Van Gorder - Artist

I am gathering all my photos to go through them again and I came across this painting which was saved throughout time by my family members... So, a quick search does not help me discover who this artist was. It never struck me as a particularly fabulous painting... but it was saved, so it had to have meant something to someone...

So, was the artist special to someone in my family? Did a family member pick up the painting at a street fair? (When did artist street fairs begin?) Is Van Gorder a cousin of some nature?

I have sent an email to a living Van Gorder in wikitree. We will see if I get a response. Who knows what I might learn?



The painting measures a whopping 5" x 7".

Could the scene be upstate New York in the Fall? I am sure there are plenty of other places where this might have been composed.... but given where my family lived, I make the preceding guess. If anyone can help, I would be grateful!

The Belfort Ruse

I took this historical tidbit from the History Channel.

On August 30, 1918, in Belfort, France, a small town near the German border, Colonel Arthur L. Conger of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) plants a copy of a false operational order for an impending Allied attack in a wastebasket; as intended, it is later found and removed by a German agent.

The Belfort Ruse, as the trick was dubbed, was the result of a suggestion by the French commander in chief, Philippe Petain, who was alarmed by the lack of security surrounding the upcoming Allied offensive near St. Mihiel, France. Planned for September 9, 1918, it was to be the first significant operation of the war under United States command; French troops were set to take part as well. The German-held salient near St. Mihiel, south of Verdun, had long plagued the Allies in France; it blocked the transport of troops and supplies on the railway line between Paris and Nancy, while posing a danger to any French offensive operation in the Meuse-Argonne region immediately to the west of the salient and providing the Germans with a forward defensive base that protected their all-important stores of coal and iron. The French had failed repeatedly to capture the salient; now it was time for another attempt.

After learning that the plans for the offensive were being talked about in Paris, Petain wrote a personal missive to the American commander in chief, General John J. Pershing, suggesting a ploy to misdirect the Germans as to the details of the upcoming attack. Pershing agreed, and with French assistance the Americans planted the false order in a Belfort hotel, presumably one where the French knew a German agent was on the staff.

The Belfort Ruse was designed to trick the German High Command into believing that the thrust of the Allied offensive, which would begin less than two weeks later, on September 12, in the St. Mihiel salient, would instead be launched near Belfort toward the German town of Mulhausen (Mulhouse), just across the border. The extent to which the ruse proved successful is debatable; some German divisions were indeed diverted to the Belfort region, but these troops did not come from St. Mihiel. The German command, aware of the impending attack on the salient, apparently made the decision not to hold it, and to withdraw from the area. This withdrawal was still in progress when the U.S. attacked on September 12, and by September 16 the AEF controlled the area.

World War 2 Photos - the Navy, USS Portsmouth & USS Portland

I found some slides in among my father's things... I am afraid I do not know when these photos were taken so I don't know on which ship they were on. I do know it had to be either the USS Portsmouth or the USS Portland.

Obviously my father was interested in the planes.... Or this was really unusual.

My father worked with radar, radio and sonar.

Wish I had a clue as to who the other guys/sailors might be.
























I don't know where I got thee photographs, probably ancestry.com... Thought they would be worth adding to this post. Maybe someone can identify which ship my Dad was on by comparing the images....

USS Portland

USS Portsmouth

Last year at this time I was talking about this...

Inflation Era Bank notes from Germany

Look what I found among my father's papers. Now, I can't figure out why he would have them... I mean, if they are from the 1920s, then a little early for him. And they are a little late for Herb's time in Europe... So, why would my father have them?

Looks like maybe it was printed in February 1923.

Fun to see, though.

Yale Law School in 1952

So, any interest in knowing what it cost to attend Yale Law School in the 1950s? Not much. Shocking, really...

According to Saving.org's calculator, the $526.50 owed was the equivalent of only $4,665.23 in 2015 dollars. Shall we discuss rising costs of education? Holy cow.

Gibson-Sullivan Wedding Annoucement from 1952

As an amateur genealogist I have been blessed by family members saving some interesting documents and (unmarked!) photos.

Today I came across this wedding announcement, but I am afraid I have no idea who the people are and when my father might have met them. Perhaps from his time at college, or at the Pingy School... No idea. I know he met them before he headed off for his graduate degree.

