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knoxcotn-digest Tuesday, December 21 1999 Volume 01 : Number 030
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 19:10:43 -0800 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: "Campaign to Nowhere" finally in print! Please forward this to all the lists or individuals where you feel there are people who'll want to know about it. If you edit a family or organization newsletter where this will be applicable, please publish it there. Disclaimer out of the way: I have no financial interest in this publication, so this isn't an advertisement. I'm trying to spread the word about an awesome resource. I am holding in my hands (and typing <g>) the long-awaited book by David C. Smith, entitled _Campaign_to_Nowhere:_The_Results_of_General_Longstreet's_Move_into_Upper_Ea st_Tennessee_. It is literally hot off the press and would be an ideal Christmas/Hanukkah gift for a wide range of researchers. You may recognize Cleve Smith's name -- he is without peer among Civil War historians in central East Tennessee, with special interest in the events in Jefferson County and its immediately surrounding area. This book, then, has historic value to those researching the Civil War period in Jefferson, Knox, Sevier, Grainger, Hamblen, Cocke, and Hawkins Counties. The book is professionally printed and bound, 8.5" x 11" in size, with 249 pages, 255 pictures, numerous maps/charts/drawings, an index, source notes, a bibliography, and a full-color soft cover depicting artifacts and photographs. The book contains historical accounts, accompanied by Cleve's personal insights after half a lifetime of researching in this area. It also contains anecdotes from descendants of soldiers and the experiences of Cleve and others during on-site surveys. The writing style is engaging, and the material could be read and comprehended by anyone from junior high reading level to adult. There isn't a better published resource for Civil War history specific to this area available anywhere. This was a limited-edition printing of only 500 copies, and nearly 20% were pre-sold. So, you'd better hurry if you want a copy! You may order the book for $25.00, postage-paid, from David C. Smith, 1173 Mountain View Drive, New Market, TN 37820-3817. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 18:14:03 EST From: Mamt1984@aol.com Subject: Re: Resurrecting cemeteries List Members: Check out the article below. ...Marjorie <A HREF="http://starnews.com/extra/features/99/dec/1207st_cemetery.html">Star News.com : Resurrecting cemeteries</A> http://starnews.com/extra/features/99/dec/1207st_cemetery.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 21:29:10 -0800 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: Some utilities for date conversion Forgive me if you get duplicates of this -- I'm trying to be comprehensive about disseminating it. If you use MicroSatan <g> products, you might want to check out some of the patches at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/year2k/resource.htm MS apparently sees 2-digit years as falling between 1930 and 2029 by default. You can change that span, but MS "doesn't recommend it." I wonder how many genealogists have done the no-no date thing and put two-digits for 19xx event years in their wordprocessing or spreadsheet files? The genealogy software won't let you do that -- but nobody controls your data entry in WP or SS programs. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 00:26:52 -0800 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: Fwd: Sunday Rockin' on Tuesday! Another bit of wisdom from Jan Philpot. Forwarding permission has been granted, but please remember to credit Jan. ============================================================================ ==== From: "j" <unicorn@sun-spot.com> Sorry tis late...hadda go to Tenn. and check on all my aunties, play Santa, all that stuff...anyhow I DID do some rockin.... Afternoon all, The holidays are creeping ever closer...and amidst the hustle, the bustle, the holiday traffic, the holiday plans...between checking for last minute grocery items, just that perfect last gift, no doubt many of you will be checking as well to see that you have plenty of film, your video camera or digital is charged. Whatever your manner of recording memories, you will be preparing...and rest assured that across this world the last Christmas of this millenium will be faithfully recorded. I have long thought that photos and albums are actually the pictures that the past "becomes"....no one really ever seems to remember the details of what was on a tray at a reception, or what the favors were, or how many aunts of the groom attended...unless those things are in a photo...and then somehow all of those things captured in a picture have a way of BECOMING the memory, the part we most remember for a while, and after a long time ALL we remember. Somehow, in supplementing our memories of events, those photos left for us to jog our memories with seem to encourage and intensify only those moments they captured, and screen the others... which is why I often think that the main thing for any family event should be the recording of it, rather than the details all too quickly forgotten or unnoticed. This power of photography has often made me wonder about the past. So often we have only ONE faded photograph or tintype of an ancestor, and often not that. Perhaps that photograph