Creekside Tales

The Commons on Flickr Are you looking for photos of a place or a period in time? Take a look at The Commons on Flickr. Archives, museums and libraries from all over the world are making historical photos and other interesting graphics available for everyone to see. Even better, most of these images are public domain so you can use them in your family history projects. What will you find at The Commons? Obviously there are fabulous collections of historical photographs. That's just the beginning. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has a number of collections, including their Historical Map collection with 149 maps. These are helping me track my Mississippi ancestors as they moved into and around the state, but it also gives me graphics I can use to help tell their stories. Who knows, I may even find a photo or two . . .

Geneablogging - Revolutionizing Genealogy

What’s so interesting about blogging? Blogging builds community, inspires stories, are VERY search-friendly and even connects cousins.

Recipes have long been a part of our family heritage. It’s not unusual to have special recipes passed down from generation to generation. Historical cookbooks are often best sellers.

The Paprika Recipe Manager is the perfect example of a 21st century cookbook. It is available for Windows and Mac desktops along with iOS, Android and Kindle devices. And, while Paprika makes it easy to capture, organize and share recipes, it also does a lot more. You can plan meals, build grocery lists, scale recipes to fit your serving size and even automatically detect and set timers from a recipe’s directions. Yes, it’s a delightful tool for people who love to cook. It’s also a great way to capture your family’s legacy recipes and the stories related to them.

I fell in love with Paprika when I first installed in on my iPad. It has a built-in web browser set up with bookmarks to an impressive collection of online recipe sites. Are you a fan of the Pioneer Woman or The Food Network? You’ll find them already bookmarked. If there are other sites not found in the Paprika list - like the Apron Recipes at Publix - just add them to your bookmarks. Using the built-in browser, you can cruise through these sites and when you find something you’d like to add to your recipes, all you do is tap Download and enter a category (main dish, dessert, brunch, etc.). Paprika does the rest.

Adding your personal recipes takes a bit more effort. Enter the ingredients and the instructions, add a category and even a photo if you wish. There is a field for entering personalized notes about the recipe. This comes in handy if you are posting a legacy recipe. Use it to describe the cook and how he/she fits into the family “tree”. Is it a recipe that is traditionally served for a specific event like Thanksgiving, Christmas or anniversaries? Include that in the notes too.

The recipe above is one of our favorite family recipes - Minorcan Clam Chowder. Instead of a photo of the dish, this recipe has a picture of the chef (my father). He had a unique way of making this dish which is well documented in the Notes section. The recipe is listed under the Soups and Stews category but it is also listed in the Legacy category. This way we can easily find our family favorites at any time.

The recipes in our Legacy collection look a bit different from the others. The photos in these recipes are usually focused on the cook or the event where it is frequently served. The notes area is used to describe why this recipe is a family favorite.

The Paprika app is available on Windows ($19.99) and Mac ($29.99) desktops along with iOS, Android and Kindle Fire mobile devices ($4.99). I have been gifting the mobile version to family members for some time so we all can take advantage of Paprika’s sharing option to pass our favorite recipes around. Paprika has also become my favorite gift for bridal showers. In addition to the app, I also add the exported collection of Legacy recipes which the new bride can easily import to her app and learn a bit about the history of her new family.

Most people document their professional lives by the companies they worked for, the positions they held or the products they created. For the mariner, their professional lives revolve around ships and ports.

Mom sending dad off at the dock.

My father spent most of his life at sea as a merchant mariner. He worked his way from deck hand on a small liner ferrying tourists to Havana to master of the largest tanker flying the American flag. Although eventually a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, his studies were interrupted by World War II while he served on liberty ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He was third mate on the first merchant ship to sail into Tokyo Bay after the surrender. He shuttled water to Guantanamo when Castro cut the water mains to the base in the 1960s. He carried wheat to the Soviet Union and oil to Cam Rahn Bay to support our efforts in Vietnam.