So let me post the invitation here so that it goes on to live where someone might find it one day and be delighted.

So, I did some more research and discovered that Dwight Sullivan went to Princeton and Lucinda to Wellesley. So, now we know where my father met Dwight....





I hope fortune and happiness smiled on this couple.

Hill Farmstead Brewery

Ok, this is not a blog about beer.... But this beer is pretty damn fine and I am mentioning it because they have used genealogy of sorts to name their beers. They have an Ancestral series of brews.

I have tried Mary, Edward, & Legitimacy #3. All very nice.

I know nothing about the brewers, and their web site doesn't seem to help me add to my information. All it says on the 'About Us' page of their web site is:

Hill Farmstead Brewery is the culmination of many years of travel and insight—of experience and education—of friendships and explorations.

The brewery is the revival and continuation of 220 years of Hill heritage and hand crafted history in North Greensboro, Vermont.

Its logo is retrieved from a sign that once hung in Aaron Hill's (our great(x3) grandfather) tavern, just up the hill, in the early 1800s.

And here is the logo - copied from their web site.

Their mission:

To hand craft succinct, elegant beers of distinction and to revive and diversify the farmscape of the Hill Farmstead in Greensboro...

If you are ever in the area - on a Wednesday thru Saturday - I'd serious think of getting some of their beer.

Key Hotel, Izmir, Turkey - a Review

Loving this little hotel.

It is a former bank building right on the harbor. The inside is all grays & blacks, hard surfaces and reflective materials. Perhaps you would think it unwelcoming, by the colors, but in fact the atmosphere feels great.

Room 308 is lovely with all the amenities - huge, harbor view, coffee, minibar, desk space, couch, huge bed, motorized black-out blinds, strong wifi.... all the good things.

The service is very attentive and kind. Top notch.

The breakfast was quite an elegant looking spread of both European and Turkish breakfast foods. Dinner was excellent with exceptional service. I had a wonderful conversation with the bartender about the local wines and he even exposed me to some new grape varietals.

The one downside I can see so far is the lack of a driveway and obvious entrance. Very strange - we drove around the hotel several times looking for the entrance. We finally had to ask for directions and cross our fingers.

Room 308

So many windows!

On to the nitty gritty -

Toiletries - everything and displayed beautifully in a box
Coffee & Tea - nescafe and powdered creamer
Robes & slippers - yes
Hairdryer - yes

I would highly recommend the Key Hotel in Izmir.

German crown council at Spa, Belgium

I was exploring what was happening in the world during this time for Herb. According to the History Channel, here is what was happening in the middle of August 1918.

Interesting to contemplate the disillusionment of the Germans.

On this day in 1918, five days after an Allied attack at Amiens, France, leads German commander Erich Ludendorff to declare “the black day of the German army,” Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany summons his principal political and military leaders to a crown council at Spa, a resort town in Belgium, to assess the status of the German war effort during World War I.

On August 11, after the Allied victory at Amiens kicked off a new Allied offensive on the Western Front, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg, chief of the German army’s general staff, told the new naval chief, Admiral Reinhardt Scheer, that Germany’s only hope to win the war was through submarine warfare. “There is no more hope for the offensive,” the downtrodden Ludendorff told a staff member on August 12. “The generals have lost their foothold.”

At the crown council assembled on August 13-14 by the kaiser at Spa, where the German High Command had its headquarters, Ludendorff recommended that Germany initiate immediate peace negotiations. Ludendorff failed, however, to present the true extent of the military’s disadvantage on the battlefield; instead, he blamed revolt and anti-war sentiment on the home front for the military’s inability to continue the war effort indefinitely. Meanwhile, the chief military adviser to Austrian Emperor Karl I informed Wilhelm that Austria-Hungary could only continue its participation in the war until that December. Though the kaiser thought it advisable to seek an intermediary to begin peace negotiations, his newly appointed foreign minister, Paul von Hintze, refused to take such an approach until another German victory on the battlefield had been achieved. Hintze, working on suppressing discontent and rebellion within the German government, told party leaders the following week that “there was no reason to doubt ultimate victory. We shall be vanquished only when we doubt that we shall win.”

