Days of Love - Religious and Personal

Tu b'Av is a relatively obscure Jewish holiday that falls on the fifteenth day of the month of Av (sundown Thursday, July 26 to sundown Friday, July 27 this year).

The fifteenth day of each month on the Hebrew calendar falls on a full moon, and the holiday was observed as a sort of fertility festival during the period of the Second Temple. After the destruction of the Second Temple, it was forgotten for the most part in the Diaspora, only to be revived in modern times as a Jewish alternative to St. Valentine's Day.

To some, St. Valentine's Day, or Tu B'Av, may feel manufactured for greeting card companies, florists, and chocolatiers. However, most couples have their own personal "Days of Love." Whether the annual date commemorates a first date, an engagement, a marriage, or another anniversary, it's significant only to the individual couple.The memories connected with these dates are often stronger than the ones associated with the annual religious or societal holidays. Still, any reason for two people to celebrate their love for one another is a good reason.

To A Lady
by Victor Hugo,
From Les Feuilles D'Automne

Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
     My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,
My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool,
     For a glance from you!

Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs,
     Angels, the demons abject under me,
Vast chaos with its teeming womby lairs,
Time, space, all would I give--aye, upper spheres,
     For a kiss from thee!

translation by Thomas Hardy
photogravure by Goupil et Cie, from a drawing by Deveria, appears in a collection of Hugo's poetry published by Estes and Lauriat in the late 1800s.

Amenuensis Monday: Obituary for Julia Wallace (1867-1934)

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

Today I transcribe the obituary for Julia (Wallis) Wallace (1867-1934), the second wife of my wife's second great grandfather, John T Wallace. Clipping found at Newspapers.com

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Funeral services for Mrs. Julia Wallace, 66 years old, who died Tuesday at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Elmer Kindred, in Crowder, were conducted at the residence at 10 o'clock Wednesday morning by the Rev. A.C. Sullivan, pastor of the Morehouse Baptist church. Burial was in Memorial Park cemetery.

Mrs. Wallace, who had been ill for approximately a year, was born in Florence, Ala. on June 2, 1867. In March 1898 she married John Wallace. She had been a member of the Missionary Baptist church at Vanduser for the last twenty-six years.

Besides Mrs. Kindred, Mrs. Wallace is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Verbal Rodgers, Sikeston, and Mrs. Edna Hamlin, Vanduser; two sons, Alva Wallace, Vanduser and Arthur Wallace, Morehouse; three stepsons, Turner and David Wallace, Vanduser, and Jim Wallace, Morehouse; and thirteen grandchildren. Three children have died. Mr. Wallace has been dead for eighteen years. Welsh service.

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1) My wife's second great grandfather had two wives, Lorrah Wallis and Julia Wallis. All indications are that when his first wife died in 1893, he married her younger sister the following year. Lorrah was the mother of my wife's great grandfather, John Turner Wallace. (I haven't yet verified the parents of Lorrah and Julia that are indicated on some Ancestry.com family trees are accurate.) Wallis and Wallace are alternate spellings of the same surname, so John T Wallace may have been related to his wives in some fashion, perhaps distantly.

2) The obituary doesn't list the names of the children who predeceased Julia. Jesse (1902-1911) is one of them. I'm guessing the other two died as infants between censuses.

3) "Welsh service" is a reference to "Welsh Funeral Home," which is now called "Ponder Funeral Home."

Amanuensis Monday: Obituary of Melvin Van Every (1863-1929)

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

Today I transcribe the obituary for my great grandfather, Melvin E. Van Every, which appeared in The El Paso Times, May 29, 1929. I found the obituary at Newspapers.com.

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MELVIN E. VAN EVERY, 66, of Garfield, N.M. Funeral services were held from the chapel of Kaster and Maxon at 4 o'clock Tuesday afternoon with the Rev. W. Angie Smith officiating. Burial was in Evergreen cemetery. Pallbears were members of the  W.O.W. Mr. Van Every is survived by his widow, three daughters, Mrs. Minnie Benold and Mrs. I.T. Herrin, both of El Paso, and Miss Myrtle Van Every of Kansas City, Mo., and one son, Dr. S.O. Van Every of Kansas City.

Notes:

1) I believe W.O.W. stands for Woodmen of the World, a fraternal benefit organization that provides life insurance for its members. From other sources I already knew my great grandfather was a Freemason.

2) My grandmother, Myrtle, appears in the St. Louis City directories every year between 1921 and 1930. It is possible, however, that she spent some time in Kansas City with her brother, as well. She appears in the St. Louis census in 1930, but her brother is listed as living with a woman named, Myrtle, in the Kansas City census. The woman is listed as a wife, but no record with her appearance after the census has been uncovered. I think it's possible my grandmother would occasionally visit her brother, and whoever provided the information for the census (a landlord perhaps) wasn't aware they were brother and sister.