) ( ) Good Morning Family! .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . \| |// ...and we even have decaf, | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! \ / ------ Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. Christmas gifts reminder 3. The truth about Thanksgiving If you've been with the family for at least three weeks, you'll probably want to skip the following paragraphÂ… TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur ancestors or any of the 81+ variant spellings we research that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. If you haven't visited the homesite of this list yet, you are encouraged to do so. Our home is Bower Community, located at <http://bowercommunity.com>. There, we currently have two sites: The Bower Family Homestead [a.k.a., the Homestead] is our primary homesite and the gathering place for much of our information. It waits to join us all in welcoming you into the family at <http://bowercommunity.com/homestead>. Smaller and just opened this year, our sister site, the Bower Cottage, houses most of our projects including an online GEDCOM fed by quite a few cousins from our lists. The Cottage is still small as far as material goes, however give us time and we'll have it filled really soon. The Cottage is at <http://bowercommunity.com/cottage>. CHRISTMAS GIFTS REMINDER (AND, IN CASE YOU'RE NEW TO THE FAMILY) To those of you who are new, we have Christmas together ~ something we've done the past two years. Yes, even in cyberspace we have this family day together ... We'll have a Christmas tree at the Homestead, complete with gifts. It will be set up as a page off the parlor just after Thanksgiving. Gifts won't be available for opening until Christmas Day and will remain online throughout December into early January. Gifts are genealogy files sent directly to me <[email protected]> for "wrapping" and placing under the tree. We all benefit when you give a gift, enjoy a family Christmas together, and some even feel the childhood magic and excitment of the Christmas season return ~ if even for a little while. Gifts can be anything genealogy-related. Here are some suggestions: a list of names from a given year's tax records; a biography; 3-4 generations of a family; a few wills; photographs; deeds; a county's/country's obituaries for a given period; immigration/emigration records; copies of vital records certificates ... and the list goes on. The point is you can be as creative as you'd like. Records can come from any source, and you can give as many gifts as you'd like. Gifts should be submitted DIRECTLY TO ME <[email protected]> ~ NOT TO THE LIST. Deadline for submissions is December 9th so I'll have enough time to "wrap" everything. Questions? Send me an email and make your subject line read RE: CHRISTMAS PRESENTS so I'll be sure to spot it. THE TRUTH ABOUT THANKSGIVING I don't know where the year went so quickly. It seems like just about two months ago that we were welcoming in the new year and saying 'good-bye' to the years 19__. But, Thanksgiving is just four days away and I thought, in keeping with the holiday (and since genealogy is also history), that I'd pass along a few truths to all of you: 1. The Pilgrims were not celebrating a great harvest during what we, today, consider the first Thanksgiving. The harvest of 1621 (when legends of the American Thanksgiving began) was rather poor. The barley, wheat and peas the Pilgrims brought with them from England had failed. Thanks to Squanto, a member of the Wampanoag tribe, the Pilgrims' corn crop did so well they were able to double their weekly food rations. 2. The guests, members of the Wampanoag tribe, brought most of the food. Though the Pilgrims invited their new friends, they weren't prepared to feed everyone who showed up! Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief, had to send his men home for supplies. 3. The following foods, all considered staples of the modern Thanksgiving meal, were not present at the Pilgrim's feast: ham, chicken or eggs, sweet potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, milk. 4. Foods that probably appeared on the table were: seafood (cod, eel, clams, lobster); fowl (turkey, goose, duck, partridge); meat (venison); vegetables (pumpkin, peas, beans, onions, lettuce, radishes, carrots); fruit (plums, grapes); nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, acorns); herbs and seasonings (leeks, dried currants, parsnips, liverwort). 5. The Pilgrims didn't eat with forks. They used spoons, knives and their fingers. Did you know ...? ** ... the first Thanksgiving did not begin the tradition, as it wasn't repeated. (The second feast was held two years later to celebrate the end of a drought.) ** ... the first feast wasn't called 'Thanksgiving'? (The Pilgrims were just happy to be alive. Forty-seven people died during the first winter ~ nearly half their community.) ** ... the original feast in 1621 took place sometime between September 21st and November 11th and lasted for three days? (The celebration was based on English harvest festivals, traditionally occuring around September 29th. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November in 1939. Previously, Abraham Lincoln had the date designated as the last Thursday in November ~ a date which might have been determined by the anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Code on November 21st, 1621.) ** ... that, unlike what you see in the pictures, the Pilgrims did not wear only black and white clothing nor did they have buckles on their shoes? (Buckles didn't come into fashion until later in the seventeenth century; black and white was reserved for Sundays and formal occasions. Women normally wore clothing of red, green, blue, violet, brown and gray; the men wore green, beige, white, brown and black.) ** ... that the Pilgrims, who are said to have been heading for Virginia, but ended up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts due to navigational error had actually intended to go to the Hudson River region in New York State? (The Pilgrims were part of the Virginia Company, which had the rights to most of the U.S. eastern seaboard. New York would have been considered "Northern Virginia." Storms and buffeting seas prevented them from going further south.) ** ... that Squanto, the Wampanoag who showed the Pilgrims how to grow corn, had earlier been captured and sold into slavery in Spain by slave traders? (A Spanish priest helped him return to his homeland. But, by the time he returned to his ancestral home, his village had been wiped out by the plague, brought by the slave traders. It was later that Squanto help the Pilgrims when he saw them suffering and struggling.) Family ... it's what we're all about ... Thank you for allowing me to spend this time with you. I hope your upcoming week is filled with health, productivity, fun, and above all, filled with love. Cousins, as we step into our holiday season, I'd like to wish you all a happy and bountiful Thanksgiving! It's nearly time to PIG OUT!!! :) ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.'