Digitizing (read preserving) the Past

Man, did May ever fly by! I didn't realize that I'd gone a month again without posting. Here's a preview of things to come, albeit that they will come VERY slowly, merely because of the nature of the work. Of course, my pace probably doesn't help. Here's the list though.

Digitization of Letters:
I've digitized one letter on here from 1920, this is the plan for those to follow.

As I embark on the long, but necessary journey of digitizing and transcribing my grandparents’ letters and letters of older generations (what few I have), I want to note a few observances regarding the letters.

First, I intend to digitize into *.jpeg format each of the letters into files in which each of file will be named for the date the envelope was postmarked denoted as follows 1957.06.01 pm. A date/file name without the ‘pm’ indicates that there was a letter, but no envelope.

I will try to get them organized in related segments/events, and then of course by date. My goal, ultimately, will be to have all of them digitized and typed. As best I can, I will digitize and type the older ones first.

The letters generally will fall into the following groups.

Pre-1940
Most of these fall into the WWI era time frame with one coming just after the war in 1920 (which has already been digitized and transcribed) and a group of letters having been written from a family in France who had befriended Edward Gordon Ponder and kept up correspondence with his youngest sister Dollye Elizabeth Ponder Thompson, Mme. Guiggard and her daughter according to the letters. The spelling is the best interpretation/transcription I can decipher.

Military letters:
Most of these that I will publish will be from WWII, so as to maintain the standard that the primary writers are no longer living, to protect identity, etc. as much as possible. The bulk of these letters were written from Allen Vernon Tuten to his parents Joseph Alexander and Ruth Rogers Tuten. I will also scan and transcribe a journal that one of A. V. Tuten’s crew-mates kept regarding their missions in Europe. There are a few letters that Marguerite Elizabeth Thompson, while in boot camp, wrote to Ralph and Naomi ‘Jane’ Bowden. There are a few military documents as well that I will scan and include.

1957
These letters were written while Robert Harold Clinton & Marguerite Elizabeth Thompson Clinton, referring to each other as Baja and Tommy or Tombone respectively through out the letters, were living apart from each other between May 1957 and Sept. 1957. Baja was in Norwalk, California writing to Tommy and their children in Watkinsville, Georgia and vice versa. Unfortunately, the letters for the month of July that Tommy wrote to Baja are currently missing, and likely lost to posterity. All of the letters written from Baja to Tommy, to my knowledge are accounted for.

While writing to each other during this time, they rarely missed a day of writing, and the letters that I have read thus far have been descriptive of their days and especially full of love for each other and almost disconsolate longing and loneliness while apart.

For each set of letters, mistakes within the letters will be kept as is with the typical notation of [sic] after each.

I will try without too much commentary to let the letters speak for themselves. When narration is necessary or beneficial, I will provide it.

AFN
DCC
Athens, GA 4 June 2009
Rainy

WWI & WWII Relics

First of all, Happy Easter!

I mentioned WWI & II items that I had recently; however, these were not the ones that intended. But, I think they'll do for now. They're two of my favorite pieces that I've found in amongst the forgotten piles of artifacts that sat so long at my grandparent's (Bob & Marguerite Clinton). In all honesty, as with the earlier letter, these are just a small portion of the photos/relics that I want to preserve and/or digitize that we found at the house. I'll have these two in chronological order.

Death Certificate of Corp. Edward Gordon Ponder

This one is fairly explanatory in terms of what it is, and the heading pretty well takes care of that. Whether it's actually his signature or not, I don't know, but it is signed by General John 'Black Jack' Pershing, who was the commander of the AEF during the Great War.

As I've mentioned previously Gordon, as he was called by his family, and was mentioned in the previously published letter on this blog, died of illness, rather than gunshot or any violent means, at the end of Oct. 1918, within a couple weeks of the armistice. Here's a BW photo (courtesy of my new camera) that I took of the certificate.

V-E Day!

This one is even more self-explanatory. Another 'relic' that I found at my grandparents' house. Whether my grandmother (M.E. Thompson Clinton) or great-grandmother (Belle Crenshaw Clinton, one of the wayfarers) kept the paper originally, I do not know, but it was likely one of them who held onto the paper at the end of the European war. Again, in BW.

More to come as I can get things digitized.

AFN

DCC

Vidalia, GA 12 April 2009

Matthew, Chapter 1, Intro

As I was posting recently, I realized that having some connecting links to each of these stories might help, besides just the labels below. I'll try to link each of these as I post, but as I can.

