Heraldry has its early beginnings.  And popularly, it is treated as such.  It has movie associations, for example The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn, 1938) and Becket (Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, 1964, in which English King Henry II is at odds with his old friend the Archbishop of Canterbury).  Heraldry also dresses up the plain and common t-shirt or off-the-rack blazer with something more than an evanescent flower.  It is seen as the way to distinguish onesself (or one's business), even when there are no real claims to coat arms  --  even when it is evident that the wearer of the shield may be only wearing a decorative bestowal.  It is in short historically romantic to include onesself among that long league which has come and gone: the knights of old, the bearers wide and far, those who stood for Christianity. We reach into the mouldering ages when we seek a moment in the presence of an ancient armorial symbol, something so particularly old that its meaning seems truly forgotten.  Yet heralds kept records of the claimants and their shields.  We know the standards of representation for the shield.  We know what they mean and who bore them.  Heraldry is still a used language.  Even today, we bear the symbols, we try for the notoriety and association with greatness, and we wear the shield.

I myself am fairly new to this discussion.  In the past, I was afraid to approach it, it has such steadfast formality.  Isn't it a world unintended for our eyes?  We are common folk.  We in America do not base our personal success on armory.  We are a young country, with young trees.   Perhaps the ways of the Old World whose forest resources are already lost to kindling are just now manifesting here.  I am sure my great-grandfather, a Michigan farmer and carpenter, used local woods for the houses he built during his lifetime for his family.  I am sure they heated the houses in that same way, with the wood of centuries plotted down, cut, trimmed and burned for survival.  We in America are in that process, maleable yet, using all we have for the population that we have, as the Old European World once did.  We Americans constitute a Young World, And we do not honor kings in our midst more than we honor the practical intentions of a common and good-hearted leader.  However, one of our presidents, Andrew Johnson, a common man not used to wealth, was not treated well by his Washington peers.  What's that?  --  do you think it is possible  that we silently seek majesty wherever it may be found, that we want majesty and royalty even though we do not adhere to it openly and politically?  Let us be honest:   many of us utilize simple, company-invented symbols to distinguish ourselves in this very young country where we cannot be born with distinction as in the Old World.  We use Brand in place of Crown to set ourselves apart.  The brand-creators know this, hence their high prices.  Who wouldn't want a chance to wear the crown?  We are young yet.  We still have the resources of the land.  And 'tis in the blood to want the Kingdom . . . .  (Signed G. Claire, this 28th of July in 2011.)
 
Save your breath.  It's a matter of moment, not History.  You're the moment.  And you make the history.  Don't fall back on meaningless clues from the history books which claim a reason for everything and which, of course, leave out a lot.  Be the first.  Stake your claim.  Get to gettin'.  Hurry, there's still time.  When you write your family's history, leave the big history behind.  Focus.  Stay focused.  Add a piece.  Stay focused on that piece.  Refine it, as fact; put the discovered matter forward.  Show the documentation.  Keep it. 

There has been a trend for the family historian to spend a little time on the round story:  she'll give you the context of the family by providing the big facts about the world they lived in, such as that such-and-such a war was going on, or that electricity had only recently been discovered.  If you mention a war, do it because the ancestor was a part of it, not because you want to play history-book writer.  If you mention the new field of electricity, make sure, too, that the facts about the ancestor's town show that electric street lamps were brought in just when that ancestor was such-and-such years old.  This is relevance.  Keep the elements of story relevant.  Be very particular about this.  When you write the over-general stuff about the world your ancestor had no part in you lose typed lines that could have been committed to discovered particulars about your own family. 

Leave History to the history books and write the real story.  G. E. Claire, this 19 July 2011.  Copyright 2011 by G. Claire.  <> <> <> <>
 
“Oh!  California!
That’s the land for me!
I’m bound for Sacramento
With the washbowl on my knee.”

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RESEARCHING REEL NO. 9 OF THE GREAT REGISTER OF VOTERS:  THE OREGON CITY PRECINCT. 

The first page of the “Oregon City Precinct” occurs on page “72” of the Butte County Register of 1896, along with the final listings of the “Oakdale” Precinct.  The Oregon City list of voters ends on page “74,” as indicated in the upper corner of the printed precinct sheet.  The Names are Enumerated, and there are 76 Voters in total on this precinct list.  Page 73 incorporates the names of voters “5” through “63.”  There are no women listed; women obtained the suffrage in California in 1911.  Our Evan Richards (Jr.), my grandmother Ellen’s father, is number 53 on the page.

