Genetic Memory

I do not believe in reincarnation, though I have had personal experiences that made me understand why people do believe in it.  Now, I read about studies conducted at Emory University indicating that we inherit memories through our DNA, that we share in the experiences of our ancestors. This would explain a lot!  Chemical changes to our DNA occur when we experience a stressful or traumatic event, and experiments with mice show that these memories are passed down to subsequent generations. Experiences can alter our brains and our behavior, and these traits can be inherited.  Our DNA holds the recorded history of our family!  Natural aversions and instincts, and even phobias can be explained by this biological mechanism. I'm thinking that those mysterious deja vu moments can be explained by this as well.

Deja Vu

deja vu 

When I was about seven years old, my parents and a neighbor took me with them to Colonial Williamsburg. I remember very little about the visit, but one moment struck me so dramatically, I still get goosebumps thinking about it. The grownups were at Raleigh Tavern purchasing ginger cakes from the bakery there. (The smell still has very strong memory associations for me, which may explain why I must bake Raleigh Tavern ginger cakes every Christmas).  Anyway, I walked ahead of them and opened a little white gate leading out to Duke of Gloucester Street.  As I stood in the gateway looking toward the capitol building, an powerful sensation of deja vu came over me, and I have never forgotten it.  At that age, I could not even have known that deja vu was a thing.

Remembering Places I've Never Been
There are certain places that have always greatly interested me for no reason that I could figure - I have never set foot in any of them, but they are on my bucket list for sure:  Long Island and Cape Cod, The Alamo in Texas, and the particular areas of England associated with the legend of King Arthur.  Also, a story that greatly intrigued me as a child was The Boy at the Dike, set in the Netherlands.

Through my genealogy research in the past two years, I have discovered that my ancestors have solid connections with these very places.  It is truly an exciting thing for me, to believe that my inexplicable attraction to these places may be linked to my DNA!  I believe that this phenomenon might explain why some people get so hooked on genealogy once they get started.  It's like finding yourself.

Teresa Marie Allen, part 2

(this post is a continuation of THIS one)

Teresa Marie (nee Ethelyn) Allen
We know that my grandmother, Teresa Allen, nee Ethelyn, was raised in a Catholic boarding school in Paris, Texas.  We know that she was influenced by the nuns who cared for her (we have the Bible that was given to her by one of the Sisters).  She told her daughter Virginia that she changed her name to Teresa, taking on the name of one of the nuns.  We also know that she was trained as a nurse.  In researching the history of Paris, Texas, the only mention of a Catholic boarding school I could find is St. Patrick's, where the nuns were from the order of the Sisters of Mercy, whose mission was nursing. 

The History of Paris Regional Medical Center: Our Paris, Texas acute-care hospital has come a long way since its inception in 1911....The beginning of what was to eventually become Paris Regional dates to 1896 when the Sisters of Mercy operated St. Patrick’s Academy, a boarding school near downtown Paris, Texas. After several years of agonizing labor and severe tests of faith, six sisters reopened the facility as St. Joseph’s Infirmary on October 1, 1911.

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/138242/7266250

St. Joseph's Infirmary, 1908

St. Joseph's, est. 1911, site of St. Patrick's Academy

Present day site of St. Patrick's Academy (from Google Earth)

From Texas to Oklahoma to Illinois Nursing became a licensed profession in the early 1900's in Texas.  A growing percentage of women were in the workforce, and I believe my grandmother was among those at this cultural cutting edge.  In 1920, she was living in Oklahoma City in a boarding house on 11th Street and was working as a nurse.  A fellow roomer in this house was her lifelong best friend Maud Marshall, also a nurse.  The nearest hospital to this location - in walking distance, in fact - is the present-day Oklahoma University Medical Center and College of Nursing.  The Sisters of Mercy were a strong presence in Oklahoma City, as they founded Mount St. Mary Academy, an all girls' school which began as a mission to education Native American children.  From Oklahoma City, my grandmother moved with her friend Maud to Chicago, where there happens to be another Sisters of Mercy hospital. Coincidence?  I think not.  

UPDATE - Found Mother Teresa online!  This story is definitely adding up.