I'll post each one as I get it typed up, which may take a while. For a few of these, I'll leave off after a couple generations as some of them have connections further back than what I will list or I will end with an ellipses and an explanation of where the line 'goes.'

There will be four parts:

Part I. Robert Harold Clinton, Sr.
Part II. Marguerite Elizabeth Thompson
Part III. Allen Vernon Tuten
Part IV. Willie Amelia Mayers

We’ll leave each of these at 2 generations back, ending w/ my grandparents, but I’ll go with what I have and dates and locations so that folks have an idea of how this works and the interconnections, but to preface each of the parts, I’ll start ‘out’ of the state, i.e. Georgia, and work inwards, as most of my families are very closely tied to Georgia. Of my grandparents, 4 died in Georgia, and 3 of 4 were born in Georgia, with at least 2 generations of their ancestors living in the state.

More to come as I get them typed up.

AFN

DCC

14 January 2009, Athens, GA, the house

Ma & the Great Depression

Here is a description that my grandmother, 'Ma', wrote for me when I was working on a project for the 3rd grade (it may have been 4th) 'Social Science Fair'. I was so much 'in' to the work that it was quite possibly the laziest I've ever been on a project, which is saying something. I left the project board bare with the exception of the title which I had printed on a dot matrix printer from dad's Apple IIe (another bit of history there) and a couple charts I had printed & colored. And then there was the 'report' which, I'll leave off as saying it was very similar to what is below.

This effectively served as my 'interview' of my grandmother at the time. Here it is . . . in her own words written c. 1990-2:

The Depression
A piece Ma wrote to help me with a project on the Great Depression.

In 1929, when I was 6 years old, the big “crash”, or depression, hit this country. The shock of a suddenly collapsing economy was nationwide, but, in our small town, it was not immediately apparent.

Then the bank where my father worked closed, and he lost the property he had bought in more prosperous times. We moved to a boarding house, where my mother and I stayed while my father looked for work, which was hard to find. Finally he found a job in Cartersville , GA , and we were there as long as the job lasted. We moved a number of times up until 1939, when we settled in Oconee County , where my parents lived the rest of their lives.

Jobs and money were very scarce. We had a garden and grew corn to be ground into meal, which we used to make cornbread. The fresh vegetables and corn were often all we had to eat. We rarely had “loaf bread” to eat in those days—it was considered a special treat. Sometimes we could trade Watkins Products, which my father sold for awhile, for coffee, sugar, salt, and pepper at local small grocery stores.

We learned to recycle everything and make every resource last as long as possible—from food and clothing to coal and wood for fires and kerosene for light and cooking, in those houses we lived in which didn’t have electricity.

Surplus products such as dried beans, grits, margarine, corn meal, sugar, and flour were available free from the government for people who needed them. The margarine in those days was white, like shortning, with a color packet provided that you added to the margarine then stirred with a spoon until it was well mixed and hand a smooth yellow tint.

At one time my parents picked cotton for our landlord, to help pay rent, while I took care of my younger brother and sister. We lived about a mile out of town then and didn’t have a car, so we either had to walk or catch rides wherever we went. My father caught a ride to and from work each day. So many people were in that same situation, and those who had cars were good about giving others rides. We felt safe “hitch hiking” then. Now, of course, it’s a very dangerous thing to do, but in those days we all depended on each other.

President Franklin Roosevelt started some educational programs in the late 1930’s to help young people work and learn trades at the same time. After graduating from high school, where I worked in the school kitchen and at the local hospital, while learning typing and shorthand in class. We students were paid a small salary for the work we did, and we could go home on weekends.

On Dec. 7, 1941 , Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii , and our country declared war on Japan . Our boarding school closed shortly afterward, as many young men students went to war. Later I attended another school to learn woodworking and furniture finishing, and we made and finished furniture to be used in Army barracks.

President Roosevelt’s economy recovery programs, and then the war, provided jobs and many for more and more people, and prosperity gradually returned. But none of us who lived through it will ever forget the Depression.

Mrs. R.H. Clinton (at the time the events took place she was/is Marguerite Elizabeth Thompson, with nicknames ranging from Rita to Marty to Tommie)

I'll include a bit more later in terms of where she & her family moved, also quite the journey during the depression, almost as if my grandfather's (her husband's family) becoming sedentary signaled her family's becoming mobile, but for reasons no one wants.

AFN
DCC
8 January 2009
UGA, Athens, GA