The following data are transcribed here as I found them on the precinct page: 


 
"GREAT REGISTER OF BUTTE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, 1896."

 53    Richards, Evan . . . . . . . . . Miner.

                        Aged 53.

                        Height 5’ 7-1/2”.

                       “Light” Complexion.

                       “Brown” Eyes.

                       “Brown” Hair.
    
                       Country of Nativity:  Pennsylvania.

                       Place of Residence  /  Precinct:  Oregon City.

                       Post Office Address:  Hengy.

                       Able to Read Constitution in English Language:  “Yes.”

                       Able to Write Name:  “Yes.”

                       Physically Able to Mark Ballot:  “Yes.”

Date of Registration:  “April 25, 1896.”

Researcher's Notation:  My discovery of the contents of the 1896 Butte County Great Register occurred at the end of my research day in the California Room at the State Library in Sacramento.  All of the Butte County document occurs on a single, large reel, Reel # 9 (like a good researcher, I noted the reel number and other source identifications in blue ink on the reverse sides of all my microfilm Xeroxes), so that it really was a rather tedious drill by the end of the day, looking frame-by-frame at all the register years, and all the towns and cities within those years as well.  In short I examined numerous alphabetic lists.  It was original research.  This is certainly the nature of it:  that  I had very few clues to begin with.  And that I had to look in every document niche to find my answers.  I must note that using the original book registers would have been preferable to using microfilm! But by the end of the day I had learned enough about the Richards, that gold-mining branch of the family who emigrated to California very early on, to tell where they had mined  - -   the towns, the burghs, here, in the Northern State  - -  as well as when they had been there.  I had been the first one to discover (and in a sort of way “remember” for the family) that they were in fact miners, and that they had indeed mined the Precious Metal.  These basic facts had not been known.  Nothing of that nature had been passed down to me as I began to make my first genealogical inquiries in the middle ‘70s, when I was still young. For some, I suppose, genealogy is a matter of assemblage  --  taking data onto one's own work from wherever the data  may be found.  The internet, especially, encourages this rapid migration of "facts."  It is truly a pleasure and privilege therefore  to be able to contribute what may be proved by my own observation.  For nothing but the truth will do.  I want to know the story as it happened, not as I suppose it may have.  I want the rock-solid ground.  Only by this means may I be in awe.  I am in awe of the facts as they stand.  It is rather glorious to be in awe of the facts, knowing that it really happened.  Of course, documents have flaws.  But an overlapping of disparate documents which originally served various independent purposes provides a status of strong likelihood of fact.   Good genealogists hold open the question.  But  --  ah!!  --  there they are, the documents!  Holding firm to the idea that they came here.  That they came here early.  That they had something to do relevant to the era.  That they lived here early.  That they were self-sustaining.  That they did not return home but found home here, in California, where I am, where (as they took the chance for it), I was more likely to be from the beginning . . . . . .   Signed G. Claire.  Copyright 2011 by G. Claire.  All rights reserved.

P.S.  The Richards had owned some property where they mined (I would like to note this, since it demonstrates that, apparently, some miners were indeed land owners as well).  They had placered, too, as the record shows, though they probably hydraulicked later on since Table Mountain in Butte County (the location of Oregon City and nearby Cherokee, where the family lived) was a great hydraulicking site at the time they were there.  They had lived here, and there raised their families, for awhile.  Ellen A. Richards my grandmother was born in Oregon City and experienced her earliest childhood days on the mesa in the days when her father Evan mined the gold.  The saved records as I found them on the microfilm at the library gave me back the story of my family.  And I have been fascinated by how much personal information  --  eye-color, the height of our good great-grandfather, the hair-color, too; and his age at the time  --  could be obtained just from a single reel of microfilm.  I could picture the miner, if I dared.  But it was a great surprise to this researcher at the end of her hard work of digging, to find these hidden pieces of gold.  G. Claire. <> <> 

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You can just imagine it, sitting there on the mountain, the whole wide stream of golden light coming in on you in the night  --  hearing the sounds, knowing the gold stamps by their sound, and the river or the flume or the brook by their sounds.  And all the beasts; and mavens of the air would fly by  --  and there would be an end to it when you sleep  --   But first there would be the cool clear night in summer, on the highest mesa, and in the best place.
So goes the story of the place my grandmother grew up in, in her earliest years.  (So goes my memory of it, in a strange way.)    Written here today by G. Claire, May 19, 2008, Monday.  <> <> <> <>

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

 
Letter written by: WARREN RAY LEWIS 24 September 1979.
[This transcription made by me G. Claire from facsimile of the original document.]]

