Rose Gold: Gathering the Right Materials

Rose Gold: Gathering the Right Materials

Preparing to Write a Family History

Photo by Midge Frazel 26 Sept. 2018, materials by Erin Condren.com

In 2016, I began thinking about planning and writing about my family business and what to include. I started writing last year in sections in a spiral bound EC notebook with removable pages. That was a good idea because it let me pre-write without fear of forgetting where I left off. 

Now, I need to make a better writing plan and add in the people from my family that made the story happen. It needs to be in a small book because it will need to look like it is meant to be kept or cherished. I named this project, "Rose Gold" because my grandmother's wedding ring is rose gold and it had endured as well as is in fashion today.

I pulled together two small bound notebooks with non removable pages to look like a set because the story won't fit in just one book. I also picked a blank journal to use so that it will look like a scrapbook of evidence. You'll see. Then I started buying stickers to be used a section or chapter dividers. I have written headings to fit the text and I am going first to write in the productivity book so that I can build my timeline without feeling that this story needs to be written sequentially or in chronicle-date order. That technique build suspense and make the research look inviting to read about.

I won't be writing matching blogs posts very often but instead writing about the process as I write in the books you see here. People are more interested in how to do it for themselves than they are reading about my family.

I am going to call it "Away at My Dreams" because it was something my daughter said to me when she was really little and thought she actually went somewhere while she was sleeping. 

Prickly Fall: Being a Widow

Prickly Fall: Being a Widow

This summer, I lost a friend, very suddenly and then another and then another. Then, my husband's cousin, Eleanor, who was a recent widow when we moved here, passed away. She was in her late nineties. 

There's nothing more prickly than death whenever it happens. It is disturbing and makes you question your own age and existence. Who leaves this world and who gets left behind can make you fearful of what tomorrow can bring. 

People who aren't on social media are getting hard to keep in touch with. I found out about one death by using the online newspaper for that location just because I had a funny feeling. I sent a card to the widow followed by an email. She felt comfortable enough to call me. I was glad to hear her voice and she shared details with me. I hope everyone is so brave. My daughter wanted me to scan some photos for her to keep of these friends. 

I found one this morning that I cropped down to share. It was a 25th anniversary photo I took more that 25 years ago. They look so young in the wedding photo and since I didn't know them when they married, I should have taken a close-up after the cake was cut.

Photo taken by the author and privately held.

I begin to think about how many women in my family were widowed.

My paternal grandmother died a bit before her husband but my maternal grandmother became a widow at age 62 and lived to be 98. I learned from her that you just have to take life a day at a time. I went through my print photographs until I found the last photo I took of her and scanned it. She was living with my parents but died in a nursing home. She told me she was wondering why she was still alive. I didn't have an answer for that question.

Prickly Fall: The Railroad Tracks Lesson

Leave Your Fears Behind

Local RR Crossing Acton, MA 5 Sept 2018

This summer, hubs and I stopped at a local railroad crossing and I suddenly remembered the lesson my father gave me at the railroad tracks behind the houses on Bowling Lane in Bradford, RI.

It must have been a time when my mother wasn't with us because she would not have approved of us going down so near to the tracks.

We went down a long series of stairs behind one of the houses. My dad looked at his watch and went out on the tracks. I was not nuts about following him. He told me to put my hands on the rails. It was vibrating. I saw no trains either way or a railroad stop like the one shown above.

Dad said that I should never go out on the tracks alone. We climbed back up the stairs and we waited what seemed like a long time until we could see the train coming. He said that you could always feel the vibration before the train actually came but it was very dangerous.

When I moved to Bridgewater from Rhode Island as a newlywed, I had no car to drive so I had to walk from our apartment to get groceries, go to the bank or the library.  I had to cross the tracks into town. When my parents came up for the first time, my dad took me aside and reminded me of the train lesson. I told him that I remembered and that I was still afraid to cross. Year after year the nearby college reported that kids took the shortcut by walking over the tracks and even some adults have been hurt on the tracks.

This is a good life lesson. Always be aware of your surroundings and don't take chances near the railroad tracks. It you see the train coming wait it out. There have been a lot of times when I have thought of dad and this lesson.

Proceed with caution. Life is short enough.

