Chasing the Elusive: Who was Catherine Field?

Many years ago, I received a copy of a fifty page letter written in 1965 that contained the genealogical memories of a woman named Dicky Kane, who wrote the letter to her nephew.  These memories centered around the family of Jacob Sheats (whose name was spelled a variety of phonetically correct ways: Sheets, Sheetz, Scheets, Sheetze, etc.), who worked along the waterfront of Philadelphia in the early part of the 19th century.  Among the many stories she shared about Jacob Sheats and his descendants pertained to my maternal great-great-great-grandmother, Helen D. M. Sheats, in which Dicky Kane stated that Jacob "gave the daughter Helen away to a Catholic family and she was reared in the Catholic faith."

I didn't think much of that sentence at the time, because proving who she was given away to would be difficult to do, or so I thought, so I filed the information away.

In doing my periodic research on each of my ancestors and their families, I stumbled across Helen Sheets in the 1850 census.  This was important to me because she married Jacob Miller just four months after this enumeration.  In 1850, Helen, listed as Ellen Sheetz, was living in the home of Catherine Fields in Passyunk, which at the time was a township near Philadelphia and in 1854 was consolidated into Philadelphia.  

Source: Ancestry.com, "1850 United States Federal Census," database online, Entry for Catherine Fields and household, Year: 1850, Census Place: Passyunk Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Roll: M432_820, Page: 60B, and Image: 129.

Even with this document, which I found over two years ago, I still had no idea who was the family she was given away to.  After all, on the census, Helen was almost of legal age (21 at the time) and could have been living with Catherine Field by choice, as Jacob Sheats had died in 1847.  I didn't have much to go on, so once again I just filed the information away.

Recently, Find My Past was having one of its free weekends.  Since it is one of the genealogical websites in which I don't have a subscription, I usually wait for such weekends to mine what I can from the site.  This past Veteran's day was such a weekend, and I knew that I wanted to search the Philadelphia Roman Catholic Parish Records.

There I stumbled upon Helen Sheats' baptism record.  She was baptized 30 April 1848 at Saint Philip Neri Church in Philadelphia, the same church in which she married Jacob Miller.  While no sponsor was listed for her as she was baptized as an "adult," this document made me giddy as it did lend some credence to the family story that she was raised by a Catholic family.  

However, what made me connect all of the dots was her eldest daughter's baptism record.  Catherine Elizabeth Miller, the eldest child of Jacob Miller and Helen Sheats is my blood link to these two, as she was my maternal grandfather's grandmother. She was born nine months after her parents had married and was baptized exactly one month later, on 7 October 1851 at Saint Philip Neri Church by the same priest who married her parents.  On her baptism record, listed as her sponsor (godmother) was Catherine Field.

Source: "Philadelphia Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms," database online with images, Find My Past, Catherine Field, sponsor, in entry for Catherine E Miller, baptized 16 October 1851; referencing St. Philip Neri, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania baptisms, page 80, entry 238, film number 132.01.

This discovery, as well as the discovery that Catherine Field was also listed as the godmother for two more of Helen's children, Daniel in 1865 and Jacob in 1867, led me to believe that this Catherine Field was more important that I first thought.  After all, she's listed as the godmother of three of Helen's children AND Helen was living with her in 1850.  So I went back and took a look at the 1850 census once more, and using that and the info from the baptisms I tried to search for more information on this Catherine Fields.

Unfortunately there wasn't a great deal, and what I did find could be pure speculation.  Catherine appears in the 1860 Federal Census as living in the First Ward of Philadelphia, Division One, as a 55 year old woman born in Philadelphia and having $1000 in personal real estate.

Source: "1860 United States Federal Census," database online, Entry for Cathrine Fields in household of Jno Fields, Year: 1860, Census Place: Philadelphia Ward 1 Division 1 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Roll: M653_1151, Page: 3, and Family History Library Film: 805151.

After that, she becomes fairly elusive. There is a possibility she died in 1875 in Philadelphia and was buried in Frankford, but further research must be done.