“Dear Geri
        I have been putting this off as long as my conscience will let me.
        I’m going to give you a few names of school mates from grammar school days.  Lester Long was in my grade.  Paul Hyatt his father had the livery stable.  Newton Sharp Jimmy Brackman’s father had the soda fountain and candy store.  Jim used to have his pocket full of candy to bribe me to do his chores.  Chas. McKee his father had the lumber yard.  Earl Swallow his father was the Doctor.
        A couple of girls I remember Helen Munger; Mary Gardner, she was the best speller in the class; I was pretty good myself.
        Some Friday afternoons we would choose sides and have a spelling bee.  Everybody went to school in one building, grade school downstairs, high school upstairs.
        I remember Poths Bakery.  My mother used to send me there to buy three loaves of bread for ten cents.  How is that for a bargain.
        If it was Fourth of July  --  shooting Roman candles at each other or throwing big fire crackers at each other.  If it was Hallowe’en everything moveable was moved.
         The next morning you hunted for it and go out [to] straighten up that cute little house in the back yard.
        ........ You go ahead and use any of the junk I write any way you please.

            Your worthless ol Uncle
                        Ray

I don’t recognize any of the scenes in those pictures of Carbondale.  You know why they called the town Carbondale  --  on account of be[ing] in the low part of town.  Coal mine on the hill.  Just throw this crummy epistle in the trash without reading it.  Won’t do you any good.  I don’t remember Metzler or Patterson.”

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The old gentleman who wrote this letter, Warren Ray Lewis, was born in September of 1891.  He was my grandfather Melvin's brother.  They were raised, in part, in Carbondale, Kansas.  The people whom Great Uncle Ray refers to in this letter were apparently the merchants of the day in that small town.  Uncle Ray's own father, Melvin Albert Lewis, was a violinist who played with the local group Sharps and Waller.  He owned the town jewelry store.  They played checkers in the back of the store.  Myself, I remember that my grandfather Melvin always wanted to play checkers with me whenever I would visit him.  I used to ride my spider-bike over to his house on some days when Catholic school was over.  He lived near the school.  I would park my bike and go up the stairs and visit.  There would always be a checkerboard around.  Perhaps this was because he played with his own dad in the days of Old Carbondale.  G. E. Claire, July 2011.  <>


