage and abolition.

If you are male, she helped gain rights for your sister, mother, wife, and daughters, and helped make all persons in our society more equal, which benefits all.

 

Today is the anniversary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birth. She was born to Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston Cady on 12 Nov 1815 in Johnstown, New York. Her father was an attorney and state Supreme Court judge, and Elizabeth was formally educated in a time when few women had that privilege. Despite her father owning slaves, she also was an abolitionist, temperance worker, and a leader of the early women’s rights movement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the principal author of the “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments,” first presented in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention. Based on the Declaration of Independence, it listed the ways that women did not have equal rights in the United States of America: they were taxed without representation, subject to laws they were unable to have a voice in, etc.- the same as the grievances colonists had with Great Britain around 1776. The Oneida Whig stated later that the convention’s ‘Declaration’ was “the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity.”

Elizabeth was different from many in the women’s movement because she addressed other women’s issues, not just suffrage: divorce and custody (men automatically got the children in the few divorces of the time, even if they were bad parents), work and income, property rights, and even birth control. She worked closely with Susan B. Anthony who is now the better known suffragist. They had an equal partnership, however, with Elizabeth writing speeches and Susan delivering them, since she was unmarried and had no children and could travel more easily than Stanton, who had seven children.

So why is a post about Elizabeth Cady Stanton on this blog? Yes, she is one of my heroes, but her work affects all the women in our family who came after. Edith Roberts was in college the year women got the right to vote- I once asked her what she remembered about it, did she go out and exercise her right to suffrage right after it became law, did she also protest and write to get women suffrage? She replied that she didn’t even remember the event, as she was so busy in school and with her sorority. (I was disappointed.)

Also, Edward B. Payne, our McMurray ancestor, was active in the woman’s suffrage movement in Berkeley, California in the 1890s. More about this in a future post.

Although she married, Elizabeth had the phrase, “I promise to obey” removed from her portion of the vows, later writing, “I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation.”

Over 70 years after the beginnings of the women’s suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton died  on 26 Oct 1902 without ever having voted in the United States of America.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Wikipedia article on Elizabeth Cady Stanton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton 

2) North Star, July 28, 1848, as quoted in Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights, Philip S. Foner, ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1992, pp. 49-51; originally published in 1976, cited in Wikipedia article on ‘Declaration of Sentiments’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Sentiments

 

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Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

 

We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.

 

This image is in the photo album of Edith Roberts (later McMurray and then Luck), in with images taken in the early 1920s. The woman in the front on the right appears to be Edith, but it is unknown who the other persons are. Since she is by herself and we do not recognize any of the men in the picture, she may not yet have been married nor had her son, Edward A. McMurray. (He was born in 1924.)

We would be very interested in learning more about any of the people in this picture! Please contact us if you know them.

 

REVISED later in the day after looking at more family photos: The man with the bow tie to the right of Edith is probably her brother, George Anthony Roberts, Jr. The woman two persons to the left of Edith, holding a little girl with a barrette in her hair, may be Edith’s sister, Ethel Gay (Roberts) Robinson (1891-1969). The child may be Ruby Robinson, born 1915, or Helen Viola Robinson, born 1921. Ethel’s husband Bert Robinson (1890-1977) may be the man in the back, just to the left of  “Georgie” Roberts. These assumptions/guesses are just from knowing these people in later life and looking at the few pictures we have of them. The man in the center with a tie (in front) may be George A. Roberts, Sr. OR Robert Woodson Daniel. There is a picture of RW Daniel somewhere in the family archives, as I remember Ed McMurray talking about it as we viewed an image. It is on a little cassette video somewhere, just begging to be digitized. Even better would be finding the original, which has not turned up in boxes of family pictures. I am now leaning toward this being a group photo of the Daniel family, as George Roberts, Sr., was not happy with his daughter Ethel’s choice of husband, and he disowned her when she married Bert Robinson; thus, a picture of them all together was unlikely as Geo. Sr. was a strong-minded man (per his daughter Edith). George Sr.’s wife and the mother  of Edith, George, and Ethel’s was Ella V. Daniel, but she had passed away 17 Jan 1922; I don’t believe she is in this picture, which may help date it after 1922 or so. R.W. Daniel’s wife, Margaret Ann Hemphill, died in 1915, so that may also date the photo. Again, any help would be appreciated with identifying the people in this image.

Edited 05/12/15: The man that might be RW Daniel might be correct, but his wife is not in this picture. A story by Edith Roberts said Margaret Ann Hemphill was very thin, and always dressed in dark colors. She was ill for many years before her death, so it is very likely that she is not in this image. RW was bald, per Edith’s story, so that may not be him in the image either. 🙁

 

Still searching for information…

 

Notes, Sources, and References:

1) Family treasure chest of photo albums.

