Little Egypt Heritage Articles Stories of Southern Illinois (c) Bill Oliver 18 April 2004 Vol 3 Issue: #16 ISBN: pending Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of Little Egypt, Spring time ... that time when you can write a paragraph and look up to witness the changes taking place. Analogies have to do with word relationships. I use them as mental exercises. Analogies are resemblances in some particular way between things otherwise unlike. In this article I use it to mean two things which relate to the same subject but come from different sources nearly at the same time. Maybe I should use the word homology, which means a similarity often attributable to common origin. Everything is not spam..There are things that I would not know if I didn't read my mail. A friend of mine is winding down from a humungous project ... the compilation of information in a wonderful resource book. In her words, "the book Ohio Cemeteries: 1803-2003 is now in print". It lists the names, locations, conditions, ownership, maintenance, etc of the 14,609 known cemeteries in Ohio. Further reading in the same organization publication reminded me that recently I read an obituary about one member of a wonderful group of people ... the WASP. Women have always been the "backbone" of families. They have also been the ones to take the place of "men" when men were off getting themselves killed. In round numbers, 1000 women pilots flew 60 million air miles during WWII. They flew experimental jets, planes rejected due to safety factors. They also pulled the targets for inexperienced gunners to practice their shooting. It was a "dirty" job but someone had to do it. In my research I have found many of my ancestors of two hundred years ago making their "mark" on legal documents. Harper's Magazine estimated, prior to the Civil War, that four-fifths of the reading public were women. There is a long list of things that put women "down" so to speak. "Dower rights" were not something women were in control of totally. Or, take the societal requirement in Revolutionary Pennsylvania of single women with children "on the dole" to wear a red "P" on their sleeves. Another "Scarlet Letter". [Oh, the "P" stood for Pauper.] Well back to the Women Pilots. There were the Women Airforce Service Pilots [WASP]. They were called together by forceful women. In 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt said, "This is not a time when women should be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and ever weapon possible. WOMEN PILOTS, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used." The latest WWII Woman Pilot to take her Last Flight was LTCOL Yvonne "Pat" Pateman. From her obituary, "Aviation pioneer and author LTCOL Yvonne "Pat" Pateman died in her sleep April 4, 2004 near her home in Laguna Woods, CA. The cause was a stroke following a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. She was 84." She spent her career serving in three wars (WWII, Korea, and Vietnam). She retired in 1971 after 22 years service. She devoted her later years to bringing recognition to WASP and championing women military aviators through her public speaking and publications. She authored "Women Who Dared". Meanwhile, back on the frontier [200 and 300 years ago] my Ulster-Irish ancestors were always out on the "cutting" edge. Energetic, restless, and enterprising, they were not content to tarry long in "civilization". This no doubt accounts for the fact that it s very difficult to find descendants in 17thand 18th century locations. They were being beckoned by the opportunities in the form of trapping and big game hunting offered to the brave, bold and ambitious by wild frontiers. The men, often in small groups of three or maybe four, would leave their wives and families in a settlement, while they drove small herds out in search of new opportunities in new territories. They would often reach a prairie area with timber along about fall and "dig" in for the winter. During those winter days they would hunt and trap. As spring would approach they would tap maple trees for the sap to make sugar ... a prized commodity in settlements. In the spring the would return to their families laden with furs and sugar to market. That accomplished they would pack up their families taking them to the new locations. In another year or two, the process might repeat itself. <sigh> e-la-di-e-das-di ha-wi nv-wa-do-hi-ya nv-wa-to-hi-ya-da. (May you walk in peace and harmony) Wado, Bill -=- PostScript: Other sites worth visiting: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/SOIL http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/ILMASSAC http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state/BillsArticles/LittleEgypt/intro.html