The Things Kids Say

My daughter calls it "Modern Genealogy" when she captures things her family is doing. My favorite is her "Heard Around the House" which she captures comments the kids make. Imagine if we could go back in time to hear what we or our parents said when we were 5 and 8 years old. What goes on in this little guy's mind is priceless. A sample follows:

Heard Around The House
We are driving in the car and he says, "I wish I still had my tonsils."
Mom, "Why? You aren't getting sick anymore buddy."
Ben, "Because I want them back. Katie still has hers. Why does she still have hers?"
Katie, "My tonsils weren't to big. Your tonsils were to big so they had to be taken out."
Ben, "I want mine back!"
Katie, "Well, your not in charge. God has the plan for you and you needed your tonsils out."

THE PEOPLE IN THE BARNES' BOX PART 2

Browsing though the Bristol history book from the library, I found over a page of info on Rodney Barnes who I posted on a few days ago . Included was a photo of him in his old age. It also gave a clue to where the family lived before the Bradley St home. It mentions a Monce trout pond which could be located on Monce Rd. just around the corner from our house. For those of you unfamiliar with the area the town of Farmington was the mother town of Bristol and Burlington.The Bristol and Burlington area was called the "West Woods" and later "New Cambridge" and "West Briton". Bristol became a town and still contained Burlington until the early 1800's. Other areas I mention in the blog are the villages of Forestville (Bristol) and Whigville (Burlington).
It looks like Sherman Barnes' had at least 3 sons that followed him in the machinist trade, Monroe (our line) Bainebridge and Rodney. Brainbride and Rodney worked for the Hubbell Co.in Forestville. The most famous product been the Hubbell Marine Clock. While looking that up I found the History of Bristol on line at Google Books. Who knew!
Smith, Eddy N., and George B. Smith, comps. Bristol, Connecticut ("In Olden Time New Cambridge") Which Includes Forestville. Hartford,Conn.: City Printing Co., 1907.

A Swamp Yankee's Research Gadgets

First of all some free things do work well. I use Mozilla Firefox for my browser and one add-on available is ZOTERO which labeled as the "next generation research tool". It allows you to take snapshots of web pages. It sits at bottom of the browser window and you can access files from there.
I also use Google Docs and Notes, which is another method of copying and storing things of the web. Google docs can render a great PDF for down load also. Its also great to access from other locations and retrieve later from home.
As for photos I use Faststone Image Viewer available at Faststone.org. It has some neat viewing options, quick resizing and editing tools. I discovered this week I could use in the photo properties the "jpg comments" feature to add info to the photo. I'll be posting some soon to see if the info can be accessed in Blogger. I tried Picasa awhile ago but found it lacking.
I finally took a look at Roots Television and found a video on adding comments below a photo using GIMP . So I viewed it 4 or 5 times and opened my Gimp program (it has always scared me) and did it. The man giving the demo gave me the clue about the photo properties option. Good stuff on there. I saw videos for retouching photos which I will be going through real soon.

BLOGGER IDENITY ISSUE

I've had a problem leaving comments on several blogs and then I noticed my smiling face was missing on most of the blogs I follow. Some how I was one of the blanks with no id at all.
I went to the "manage blog you follow" screen and changed all back to a blogger ID.
Is google acting up or did I do some thing?

HAPPY BLOGOVERSARY TO ME !

Well it's been a year since I stepped out into the world of Blogging. I felt a little like I did about 65 years ago when I stepped out on that door step and into the sunlight. "What I'm I doing out here naked to the world ?"
Well just as life has treated me pretty fairly, this trip on the blog has been a lot of fun. When I started I wondered if I would find anything to write about, but it seems interesting stuff always turns up in genealogy.
I called the blog "Bits and Pieces" because when started genealogy all I had was a few scraps of paper and a lot of facts floating around my memory banks. I needed to record some besides a list of names and dates in a computer program. A blog adds a little life to the hobby!
And then all of a sudden you get followers, which you would think would cause added pressure, but it doesn't. They are there to support you.
Thanks for showing an interest in my "Bits and Pieces".

A.K.A. Poppy--"I need your help"

I received a phone call this afternoon from my oldest grandson, he's in the fourth grade and the project is due Tuesday. He had to answer 10 questions about someone in the family who emigrated to this country.
So I thought my mom was the most recent (1920) and the youngest (age 4) and I have the most information on her. She was born in 1915 in the Azores, in the village of Sao Amaro on the island of Sao Jorge. Her parents were here before (her older sister was born in the U.S.) but returned to the Azores.


The family returned here on the S.S. Manchuria, sailing on 7/28/1920 and arriving in N.Y. on 9/4/1920. From there they went back to Taunton Ma.
Her father was a weaver in the cloth mills of Southern New England.
I received most of this info after I had posted on a Google group for Azores genealogy. The folks there were so helpful. Of course this made me go off onto another tangent and I looked into the history of the Azores. I found one of the early settlers in 1439 was a Flemish knight William van der Hagen of Bruges , which the Portuguese translate as Silveira Borges. This is the name my mother had written down for her mother, grandfather and great grandfather. I had always thought it as a middle and last name, but it seems it was combination name carried down though the ages. At any rate to get to the point, my ggrandfather did not approved of my grandmothers marriage.
He felt she married beneath herself and disowned her. Love is blind. They were married for almost 50 years and raised two great daughters.

People from the Barnes' Box Part I

Portraits of Rodney Barnes, Mrs. Rodney Barnes, and two children Emerson and Darwin were in the Barnes box of pictures. They were all labeled with narrow strips of paper with their names in the same script. I had no idea for their relationship (although tonight I did find him and his wife Roxanna Horton in my piles of paper).. I felt he may have been a brother to Monroe Barnes my wife Nancy's GG Grandfather. I suspect another unlabeled photo maybe Monroe and his wife Ann. I'll be posting the others along with a photo of Ann in another post.
Rodney Barnes


Roxanna(Horton) Barnes

Emerson Barnes


Darwin Barnes

Emerson Barnes
So not knowing who Rodney was, I e-mailed Mr. Alderman the Burlington Town Historian (an a distant Barnes cousin). He was kind enough to send the following info about Sherman Barnes . Last year he had told me that Sherman and Monroe families were "Universalists" and that Sherman built telescopes. I later found that Monroe lived in Meriden Ct. for a while and was a founder of the Universalist Church there. What Mr. Alderman sent appears to be from a history and gives a glimpse into life in the mid 1800's.

With many enjoyable things in the life of the village, not the least was the astronomical "observation given by Sherman Barnes with the aid of a telescope" of his own make. This later became the property of Yale college, Mr. Barnes replacing it with another still better. He was at all times interested and pleased when people came to his home, to show them what could best be seen at the time in the heavens. When the planets and stars or moon were showing at their best he would invite his company to meet on the school house lawn or street to study the skies. He was son of Joel of Wise, and lived west of Caleb N. Matthews. He married Luana Smith, daughter of Gideon. The children were Rodney, Cyrus, Banebridge, Juliette, Hannah, Monroe, Gideon and Amelia.

Mr. Barnes had a machine shop on the brook near His Home, the old house place of Gideon Smith his father-in-law, opposite and beyond was in the now almost deserted district of Falls brook and the "Nigger Bridge," Mr. Schriver lives northward from the bridge. Southwest from Norman Matthews lived Josiah Barnes, father of the twins Elias and Eliada Barnes and a younger brother, Austin. The house is a ruin and the sons gone.
I would say life in the "Barnes" home was interesting to say the least. At the bottom of this blog is a photo of the brook his and Monroe's shop was on.
I should make a photo of "Whigville" as it has changed little since Sherman held those sky viewings.