Meanwhile, on the battlefront in Flanders, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, one of the German army’s most senior commanders, wrote of his own doubt to Prince Max of Baden (the kaiser’s second cousin, who would become chancellor of Germany the following October): “Our military situation has deteriorated so rapidly that I no longer believe we can hold out over the winter; it is even possible that a catastrophe will come earlier….The Americans are multiplying in a way we never dreamed of….At the present time there are already thirty-one American divisions in France.” The Allied commanders, for their part, pushed their troops forward on the Western Front and made aggressive preparations for future offensives in 1919, unaware that victory would come before the year was out.

The Marmara, Antalya, Turkey - A Review

Though a bit crazy looking, we thought The Marmara Antalya was quite nice. You can see from the rooms that it is decorated like nothing you might have seen before....  Green and blue strips on some walls, pink sponge treatment on another wall, beach furniture in the room... hot pink and orange paper thin shower curtain...

Looking from the entrance - no balcony at a seaside hotel....

Two sinks - which was nice, and a crazy door which closed two spaces at once, the toilet and the bathroom

Turquoise day bed.... that was my dresser, as no dresser in the room, though tons of hooks

Service - at night it was attentive in the dining room
Ambiance - crazy, unlike anything I have seen r expected
Cleanliness - no issue
View/Balcony - no balcony, but nice view of the pool and the sea
Room Number - 1907

Toiletries - yes
Coffee & Tea - yes
Robes & slippers - can't recall
Hairdryer - pretty sure there was one....
mini frig - yes
wi fi - yes, free
space - plenty of space
restaurant - just the one, and 'international' buffet for dinner
Pool - large, but without personality
Fitness Center - yes... in those floors between 6 (the dining room) and 1 (sea access)
Spa - yes, though didn't see it

We had a nice conversation with a waiter on our last night and he steered us towards a nice wine and told us a little about his life and his time in the US. Some people might not appreciate hearing about his life, but we welcomed it. We thought it was interesting to hear a young person's perspective on things - and current events.

Great desk space to share - a nice feature, so that I don't have to wrestle for space with my honey

No drawers in those bedside tables....

View of the pool and the sea... the round building was supposed to rotate, but I wasn't aware of that happening

Dining room, game room, reading room, bar

Two story dining room

Bar area

Access to the sea

Lone Star Tick bite and Red Meat

Ok, this is going to sound absolutely crazy.

A bite from a Lone Star tick can make you allergic to red meat.

A friend told me about it over some healthy green salads. Now, when she eats red meat she gets sick to her stomach. She is thinking that she may never be able to eat red meat again. She can eat fish and fowl, though - and lots and lots of veggies, of course.

I found an article here - that web page is also where I took this photo...

Apparently we need healthy gut bacteria so that our immune system can fight off the infection caused by this tick. And we have discussed gut bacteria several times already.

The tick is called Lone Star because of the white dot on the back of the female. It can be found in the southeastern United States.

Here are some other articles/blog posts on red meat.... prices, tough on the planet, meatless Mondays, and Pricey Protein.

And that concludes my public service announcement for the day.

All presidents bar one are directly descended from a medieval English king

And this is the kind of thing that genealogy can do. And one wonders why I am obsessed...

If this is true, how wonderful. And, of course, wikitree claims I am related to Eleanor of Aquitaine.... I haven't quite proven that one yet... but it is one of the trees I have on Ancestry.com, so as hints show up, I can explore more fully. Isn't that a hoot?

Here is the article - found in an English newspaper, though the young lady hails from California.

Exciting Breakthru

Life is good.

I was contacted by a cousin by marriage through wikitree yesterday. Though I learned I have missed the opportunity to speak with a relative who loved to talk about the Maher family, I have gained some information about a branch of my tree which had grown cold. And I have learned where many relatives are buried.

I have made some speculative stories about my great Aunts, Lillian and Roberta.

I have also come up with a theory about how Florence and Herb met; something I now must explore. I will share more as I uncover, but I have always been confused as to what happened to Karolyn and how/when Herb meets my grandmother Florence. There is a Lee in the Maher plot. Might Herb have visited a Lee relative for a holiday event and met Florence there? Could be. I mean, Herb didn't meet Florence in a bar or on-line.... so how did they meet? A family gathering would be very appropriate. Herb was living in New York City without the rest of his family who were in Troy, NY. Of course, this Lee in the Maher burial plot has not yet shown up in my tree... but maybe a little more digging and time will tell.