There's also chasing down any deeds she might have had. After all, she did own property according to both the 1850 and 1860 census enumerations. So there is a chance that she owned a great deal of land, but accessing the deeds for Philadelphia online means traveling to my nearest Family History Library, as most of them are locked to viewing at home.

And there also is researching the other Field people that reside with her on the 1850 and 1860 census enumerations. One of them in particular stuck out; the Elizabeth that shows up in both enumerations. One Elizabeth Field was listed as the godmother of Helen's son George in 1857, and Helen's eldest daughter was named Catheirne Elizabeth... was it for both Catherine and Elizabeth Field?

So on I go, chasing down the paper trail of clues to discover if this truly is the Catholic family who fostered Helen Sheats Miller.

Cooking History: Celebrating the Food of Our Family

Today was a day off for me, so I spent some time getting some things done that I had been intending to do for a while now.

I roasted a pie pumpkin in the oven, with the intent of mashing it down and freezing it for our Thanksgiving pumpkin pies.

I also made some veggie scrap broth, which is currently simmering on my stove.

I also cut some older bread that had been made two days ago by my husband into cubes to make some dressing for a meal in the coming weeks.  The crumbs were also saved and will go into our breadcrumb container for meatloaf and other breadcrumb needs.

I do some of these things out of necessity - the bread is homemade, made with whole wheat flour, and has no salt due to my husband's dietary restrictions, as well as the veggie scrap stock since it also is better than the salt-laden broths from the store.  But I also do these things to keep a connection with my past.

My mother's grandparents and some of their descendants eating outdoors, c. 1930s

My mother's mother was a caterer.  She taught my mother how to cook from a very young age.  My mom did the same for me and my siblings.  All of us were helping her from the time we could lift spoons, and by high school I was able to help her in the kitchen by cooking meals while she worked nights.  Because of her mother's catering, my mom knew what could be substituted in cooking should someone run out, and she taught me how to make things from scratch the way she learned, which is why I prefer to roast my own pie pumpkins and mash them versus using canned pumpkin, although my shortcuts in the kitchen involve using my food processor to do the actual mashing versus doing it by hand as it was done in past generations. 

After my parents got married nearly forty years ago, my father's mother gifted my mom handwritten recipes of the foods my dad liked so Mom could make them for him.  Some were deemed "not the way Mom made them,"  but others still live on to this day... and I make them now as well for my husband and I.  When she was alive, my gram loved it when I messaged her via email to tell her I made her No-Peek Chicken (or Pork chops) and that my own dear husband loved the recipe.

My Gram and I at Thanksgiving dinner, 2005

Food is very much a part of history in any family...... When I ask for memories of family and get no response, I ask people to tell me what kind of food they had at family gatherings.  Memories seem to flow when people think about food.  My maternal great-grandmother was known for boiled chicken, which some of her grandchildren remembered fondly while others remembered with horror.  My great-great-grandmother had raised a hog every spring and butchered it in the fall.... so that the Alsatian tradition of having pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day to bring luck to the new year could be celebrated.  My paternal great-great-grandaunt loved carrots, so much so that she put them in EVERYTHING, or so I have been told.... in soups and roasts, in mashed potatoes, even in lime jello.

My dad's grandparents and family gathered for a meal, c. early 1960s

It is these stories that make my family history come alive.  Since so much of family gatherings, indeed human culture, is spent around the table, it is natural that I have this connection to past generations each time I make a traditional meal for a celebration or make my grandmother's cucumber salad or even bake a loaf of bread.  I remember the stories that have passed down from my ancestors at the holidays as I celebrate their cultures in the foods that I choose to eat, from the Sauerbraten at Christmas to the turkey with homemade dressing at Thanksgiving to even the corned beef (rinsed really well and soaked to leech out the salt) at Saint Patrick's.  And yes, it is still traditional in this house to eat Pork roast and sauerkraut at New Year's to bring good luck

Rediscovering Grandmother

I have been doing online genealogy off and on for the past 18 years.  I started in 1999, when the online genealogy community was just starting out.  Now hundreds, thousands, millions of documents are at the fingertips of people willing to hunt them down with nothing more than an internet connection and something to type on.