He moved from super tankers to fishing boats after he retired and always found being out on the water a relaxing experience. He died in 1991.

His brother, Charles, also made the sea his profession and served during WWII, but when it came time to settle down with a family, he chose a job piloting ships through the Panama Canal. As a canal pilot, he was in a unique position to have access to almost every ship that sailed the seas for the many years he worked there. So, when I recently inherited my father’s discharge books, I called my uncle to help me understand what these documents were and how I could use the information they contained as part of Dad’s life history.

The terms of employment for a mariner are much different than onshore professions. Some of those traditions go back many centuries. A mariner signs on for a cruise to perform a specific job on that ship. A “cruise” may make several stops and may or may not return to the port of departure. At the end of the cruise all the crew members are paid off and become technically unemployed. The Continuous Discharge Book is a U.S. Coast Guard book issued to every mariner to log each cruise that individual is hired for, giving the ship’s name, the mariner’s assigned job and the dates and places of engagement and discharge. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell you all the places that cruise visits. You need access to each ship’s log for that.

As my uncle is explaining all this to me and looking through the books, he starts commenting on several of the ships listed in Dad’s logs. He was familiar with a number of them from his experiences as a pilot taking ships through the Panama Canal. Several times he mentioned that he had a sketch of this ship or that ship in his sketch book. I was delighted to learn details about Dad’s career and the additional comments about the ships was icing on the cake.

I should mention that my uncle is an accomplished watercolorist and we all have been the delighted recipients of pieces of his work. He always has a sketchbook nearby and has years of earlier sketches in his studio. So, when he stopped by several days later to show me a rough sketch of a project idea and wanted me to help, I was pleasantly surprised and delighted to participate.

He is fond of creating collage-style paintings for friends and family members that incorporate the person’s interests, special events and places. His proposed project would be a painting celebrating Dad’s maritime career that would include the memorable places he visited and the special ships he sailed aboard. My job was to help compare cruise dates in the discharge book with dates of significant events to determine which ships were involved with those events and to find photos online of the one or two ships he didn’t already have in his sketchbooks.

A Seaman’s Life by C. O. Barrett

Nativity in a Walnut

Between 1986 and 1989 David and I were living in the  village of Schonau - just outside of Mannheim, Germany. David was stationed at Colman Barracks which was not far from where we lived.

For most of our time in Germany we were the only Americans living in Schonau. Our neighbors were all quite friendly and even though most didn’t speak English and my German was quite rough, we all got along fine.

One day Ingrid, our neighbor across the street, stopped by and asked if she could cut a couple of rhubarb leaves from our back yard. We are not rhubarb fans so we were happy to see that someone else was.

When you think of a regatta, you think of beautiful sailboats with their sails full of wind flying across the water. That would not be our regatta. Aunt Caroline initiated the regatta in the 1990s as an entertainment idea for a family gathering. It has become an annual event. Aunt Caroline passed away in 2001, but she is still with us in spirit so the regatta now carries her name.

Old Quarry Road

Most visitors to The St. Augustine Alligator Farm turn in to Old Quarry Road to find a parking spot. Little do they know that this quiet road was once an important element in the construction of the Castillo de San Marcos - the huge fort that overlooks Matanzas bay.

The Castillo was constructed using coquina - a “rock” made of seashells fused together with limestone. Coquina is the closest thing to rock to be found in Florida and after 20 years of construction it began serving St. Augustine’s citizens well.

During the construction, slaves and Indians cut huge blocks of coquina and used sleds to drag those blocks down this road to Quarry Creek. Once there the blocks were put on barges to float them to the building site.

Although the Castillo was never captured in battle, it changed hands several times. The British took control via treaty. At the end of the American Revolution Spain regained control but would soon give it up along with all of Florida in 1821. From that point on, St. Augustine and the Castillo have been historical treasures.

(via Steamboat "Chattahoochee" on the Saint Johns River near Ge… | Flickr)