El Segundo Author Fair  

So when do you take a rumor and run with it? Not family lore mind you, other than relatives repeating what they heard as a child from the neighbors? Which 80 years later almost threw me into another hemisphere.

Here's a story: My grandmother was from old New England stock. She had relatives who came to Massachusetts in the 1600's. They participated in the witch trials in Salem both as jurors and as the accused. She had an ancestor that fought in the Revolution in the Penobscot Expedition, as well as one that ratted out his neighbors to the British from his island in the Penobscot. Her father married her mother a month after she was born and hid this scandal and embarassment for her entire life. She married an acountant in a lumber mill who was French Canadian; who later became a radio actor who started out in the 20's and early 30's locally in Bangor and then later moved on to New York and Cleveland with NBC affiliates.

This French Canadian man was bilingual. His parents spoke little to no English. They were immigrants from Quebec. Both 3rd and 5th cousins. After his parents died the old timers would come to visit him because they knew his parents and they both spoke the language. My grandmother frowned upon this because they did not speak English in her presence. They had no desire to. So she always assumed they were talking about her. She thought they were an inferior race. They couldn't stand her because she treated them thus.

My grandfather's best friend Charles rented a room from them for 10 years. He was there through the births of their last 3 children: Mil, Leo and Bobby. He was there when their first born son Charles drowned in the Penobscot River. And according to the old timer French Canadians was my father's father.

So who do you believe? The aunt and uncle who heard this rumor from the old timers and took it for gospel, or trust in your instincts and the knowledge that your grandmother who was a Catholic convert - someone who made the Pope look like a lackie, someone who couldn't accept she was illigitimate, who ran roughshod over her oldest daughter who gave birth out of wedlock and her oldest living son who "had" to marry his future wife - would she really do something like that?

I would have to say no. I would say you had two factions who couldn't stand each other, and a group of non-English speakers who had nothing better to do with their time than watch a young struggling family and their boarder and ran with it.

Something similar happened to my parents. My mother was always a Nervous Nelly. It was simply her nature. When my brother was 2 (the neighbors said he was adopted because he had red hair and my parents brown...) my mother caught pneumonia. They couldn't afford to have her in the hospital so the doctor made my mother promise she would stay indoors until she got well. Two weeks is what she was told to do. Now the neighbors didn't see her for two whole weeks, so the rumor around the neighborhood was that she'd a nervous breakdown and my father had commited her to an asylum. I found this out from a neighbor who did not like me or my family 40 years later. I had the chance to ask my Mom and she laughed and said that no, it was a lie and then shared the story with me. (As a matter of fact while she was sick on the couch, my brother stuck a knife in a light socket.) So not only was my brother adopted my mother was in an asylum. There you go. Once again a bunch of stay-at-home mom's who had nothing better to do with their time than use their telephone for gossp.

Now maybe there really is more to the Cynthia-Waldo-Charles story. But those who would truly know are dead. Charles did eventually marry my grandmother many years after my grandfather died. He was a good man, brilliant, kind and giving, but not my grandfather. He promised my grandfather he would take care of her if anything happened, and he did.

How can I know for sure? I feel it's in the pictures. One of the things brought to me, along with the rumor, was a picture of my great-grand father Peter as a young man. It was the eyes, the forehead, and the mouth. Just how my great-grandmother is prominent in my grandmother (her mother's mother), so my great-grandfather is prominent in my Dad. He looked like both his mother and his grandfather. They were so busy trying to match something that simply wasn't there they never looked at what was.

One of the first rules of genealogy is to take the fiction, rumor, legend, and seek out the true facts (...you know - indian princesses, being a decendant of George Washington...), weed it out of the fiction. As far as I am concerned, Waldo Pooler is my grandfather. The End.

Well I got bored. I've had the same web page design now for about 2 years and decided it was time for a change. And since most of my murders occur in the past I thought the background for this one was appropriate. I do need to do some cleaning up but that will have to wait until after my cousin leaves, Ho'ike ends, and the Scouting presentation is finished!

Well I may not be getting a whole lot of writing done, but I am speaking twice this spring, on March 20th and again on June 5th, the day before the author event in El Segundo.

I am speaking to some scouts in order to help them gain a merit badge for the boys and a badge for the girls. My topic is Computers and Mircofilm in Genealogy. The talk in June is a case study where I show how genealogical records build on one another to prove a lineage. Things like vital records, church records and census and how they are tied together. I am not a great speaker, but on the few times I have, I did pretty well (monthly meetings don't count!) If I know my material well, I can talk a blue streak.

The interesting part is making a talk on computers and microfilm exciting for kids 4th grade through 8th exciting and 20 minutes long. Ain't life grand!