Every few years I go over my own ancestors.... I clean up citations, I  re-examine the information i may have had lying around for years, discovering old letters that I cast away intending to read from forgotten relatives and stories that didn't have merit when I started coming to light in a new day and age as being based in fact due to one new piece of information or another.

As I do this renewal of interest into my ancestors' lives, I come across new information that has been posted to the wonderful wide expanse that has become the information highway.

One such piece of new information was my maternal grandmother's high school yearbook from her senior year at North Wales high School in North Wales, Pennsylvania.

My grandmother, Jean C. Cox

I will start off by saying this, I have never been close to my mother's mother.  While my cousins called her Nana, I stuck to the more formal "Grandmother" because she was virtually a stranger to me.  Part of it was due to family dysfunctions and history better left for a family therapist to untangle, but as a result, I always have felt an aloofness when it came to learning about her, as if she was too complex to discover.

She died right before I graduated high school in 1999, and I have no vivid memories of her, as we had only visited her a few times when I was very young.  Mom always called her family for Christmas, and I would say a few words, but she was never as  fond in my memories as my dad's mom, my Gram.

I had some stories, as my mother, my aunts and my mom's cousins all willingly have shared stories, but I didn't hold them close.  I dutifully wrote them down and struck them from memory, focusing more on my more lovable Grandpop, her husband.

My mothers parents - circa 1944 or early 1945.  

So when I stumbled upon her high school yearbook, it was like opening the door in the tree and tumbling into a veritable Wonderland of sorts.

Grandmother's senior year photo, from the 1941 North Wales High School Yearbook

It was through the yearbook that I re-discovered my grandmother's love for singing, as she sang a solo in the senior play and was a member of the Glee Club.  She had aspirations of being a vocalist, according to her write-up in the book, and no one seemed too surprised by that.

Grandmother with her glee club.  

In sharing my finds with my mother over the telephone, I read to her aloud from the yearbook.  She stopped me mid-sentence to remind me of a story I had written down so long ago and forgotten about, a story that was a mere sentence in my file on my grandmother.

 "As a young woman, she entertained troops as a singer with a band, lying about her age (saying she was 21 when in fact she was 18) in order to sing." 

I have so many questions about her life now.  I wonder what it was like for her as a young woman to tour with a band.... to throw off convention and lie about her age to do what she loved.  I wonder what made her give it up.  Was it marriage and the more conventional days as a housewife and mother in the post-WWII era?  Did she miss singing?

late 1955 or early 1956 - with my mom and Uncle Ernie

I will never know the answers to some of these questions, as she has been long gone - it was her death that sparked my interest in this trek into family history, and for that I will be forever grateful.  Perhaps one day I will find answers, and photos to go along with them, but for now, I live with the guess, with the surmised thoughts of "what ifs" and "what nows".... and I will continue to trek to rediscover not only my grandmother, but all of my ancestors.

Dicey's Song : 1983 Newbery Award

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book. A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all. Want to keep track of which books I read? Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause

Dicey Tillerman : Keeping at Arm's Length

"You've been responsible a long time and done a good job.  Take a little rest now."

Dicey Tillerman is thirteen and lives with her three siblings James, Maybeth, and Sammy at her grandmother's house in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland, a place they had only recently moved to.  For so long, she has had to take care of siblings, having been abandoned by their mother in a parking lot in Massachusetts.  She feels lost having someone else do it, but Gram is determined to be the parent, as well as keep her own past hidden from her granddaughter.  Dicey's mother, living in Boston in a psychiatric hospital, is no better than catatonic, and the news worries Dicey and  James.  The family has to stay together, and that to Dicey means keeping others out.  But people like Maybeth's music teacher Mr. Lingerle, the slow shop keeper Millie, and fellow students Jeff and Mina, find their way into Dicey's heart and into the family fold. Dicey soon begins to learn that maybe taking care of others means letting others take care of her as well.

Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt is the second in a series of books written by the author.  Like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, this book's resolution isn't really a resolution, but rather a interlude in the lives of the Tillerman children.  The book leaves you wondering what will happen next.