 
This is for my descendants:
There was one day when I saw the curve of the earth.  It lay before me as lights.  It was the Fourth of July, 2011, a Monday.  We (my child and I) climbed fulll to the top of the Peak, before nightfall.  We thought we were alone in this endeavor.  But others had gone up too, sturdy climbers all.  We took our accolade by standing on the rock in which a metal pipe was embedded.  We held on to that pipe, both of us.  We looked out over all the soft hills, by now brown because of summer.  The light was just so, like summer makes things to be, even at such heights.  And we looked out.  I cried some.  I couldn't believe that after all we've been through, we could still climb, that it was ours still to do, should we want it.  Someone had planted a large flag up there, next to the smaller one that stays on the peak.  He left a message at the base of the flag, Happy Fourth of July, enjoy, congratulations, but please don't take the flag, which he would be back to retrieve in a few days.  The flag is more a sound to me than an image.  We had seen it from some miles below, large as it was.  And it guided us, though those who climb here frequently probably didn't need the flag.  In fact this climb is the backyard of some good children and adults (I have come to understand) who want walking in their lives, and who know that a mountain this close is, simply, theirs.  And so they do, they climb it.  And though it is not our backyard, it is in fact my mental yard-space.  And sometimes I picture myself there in freedom, with the person I love most, making my decisions, climbing, thinking, walking of course, all on the merits of the moment and on my merit as a human being.  The mountain really is freedom, in the dry California summers when the tall dry grasses are truly dry, and tall, and the tall green stickers with yellow wild blossoms reach out to you and you brush past them as you naturally would.  We could still climb.  It was ours still to do.  We did do it.  And there were others there.  They (many of them) had planned it from the start, to create again an upward pilgrimage, primarily of youth, on the Fourth of July.  We had not planned to see the Fourth from so high like they did, but gleaned the idea of it from the many who grouped like lowing cattle duly domesticated around the one single pole.  And they and we too heard that great flag snap and whip the high world of open land out there, where the world goes on forever, like mirrors and mirrors showing brown and forgotten land to come, as if we could be pioneers if we wanted to, and claim some.  We heard people talking.  We sat on a large rock.  Someone wanted to see the County Surveyor's seal, looking for a precise determination of altitude to confirm for his children, who had climbed with him.  Some would stay and watch fireworks, I was able to determine.  I asked some who came up the hill, as they arrived, did you come up for the fireworks?  yes, would be the reply.  Do you climb down in the dark?  yes, came the reply again, with flashlights handy, she added.  I asked if that meant that a whole group would go down in a sort of parade of flashlights, down the rocky ridge, and downward further still, into gravel beds and narrow places in the steep gathered hills.  It would be a parade, one of them said.  He was the flag-placer.  He stayed up on the hill last night to put the flag there, came back up today, the Fourth, to visit, and then to take it down.  He had children with him.  They would at last, after nine-thirty or so, carry the plastic pole in parts, and someone would carry the flag.  They did climb down after dark.  And we followed them, in a sort of mystical troop.  You could see the light here and a light there, behind us, round the bend and up there where we had just passed, and there was the occasional cow bell (the young people seemed to know instinctively that you can chase away the dark and the night by pleasant singing together, or by laughing about something mutually, or by a sound, something you yourself could bring along, and this alone was powerful).  We placed ourselves, my good one and I, down the hill somewhat, before dark, and so left the peak before the fireworks began; we did not want a risky trespass later.  And we indeed watched that night come.  The lights came on like they do everywhere.  You could see the avenues mapped out in due time, by the movement of red and white lights.  Distance gets distorted in the dark and so does the relationship between things.  There was a crescent moon that seemed to play the visual part of the cowbell, except up in the sky.  My good one, she saw it set before her, near midnight or so, and it turned orange.  An orange crescent moon.  That is what we saw, above the curved world.  We saw lights and they mapped out the world all up and down the bay.  We saw the edge, the shape of the bay.  We knew we were seeing  all the cities in one view before us  --  San Jose, Milpitas, Fremont, maybe Redwood City, and Great America the theme park, we surmised.  At first there were bright white flashes (we were so high we were up there, looking down).  And we looked across at all the cities.  Bright flashes became high circles and spanglers, sometimes multiples.  There were red, true red lava points all over the lit curved globe last night:  red to the left on that broad horizon, and some lava spouting forth in the city realm between the lights, and right, too, on that horizon line.  It was very late before the best took place  -- clear green, at times, and very large, even on the tilted plane which we viewed it on.  Not much blue was visible.  Red stood out even among the myriad electric lights, as I said.  Red is rather stark against a black night sky.  White is simply beautiful in the form of a rocket or a shooting-star.  The white was reflected in the great pool of the bay.  The light (in short) gave depth to the whole picture when it shone on the far shore.  Finally, the man and the children with the great flag started to pass us, each represented by a blue-white light.  Sometimes the lights would gather.  This would mean the children had stopped for some reason, to talk or to consider the path, or for any reason.  It was like this the whole distance of the two hours down the hill.  But, in short, when we saw them we knew it was time to go.  I followed my child's advice to go with this large group even though in doing so we  would take a different path than we had earlier.  We walked.  We had our small flashlight bought just for the purpose.  And we shone it when others would come towards us.  They would see us better.  And we would all be linked more closely in any case by the intermediate individuals who carried their lamps.  We looked up, behind us, we could see where we had been because we could see one or two floating small lights, just there, and by these we saw the curve of the road, not because we could see that old dirt and gravel but because, actually, the lights, here and there, curved around to some degree, as they did before us too, where we were going.  There were a few grates placed over dug ground; we would be careful there.  And it seemed with every severe turn round the hills, as we went downward, the location of the natural precipice would change.  We grew accustomed to that.  We put the light to the left  --  is that the deep side?  We put the light to the other side  --  how does that one look?  We had to figure the turns in the night  --  where were they?  And the little lights strode on, by one or in groups, sometimes twos, very confidently.  It was only once a year, I thought to myself; they do this here; they're accustomed to this.  This is the whole world, the curve of the world and the early understanding to navigate, right here and now, THIS JULY 4TH, 2011. WHERE WE WERE.    Signed me, G. Claire.  <>

    Author

    G. Claire is a descendant of Welsh Immigrants who came to California during the time of "the Great Excitement," also known as the Gold Rush.  She is, in addition, a descendant of young Mayflower passenger Mary Allerton and of Thomas Cushman, an Elder of the Plymouth Church.  The author is proud to be descended from Silvanus Brown, a member of that most notorious group of Vermont mobsters known as The Green Mountain boys.

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