Prickly Fall: Newspaper Evidence

Newspaper Evidence

It is apparent that my father played for two local baseball teams after graduating from Westerly High School in 1935. During high school, my father ran track and cross country and played baseball. This is the kind of evidence you can find in high school yearbooks. He also helped support his family after his parents died in 1934 and 1937 by working in the local dye mill called Bradford Dye. These newspaper clipping from the Westerly Sun newspaper for June of 1938 helped prove where he was that year. Teams were sponsored by local business who most likely bought the uniforms and the equipment.  This put ancestors and relatives in a particular year and helps add evidence to their life story.

Westerly Hilltops at Hilltop Park

Westerly Sun, 13 Jun 1938, courtesy of  Barbara Fallon, August 2018

 Broadfoot, Third Base

Westerly Sun, 13 Jun 1938, courtesy of  Barbara Fallon, August 2018

Bradford Dyers ( as "Tommy" Broadfoot)

Westerly Sun, 17 Jun 1938, courtesy of Barbara Fallon, 9 Aug 2018

Prickly Fall: Champion Team Photo

Bradford Dyers Baseball Team

Tom Broadfoot from photo below

Bradford Dyers, 1940, Champions of Westerly Twilight Baseball League

This is the Champion Team Photo of the Bradford Dyers (BDA) of the Twilight Baseball League in Westerly, Rhode Island.

Did my father play for two baseball teams? This was the question I asked about the photos I have. This uniform Tom is wearing doesn't have a team name but other men have shirts that say Bradford. The plot thickens.

There is another team photo (not shown) that says 1936 and is the Bradford Dyers. Tom must have joined the team after graduating high school in 1935.

I guess you have to be champions to get a team photo.

Prickly Fall: Tom and the Baseball Photos

Prickly Fall: Two Baseball Teams
Was it Twilight League or Hilltop?

My Father, 1938 Hilltop Baseball Uniform

Tom Broadfoot, my father died on this day, twenty years ago. With every passing day it seems so fresh in my mind yet so long ago. For many years, this photo remained a mystery. Stay with me as I show you how solving this took a lot of time.

My father, loved sports like cross county, track and golf. He envisioned a retirement where his days were spent playing golf with his friends. That's not what happened because many of his friends moved to Florida and my mother, who didn't drive was demanding of his time because my maternal grandmother came to live with them. He did organize a senior golf tournament and it was called the Twilight League. 

This photo of my father is dated by the car license plate as 1938. Probably it was taken the summer before the Hurricane of 1938 in the town of Bradford, RI where he lived with his sister Ada and his brother Bill all who worked for the Bradford Dye. 

I appealed to my friend Barbara Fallon to help me solve the mystery of why this uniform says Hilltop. You see, we lived on a street called Hilltop but that was years later and my dad thought that was funny.

I assumed that my dad played for a local team sponsored by the company that he worked for and I wasn't wrong but it must have taken her a long time to find it in the microfilm of the Westerly Sun, a widely read newspaper of southern Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. 

The prickly thing is that there is a bar in Westerly called Hilltop so on this twentieth year, everyone should have a beer to salute my father.

Prickly Fall: Hurricane Fear

Pricky Fall: Hurricane Fear

Photo of Books about New England Hurricanes (1938 and 1954), taken by the author.
9 July 2009

When we cleaned out the items in our parent's houses, we found some books published and given freely to Rhode Island residents about the Hurricane of 1938 (often called the Long Island (NY) Express and the Hurricane of 1954 called Carol.

As part of my Master's coursework, I did a project about these Hurricanes. My family both maternal and paternal lived through the Hurricane of 1938 and I interviewed them about what they remembered. Many books have been written about that hurricane and the newsreels are available on YouTube. Because of a failure to predict hurricanes at that time, coupled with the beginning of World War II, this storm devastated much of New England. Power was out for weeks and the economy suffered. It was a blow to New England during the Great Depression.

We found out that my mother, who was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design couldn't drive in the wind (in a convertible) and a fellow student took over driving the car home.  My father, was working at the Bradford Dye in Westerly, was an able bodied adult and was called upon to help move bodies from the ocean near Watch Hill to Westerly so that they could be identified by loved ones.

In 1954, I was scared of the high winds and my mother tried to calm me down by telling me that our new neighbor was in a Boston Hospital giving birth. I wanted to know why anyone would have a baby during a big storm! Our neighborhood, plunged into darkness for days, became a place of fear as all the adults had lived through the 1938 hurricane and were not prepared at all.

It was my first experience of living without electricity. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. It gives me fear and anxiety.