The first Catholic school in Paris was founded by a little band of Sisters of Mercy under the direction of Mother Teresa Muldoon. The sisters arrived in Paris in 1896. For two months, the sisters lived in the old Wooldridge home, at 238 Clarksville Street. With money bequeathed to her by her brother, Mother Teresa purchased three lots adjacent to the church on Clarksville Street. The little school was on the site of the first St. Joseph's Hospital building and now the parking lot west of the present hospital. In four years the sisters had progressed from small shacks to a fine modern building, a combination of a convent, the Convent of Mercy, and a school, St. Patrick's Academy. The school was started with a solemn blessing on March 17, 1900, and included a boarding school for several years. Financial difficulties forced the sisters to close the school, and the sisters converted the school to a hospital in 1910. It was named St. Joseph's Infirmary. They ran it for its first two years. In 1912 the Sisters of Mercy returned to Chicago, and the hospital was then continued under the direction of The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of San Antonio. Mother Teresa is buried in the Sister's plot in Evergreen Cemetery.

Boston Evening Transcript - Jun 26, 1903

http://glt.amormeus.org/documents/USProvinceNewsletterNovDec07.pdf

Update -Mar 2015:   My sister found a couple of documents packed away with her own nursing school stuff... a listing of licensed nurses in Virginia showing that Teresa Allen Crofford graduated from Paris Sanitarium Training School for Nurses, and a yearbook listing alumni of the school.  She, along with her friend Maude Marshall and five others, comprised the 7th graduating class.  The nursing school originated in the St. Joseph's Infirmary, further cementing the facts in the above story.

Update-June 2015:  searched for Maude Marshall and found her name as well as Teresa Allen's in the City Directories of Sherman Texas, and Paris Texas.  They both worked as nurses at St. Vincent's Sanitarium, and then at the Sanitarium of Paris in 1917-1919.

http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/cm1/id/1191

Horses in the Black Hills

Passing Down a Love of Horses
Lame Johnny Creek was named after a scoundrel who was hanged from a tree near the creek.  The land along this creek was desirable grazing land for ranchers in the Black Hills area.  One ranch on this creek called Fleur de Lys was famed for its horses that were imported from France, including Percheron and Arabian breeds.  My grandfather's family owned horses too.  My grandfather, Horace Crofford, used to talk to me for hours about horses, and I hung on every word.  He described each breed and its characteristics, all of which I remember to this day.  From him, I learned about roans, paints, pacers, mules, Appaloosas, palominos, Percherons, Arabs, quarterhorses, and Tennessee Walkers.  I learned which horses were good for racing, plowing, carriage, or riding, and I could tell you which characteristics made them good for the job. He taught me about halters, bits, and bridles. When I went away to college and visited the riding stable there, I was drawn to a beautiful horse that I could immediately recognize as a Morgan because of Baba's description - barrel chest, strong legs and hindquarters, graceful arched neck, broad forehead, and cupped face.  My identification was confirmed by the owner.

Personal Experience
One story Baba told was about a horse on his father's ranch... during the night, the horse squeezed through the door into the stock room and gorged on oats.  The oats swelled up inside the horse and he couldn't get back out through the door.  The horse raised a ruckus, and the family came running.  They got him out of the storage room somehow, and family members had to take turns walking the horse around and around the paddock all night long so he wouldn't get a ruptured intestine and die.  A drink of water would have killed the horse quickly.

Postcards from my Grandfather
Whenever Baba went to Wyoming to visit his family, he sent postcards of horses and wrote about them on the back:

As you can see, I wore these postcards out studying them!

The Year of the Locusts

LOC http://www.bozeman-magpie.com/thebigmt-full-article.php?article_id=696

Making History Personal
This morning I happened to see a TV documentary program (Mysteries at the Museum on the Travel Channel) about the Locust Plague of 1874.  The locusts (grasshoppers on steroids) swept through the Great Plains, moving from North to South across Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota Territory, and on to Texas, covering a swath equal to the size of all of New England.*   It took a while to register, but I realized that this must be the story I'd heard from my mother which she heard from her father.  Since my grandfather wasn't born until twenty years after the plague, the story must have been passed down by his mother who was a born storyteller. I became curious to find out what my ancestors were doing in 1874.

Our Family Moves West
First of all, how did my ancestors end up on the western frontier and where did they live? The Great Western Migration in the U.S. was brought by several factors:  the Homestead Act of 1862, the end of the Civil War in 1865, and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869*.  My family was a part of this migration from the east.