Dicey, the eldest of four, is consumed with worry.  She worries that her grandmother won't be able to care for them.  She worries that her little sister Maybeth won't be able to live a normal life, and that James and Sammy won't be able to fit in.  She worries that her mother will never be coming home or that she will take them off somewhere else to fend for themselves again.  She toughens herself up so that people can't get in, since so many people have left her, that she resists and fights when Mina, Jeff, Mr. Lingerle and even Millie find their way into the family.  

Dicey also has to learn to let go but still hold on.  For most of her siblings' lives, she has been their mother, and now that they live with their grandmother, Dicey must learn to stop being the mother in the other children's life.  Grandmother warns her that she must learn to continue to hold on though, something that confuses Dicey.  It isn't until she starts letting others into her hear besides her siblings that she learns what Grandmother means, and also learns that her grandmother is speaking from experience.  

This was the first book I could recall reading from this author, and I did enjoy it.  I am not sure thought if I want to continue on in the series.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond: 1959 Newbery Award Winner

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book. A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all. Want to keep track of which books I read? Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - Used for Identification Purposes only Under the Fair Use Clause

Kit Tyler: Longing to Escape

"There is no escape if love is not there."

Katherine Tyler, known as Kit, is an orphaned English teenager without a home.  Her grandfather, a Royalist and a rich man, has recently died, and his Caribbean home has been sold off to pay debts.  The only place for Kit to go is to Puritan Connecticut, to the home of an aunt she has never met.  Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matthew Wood take her in, much to the delight of Kit's cousin Mercy and to the chagrin of their other daughter Judith.  However, Kit feels lonely, as she doesn't fit in to the stern Puritan society of the hamlet Wethersfield, and longs to escape the confines of her new life.  Her only place of refuge is the meadow surrounding Blackbird Pond, and it is here that she meets the Widow Hannah Tupper.  Hannah also doesn't fit in to the society around them, as she is a Quaker and called a witch by some in the community.  Kit, along with the young sailor Nat Easton and the dim-witted child Prudence Cruff, both of who also don't fit in ti visit the widow in secret.  When Kit's visits are discovered, she finds herself under suspicion of witchcraft and must stand trial herself.  Will her love prevail?

The Witch of Blackbird Pond was the second book of Elizabeth George Speare's to win a Newbery award, and it was the second of her books that I ever read as a child.  In fifth grade, I was introduced to this author when my teacher read The Sign of the Beaver to the class.  Naturally, I sought out another book by her, and the school librarian recommended The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I devoured the book.  Speare's writing style to this day enthralls me, and she makes the time periods come alive in my mind.

Kit is an outsider to the way of life in the community.  She tried hard to be dull and drab, as she feels she must in the strict and stern ways of the Puritans, but there's a part of her that feels like a colorful bird locked in a cage.  This feeling is one that people can relate to.  How often does one smother their own personality to be something for someone else?  While Kit does it out of necessity, she find she can't completely hide who she is, and it is only at Hannah's house that she can ultimately find the freedom to express herself and be who she wishes to be.  She finds love and acceptance with Hannah, but also finds that maybe society at large is not really as discouraging as she thought it to be.  She comes to view her uncle in a new light as the story progresses, and she sees that where she only saw sternness lives also a quiet strength that she never knew was there and a glimmer of the man her aunt has come to love.

This story is set in late 17th century Connecticut, when Puritans ruled New England.  Yet, the way of life as the Puritans knew it was changing, as the King of England started to take more and more of an interest in the shipping and industry of the area and moved to take stronger control of it.  This is mirrored in the novel as the Puritans begin to chafe under the new Royal Governor, with the town divided on whether of not they will acknowledge his rule.  It is well written and ends on a happier note, hiding the turmoil that the area will come to endure and will ultimately assist in leading up to the American Revolution. 

It's Like This, Cat: 1964 Newbery Award Winner

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book. A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - Used for Identification purposes only under the fair use clause

Dave Mitchell: Seeing Through New Eyes

" My father is always talking about how a dog can be very educational for a boy.  This is one reason I got a cat."

