Winter to...more winter

Tucked some pea plants into the garden...there's an act of faith. I planted starts as the little tiny slugs never let the sprouts get a start when I put in seeds, and I suspect the crows and jays watch me plant and then go collect the peas and beans. I'm so tired of cold.

One thing I notice as I start to slow down a bit, is that the house maintenance projects just start to get away from me. My list is more-or-less permanent and I'm avoiding the big ones like a plague. Maybe I know too much. The shop will need a total rebuild at some point, when it is ready to enter domesticity again. All of the plumbing needs washers and things...and I am my own handyman, so that can be a problem. There's too much for one person to do to keep a life going these days, so you have to have money to hire people to do for you, and there I bring up one of my main challenges, so let's change the subject.

House research has gone up a notch since someone hipped me to the Geneological Society research room. I found a five-volume set of Vaughan notebooks, and discovered a couple of excellent details. They might have the census records not available online, like the 1900 one that is illegible. I need that one.

I have come to the realization that what I want is intimacy with these predecesors of mine. I want to know little things about them, what they canned, what they sewed, how they talked to their families. I enjoyed finding out that the Davis family were devoted Quakers, a group that was often persecuted, which partially explains why they never engaged in killing native people, though they did help themselves to their camping grounds. I suppose people thought it was inevitable progress to use land that looked underutilized, to populate the powerful new nation that was such a huge romantic fantasy for them.

And there were slaves here, too, though most had been freed. There is a racist subtext to much of the local history, people avoiding the Civil War, people wanting it to come here, Columbia College being burnt down several times...I am afraid some of my Vaughans were not very tolerant people. It turns out that William Tyler Vaughan, our original settler, wandered off from his family and made a few trips here, earning the title of Captain Billy and heading a few wagon trains. He spent some time participating in gold mining, and some time at "Hangtown" participating in corrections...lynching people for various reasons, it seems. His wife Phoebe was revered for her long-suffering generosity and they saved a lot of people, too.

They named their sons after famous people, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy, George Washington, and even William Tell and Marquis Lafayette! That makes it not much of a mystery where Floyd got the idea to name one of his sons after the Bilyeu family. Floyd Governor was the one I'm interested in, their third son. I think he did the majority of farming while the two older sons ranged around with the Captain, going off to mine gold and adventure. They had at least 12 children.

I found out that his first wife, Angeline Baber, was blind, which helps explain why they had a housekeeper. Miranda Freeze Haskett had four children when she married Floyd after the buggy accident that killed Angeline. I can't find out anything about what happened to her husband, and I speculate that her infant twins could have been fathered by Floyd G. If there was a scandal, there might be a record of it, but all of the pioneers made practical decisions about life and death all of the time. You certainly couldn't make it alone in those days, but many women were as good as alone when the men went off to prove up or get in on the gold rush. I'm sure it was no picnic to be a kid then, either.

Have to rush off but be assured that I am hot on the trail of the most intimate, heart-warming details available about the lives of these women and children and decorators and builders. I am bringing everything old into my heart and turning it over to see if someoen scrawled "I was here" on it in fading pencil lines.

I'm finding my own gold. I'm not likely to bury it in the yard under the peas. Somehow, I am going to make it relevant to my life, wrap it in the words I love to manipulate, and polish it up.

Just waiting for the sun to come out...and the strawberries, the perennials, the new bird-planted trees I have to unplant. I have a bird nesting in the wreath I made of sticks on the front porch...I think it might be a towhee. I'll have to find a way to watch it, and watch for eggs. Guess that's one holiday decoration that will stay up for a bit longer.