Locusts in Lincoln, Nebraska
Horace Calvin Crofford, my great grandfather, lived in Lancaster, Nebraska with his family after the Civil War.  His father, Calvin Crofford had received land by the Homestead Act of 1862 (his application can be seen on Ancestry).  In April 1874, a census was taken in Little Salt (Lancaster County). I believe Horace, at age 27, was one of the two males listed in the household of Calvin Crofford.  In Nebraska, the locusts had a devastating effect:

One report released in 1874 suggested that just one family in 10 had enough provisions to last through the coming winter. To avoid starvation, many desperate settlers, especially in western Kansas and Nebraska, abandoned their homestead claims and their dreams of a new life to return east.... Hoping to stop future infestations before they got started, Nebraska in 1877 passed a Grasshopper Act, requiring every able-bodied man between the ages of 16 and 60 to work at least two days eliminating locusts at hatching time or face a $10 fine. 

http://www.historynet.com/1874-the-year-of-the-locust.htm#sthash.QALcWMPa.dpuf

Watch the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To48K5E4ULM

Locusts in Fargo, North Dakota
My great grandmother, Ada Hall, was a teenager at the time of the Locusts.  In the spring of 1871, Andrew and Olivia Hall, along with their three children, crossed over the Red River on a small flat boat ferry to settle in Fargo.  Ada tells that the "grasshoppers came that first year."  Though the impact on Fargo was not as devastating as in some other areas, the experience left a strong impression on Ada.  She wrote:

They darkened the sky, which, looked up at, shown like silver with their flashing wings. They ate the sides out of our tents, the linen coat off my father's back while he was mowing. Where the river stopped their eastward march, they piled up inches deep and crusted every little twig five or six bugs deep.  It was a regular nightmare.  We could not keep them out of our tents, our provisions, off our tables, or out of our beds.  Once, right at dinner time, a big old timer sat down in the middle of the table, beside the butter, and proceeded to crack open down the back, and to divest himself of his whole outer covering, before the boarders, who would not let him be taken away.  In that way they got a lesson in natural history with their dinner, at the price of one. Talk of nightmares!  Wow!

A mention of Fargo from a history of Canada:

It must not be supposed that all the crops were destroyed. No better wheat and potatoes can anywhere be found than were in 1875 harvested at Portage la Prairie, and along the Red River between Fargo and Pembina, and in the neighbourhood of St. Joe, at the south-west corner of the Province. All this is spring-sown, in rich well-drained soil. Efforts in the infested regions, made by settlers and their families during the few hours in which the locust rested, such as building fires, surrounding the field or garden with a ditch into which the insects fall and drown, beating with bushes, &c., have been successful in saving large parts of the crops.

http://canada.yodelout.com/the-canadian-prairie-province-the-grasshopper-plague-its-history-and-incidents/

Some amazing facts about the Locust Plague:

• the locusts looked like a great, white glistening cloud, and appeared to be a big snowstorm
• they blocked out the sun for as long as six hours
• they ravaged the fields and trees, devouring every plant and blade of grass
• they ate the wool off sheep, the paint off wagons, the handles off pitchforks, the harnesses off horses, curtains off the windows, and even the clothing off people's backs
• they ate anything not hidden away in wooden or metal containers
• they smothered fires that the farmers lit to ward them off
• they left behind nothing but the odor of their decaying bodies and excrement
• they fouled water supplies that were not covered or protected
• people resorted to eating locusts, even serving them in restaurants and feeding them to their animals
• most locusts died off before 1875, but they were a problem for farmers until after the turn of the century

*http://www.historynet.com/1874-the-year-of-the-locust.htm#sthash.QALcWMPa.dpuf
**Information obtained from Ada Crofford's personal account which can be seen on Ancestry.

Read more:
Civil War veterans in Fargo:  http://fargohistory.com/civil-war-veterans-in-fargo/
First settlers of Fargo, ND (A.A. Hall):  http://library.ndsu.edu/fargo-history/?q=content/first-settlers

King Edward III

We are direct descendants of King Edward III of England and his wife, Philippa of Hainault, through their son, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster.  Edward was born at Windsor Castle in 1312.  He became King at age 14 (1327) and reigned until his death in 1377.  He created the Duchy of Cornwall and founded the Order of the Garter.  He was a good king and an excellent military leader who led England into the Hundred Years War with France.

This might seem like an impressive claim... however, Edward had twelve children with Philippa, plus at least three more by his mistress Alice Perrers.  A genealogist from the UK calculated the probabilities and came to this conclusion:
There is an extremely high probability that a modern English person with predominantly English ancestry descends from Edward III, at a very minimum over 99%, and more likely very close to 100%. The number of descendants of Edward III must therefore include nearly all of the population of England, and probably much of the populations of the rest of the UK and Eire, as well as many millions in the USA, former British colonies and Europe, so 100 million seems a conservative estimate. 

The special thing about this claim is that I have traced our ancestry back to England in the 1200's through my father's maternal grandmother, Georgia Powell.  Her ninth great grandfather Judd married Katherine Norwood whose maternal line goes back another nine generations to Edward III.