Dave Mitchell is a normal teen growing up in New York City.  He is fourteen and doesn't see eye to eye with his father, which cases many shouting matches.  When they yell at each other, Dave's mom has another asthma attack.  It is after one such fight that Dave storms out, headed to the crazy cat lady Kate's home.  He meets a striped stray tomcat and decides to bring the cat home.  Naming the cat Cat, Dave starts to notice that Cat brings about a strange series of events.  First, Dave meets the strange young man Tom Ransom while trying to rescue Cat from a locked cage.  Then, while on the beach at Coney Island with Cat, he meets a sweet teenager named Mary and begins to date her.  Lastly, he begins to realize that maybe life with his dad isn't as hard as he thought, and starts to see that his family isn't as overbearing as he imagined, all because of an old tom named Cat.

Written by Emily Newville, It's Like This, Cat is a coming of age story.  Set in the late 1950s or early part of the 1960s, the has a whimsical feel of the era that happened right before the turbulence of the hippie generation.  The book is a story about a boy, his love for a cat, and the relationship he has with his father.

It is a story about learning how to perceive people, and how perceptions can change over time.  Dave sees his dad as overbearing and always yelling, but doesn't see that he is much like his dad.  He sees his mother as quiet and shy and sickly, not understanding that he and his father both have been stressing her out.  His friendships change as he grows older, and while he doesn't understand it, he vents to his cat.  Cat takes everything in and becomes Dave's confidant.  Cat also helps him to make new friends like Tom Ransom and Mary whom allow him to grow, and those friends grow with him as a result.  Dave is starting to shed his childlike perceptions and see the world through adult eyes.

This wasn't the first time I have read this book, but it was the first time I read it with the intent to study it.  It is a good read.

Jacob Have I Loved: 1981 Newbery Award Winner

In March of 2014, I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book. A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all. Want to keep track of which books I read? Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

I apologize for my long absence from blogging.  Summers are usually filled with other endeavors for me, and this summer was no different.  I barely read during summer since I lost my library card and my Kindle bit the dust, and I regret doing so, but now that the school year is upon us, I am trying to make up for lost time.  I have found my library card, but must wait to replace my Kindle.  Therefore, I will be reading only print books.  

Cover of the book - used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause

Sara Louise Bradshaw: Behind Her Sister's Shadow

"I kept wondering ever since you came.  Why would a woman like you, who could have anything she wanted, come to a place like this?  Now I understand."

Elder by just a few minutes, Sara Louise Bradshaw, nicknamed Wheeze, lives in the shadow of her more delicate sister Caroline.  Growing up with her family on small fictional Rass Island in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay during the turbulence of the Great Depression and World War Two, Louise feels robbed by her younger twin, who is gifted in music and is considered more feminine and beautiful.  Caroline steals Louise's name, her friends, her belongings, her family's affection, even her very hopes.  Louise longs to be a waterman like her father and prays to become a boy so she can escape her sister's personality.  What surprises her, however, is that her dreams and prayers do not sustain the woman she is becoming and that leaving the island of her birth may be the only way to finding herself.

I first read Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson as a seventh grader in my English class.  It was one of the books that shaped my childhood.  I could identify with Louise's struggle to find herself, as well as with the feeling over being overshadowed by others.  As the eldest child in my family, the idea that a younger sibling's personality could overshadow an elder one's was something I could relate to, as I often felt the same way with my younger siblings growing up.  Sibling rivalry was a big deal to me, as it was to Louise, and I could feel her frustrations.

As I read this book as an adult, I find that it still resonates with me.  Since this was written from an adult looking back on her childhood, it reads well enough for adults to enjoy it.  Like Louise, I have been able to look back at the journey to adulthood so far as one that was filled with trials, but also with tribulations.  She is confident as she looks back over the story that had she not have had her twin sister and her overshadowing personality, she may not have come into her own as an adult.

There is a religious aspect to this book.  The story gets its title from a verse in the Bible where God says "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."  Like the elder twin of Isaac, Louise feels unloved and unwanted as she compares herself to the favored, younger twin.  The story weaves itself around this tale of old, as Louise and Caroline's devout grandmother taunts the older girl with the verse.  It takes Louise years to feel wanted and loved again, and it is only when she releases herself that she feels this.

This book is a very well written story, and anyone who can remember what it felt like to be an outsider even in one's own home will probably enjoy this book.