that survives does not capture that person at his or her most beautiful/handsome, at the point of the most vitality in his/her life, at the moment that most implied that person's personality...and yet, that being all we today have, this is the picture imprinted in our minds as BEING that person. I have but one faded tintype of my gg grandmother...it is clear enough to show me her native ancestry, but she is a tired middle aged woman in this picture, unsmiling, seated with two of her children...and something about the image denotes a very tired lady, with little vitality and a worn acceptance of her lot in life. In fact it is easy to question whether the lines about her mouth are traced by weariness or bitterness. Yet this is not the "Victoria" that my mother says her father described. That lady was exuberant, warm, laughing, giving...someone "everyone loved"...and if I did not have that description handed down to me through my mother who did not know her great grandmother, and has only her father's fond memories to go by, I would not know this. The knowledge has made me look more closely at the other photographs of my ancestors I have, and for which most I do not have but one, if that. I wonder as I look at them who this ggg grandfather of mine really was...was he really so stern and unyielding as he appears? Did a person of his family when the photo was made, look at it and giggle and say something like, "My don't you look like you could eat someone up!!!" And did that very dignified man of the photo then squirm and grin a little sheepishly? Or perhaps something along this order was said, "Hmmmm...you clean up very well, Mama....if only they could have seen you yesterday chasing the chickens out of the garden!" And then of course Mama laughed at the rememberance and the others in the family would have fallen into the contagious humor. And so I have learned to imagine a stern face tilted back in laughter, a very "dressed up" ancestor in the faded coveralls that were probably more like the daily dress, a giggle emanating from a very "ladylike" solemn young woman...because, no doubt, that imaginary transparency I mentally overlay on the picture is no doubt more the "true image". These days our photography is so real, so lifelike, and so all-conclusive in its documentation, that if pains are taken for its survival (which is a very real question to address in terms of what quickly becomes "obsolete" as well as a lack of quality in much developing)....our descendents should not have to use a great deal of imagination to know our personalities, our enjoyments, even the way we "walked our walk" and "talked our talk". Wonderous days we are living in. How much you and I would give to be able to have that documentation of our ancestors!!! And yet...I wonder...perhaps the wondering itself, perhaps the careful reading "between lines" of documents, perhaps the pouring over history, the neverending search for the past itself...is a bit rewarding. It seems to me in a way that it is a little bit like the delicious anticipation and excitement that accompanies so many events of our lives, the Christmas season often being one of them...in which the wondering and anticipation itself is actually more fun than the day. Searching for my ancestors has been an adventure, and I am sure it has been one for you as well. It has been an adventure for the imagination...which is why a lot of my stories come. I want to "see" the "day that Mama died" (my recent story), to feel what it was like to depend on neighbors for my very survival, to "hear" an untamed wilderness and know how my insides would quiver and turn at the idea of uprooting in a world of two hundred years ago....there is only one way to experience that now...imagination. Feeding it with what I know of my family's genealogy, seasoning it with what others share of theirs, stoking it with the recorded history of the time periods, blending it with the records and documents that survive... I think we all do that who love this world of history and genealogy. Perhaps we don't all write the stories we "see" in our minds down on paper, but we live them just the same. And if someone sees us with a faraway expression in our eyes, it is most likely because we ARE far away....in a tiny cabin with a long ago ancestor, climbing a bluff along the Wilderness Road, fearfully watching the banks of the Tennessee River for restless natives, walking the Trail of Tears, our hearts heavy with dread and quivering at the loss that must seem to be the end of a world...and is. A photograph feeds us only what is captured, but imagination...ah! Now that is something else again! Record your memories of this last Christmas of a millenium...something your descendents will not see for another thousand years. Record them with still photos, video imagery, digital pictures...record them that your descendents might know who we were, and how we lived, the sounds of our voice conversing or convulsed in laughter, what made us laugh or made us cry. Record them, because we have this wondrous opportunity....but never forget to imagine, to feel, to be what those who preceeded us must have known behind those stern expressions in a photograph or a tintype...that adventure is every bit as thrilling and touching as the photographs our descendents will delight in! just a thought, jan ------------------------------ End of knoxcotn-digest V1 #30 ***************************** |