Please contact us if you would like higher resolution images.

Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

 

We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.

September 11, 2014, among other things, was the 40th anniversary of the television premiere of, “Little House on the Prairie” which was based on the beloved books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. The books were favorites of mine as a child- I would check out one after the other at the school library and the public library, devouring them even under the covers with a flashlight, over and over. I would dream of what it must have been like to be a pioneer in the olden days- that was probably the beginning of my (virtually) time-traveling, family history-loving self. Even though I was an adult when the series premiered, I just had to watch the programs, and they never disappointed- not a case here of ‘the-books-were-so-much-better.’ I loved seeing the settings and costumes, and sometimes-ornery, sometimes-sweet Laura, portrayed by Melissa Gilbert. (She made me think of how my grandmother would have been at that age. Grandma thought that too.) The series added characters and changed story lines from the books, but they did them well. They had the bonus of the very handsome Michael Landon, my favorite from his previous series, “Bonanza,” as Charles Ingalls, Laura’s father.  The programs from 1974-1983, plus movies from the series, still air around the world in reruns and are now being released as DVDs in their uncut and remastered versions, indicating their popularity through time.

Melissa Gilbert is releasing a cookbook full of “Little House” series recipes and memories on 16 Sep 2014, entitled My Prairie Cookbook: Memories and Frontier Food from My Little House to Yours. She also published, in 2010, an autobiography that includes stories from her “Little House” days.

The “Little House” books have an even more special meaning for me- I knew my boyfriend was THE one when he gave me the whole set of “Little House” books as a Christmas gift when we were starving college students. OK, they were just paperbacks, but it was a nice boxed set and invaluable because I loved the books so much. The fact that he thought of them for a gift- well, that was stupendous. We are still together 35 years later, and thinking of the stories, the books, and the gift (plus the extra hours he worked to earn the money for them on top of a full load of classes plus work), make this a very ‘Sentimental Sunday.’

It is also a ‘Sentimental Sunday’ because we had the same kind of pioneers in our family! Edith Roberts McMurray Luck told stories of how her family migrated to Illinois and then to Jasper County, Iowa in the late 1800s, just after folks like the Ingalls family pioneered farming and towns on the midwest prairies. The Roberts, Daniel, and Murrell families were originally from Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana, and migrated to Roseville in Warren County, Illinois from their respective homes in the 1850s. They then traveled to Jasper County, Iowa, in 1858 with a large grouping of families and covered wagons full of household goods, elderly parents, and children.

Our McMurray and Benjamin ancestors were people of the frontiers, migrating west as the lines blurred between native and white settlements, sometimes being part of the casualties or captured during those hostilities, and eventually migrating to Iowa from Pennsylvania. Heinrich Horn immigrated from Germany (probably as a conscripted mercenary “Hessian” in the Revolutionary War and captured by George Washington’s forces at Trenton, then paroled when he became an American citizen); he settled in Virgina, then Pennsylvania with some of his descendants moving later to Iowa. The New England-born Paynes and Burnells became farmers and ministers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, and even took the train to settle out in California in the 1870s, when it still was a sort of ‘Wild West.’

The Lee family sailed from England to the Illinois prairies, going up the Mississippi from New Orleans, and although the Bunker Hill, Illinois area had been settled a while, the prairie was still a harsh environment to farm and have a business in 1875. Lee married-ins like the Lutz, Russell, and Aiken families had moved west through frontier Ohio and even into ‘Indian Territory,’ which has since become the state of Oklahoma.

The Helblings migrated to Pennsylvania from Germany, and lived on the unsettled outskirts of what is now the large Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania metropolitan area. The Springsteens were from New Jersey and watched the growth of the early Indiana prairie town that became Indianapolis, Indiana.

Edith Roberts said often to her family, “You come from strong pioneer stock. You can do anything you set your mind to.” That legacy has helped many of her descendants get through tough times, and appreciate the strong, determined pioneers that fill our family tree.

Stories to come about these families and their migrations!

 

Notes, Sources, and References:

1) “Little House on the Prairie” tv series information: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071007/

2) Wikipedia article about the TV series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_House_on_the_Prairie_(TV_series)

3) Wikipedia article about the books: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_House_on_the_Prairie

4) “Little House” books- http://www.littlehousebooks.com 

5) Melissa Gilbert’s autobiography- Prairie Tale: A Memoir, Gallery Books, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-141659917.

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Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

 

We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.