If you are a grandmother you may be one of a select few who understands the gravity of your intimate relationships with your grandchildren and their parents who by the way are your children that hopefully you and their father raised together. Now, none of us was handed a parenting guide when we discovered we … Continue reading 𝄞We are F-a-m-i-l-y ♬
Grandparent
What’s All This Fuss About a Groundhog Named Phil and Punx’a’what?
Our local Calvert County weather forecast for Friday, calls for a mostly cloudy day, which in Groundhog Day terms means if Punxsutawney Phil were here with us locally he wouldn't see his shadow and we would see an early Spring instead of six more weeks on Winter! Wel, guess what? Punxsutawney's forecast also calls for … Continue reading What’s All This Fuss About a Groundhog Named Phil and Punx’a’what?
Remembering Robert
About Grandsons Grandsons make us Proud. Grandsons listen to Family stories, even when they go on and on. Grandsons Surprise and delight us, and sometimes shock us a little. Grandsons know what's Cool, and they keep us up on it, too. Grandsons make us feel Important and wise. Grandsons add Fun to any occasion. Everybody should be … Continue reading Remembering Robert
Nearly 75 Years Later – A Family’s Unanswered Questions and Unsolved Mysteries Unravel
My Family of Secrets A year ago, nearly exactly to the day, I wrote a rather long and personal post about my paternal grandparents and great-grandparents--the Bollings and the Chambers. From its title, you can infer that there were some unanswered questions and mysteries surrounding these people and their relationships that dated back years before … Continue reading Nearly 75 Years Later – A Family’s Unanswered Questions and Unsolved Mysteries Unravel
Chi-Town –The Wedding Weekend, Part II
Friday, April 11, 2014 On Saturday, April 12, 2014, Robert Joseph II's (our eldest son--age 47, left) eldest son, Robert Joseph III, (nearly 27), wed the love of his life, Corrie, in Chicago, IL. As their story goes, "Joe" and Corrie were among the nearly 13,000 who annually attended Liberty University (the largest Christian university … Continue reading Chi-Town –The Wedding Weekend, Part II
Boys vs. Girls
Boys vs. Girls "With about 1,048 male babies born for every 1,000 female babies born in 2008, boys are keeping the edge in a ratio that's stayed about the same over the past 60 years." (These numbers came from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, which are sometimes compiled and analyzed over … Continue reading Boys vs. Girls
What’s All This Fuss About a Groundhog Named Phil and Punx’a’what?
From my May 26, 2013, blog post, Busted "Brick Wall" Reveals More "Chambers" "…So again yesterday morning, I decided to start over once more with basic research techniques for the elusive Chambers within our family's ancestors. Among my review of earlier research and findings of Frank Maynard Chambers, through my contacts with the Las Vegas Bunker … Continue reading What’s All This Fuss About a Groundhog Named Phil and Punx’a’what?
Revisiting a 20-Year-Old Oral History from Frank and Norma Boling
Oral History Interview American Studies Class – 1993 the University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus By Student, Jennifer L. Dickinson About the Interviewees Frank Burton and Norma Florence (Ford) Boling [my maternal grandparents] are in their mid-60's. Frank is a retired Federal Government Employee—a pressman by trade. [Born in the mid-1920’s, and married in their teens], … Continue reading Revisiting a 20-Year-Old Oral History from Frank and Norma Boling
I’ve Got the Music In Me – Part 6
Bach's Jesu' Joy of Man's Desiring My Beautiful and talented GREAT Niece - Alyssa Nicole LaLone on Saturday, June 1, 2013, granddaughter of my brother Frank and his wife Diane, and daughter of their daughter, Jessica and Todd LaLone, celebrates her 8th birthday. I've Got The Music In Me (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, or Part 5) … Continue reading I’ve Got the Music In Me – Part 6
Busted “Brick Wall” Reveals More “Chambers”
It's absolutely exhilarating to bust through a genealogical brick wall and reveal more "Chambers" that until now had been hidden from our family. Since 1980 when I first started manually compiling our history I had gleaned only limited information about my dad's maternal Chambers' family from Pennsylvania. If you read my post from a couple … Continue reading Busted “Brick Wall” Reveals More “Chambers”
Five Generations Together, If Only For A Day!
Easter 2013 Easter always has meant church first and giving thanks to Jesus for his sacrifices for us, then spending the day with our earthly family of loved ones, breaking bread together, hunting for Easter eggs, and giving everyone—young to old--a chocolate Easter bunny on their way home. This year, we are especially fortunate because … Continue reading Five Generations Together, If Only For A Day!
It’s a Small World…
A Follow-On to I’ve Got the Music in Me–and Oh, How it Moves Me! – Part 3 On February 25, 2013, I published a blog I’ve Got the Music in Me–and Oh, How it Moves Me! – Part 3. It included a song with lyrics sung by C. Daniel Boling, who shares the surname,talents and heritage of the Boling family. … Continue reading It’s a Small World…
Walt Whitman’s Battles of Chancellorsville: Horrific Wounds, Night Fighting, and Other “Strange and Fearful Pictures”
Mysteries and Conundrums blogs about Civil War Battles in Virginia stir deep emotions in me as I try to imagine the fear. horrors, and impact of families during these times. The Bolling family, my grandfather, 3 great grandfathers and their families (descendants from the Bolling family originally from England) and descendants of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, lived for decades (1802-1946) on Elys Ford Road immediately adjacent to major Civil War Battles at Chancellorsville, Five Forks, and the Wilderness Farms. In fact the now infamous “Widow Tapp” was my 3rd great grandmother. The bulk of the Bolling descendants also lived in Stafford and Spotsylvania Counties, and in Petersburg. Where Widow Tapp lived a simple and poor life in Spotsylvania County, Robert Bolling IV in 1823 built the Bollingbrook Mansion, known today as Centre Hill Mansion Museum. Thank you again for these wonderful posts.
from: Harrison
This year’s sesquicentennial commemorations of the Battle of Chancellorsville will build upon long traditions of eyewitness, published narrative and non-eyewitness scholarship. Yet I’ve been fascinated lately to realize that Chancellorsville inspired Walt Whitman to make, forcefully, one of his earliest contrarian forecasts for writing about the Civil War, a view that he later expressed in the now-famous sentence, “The real war will never get in the books.”
Whitman’s longest-known rumination on Chancellorsville, dated May 12, 1863, asked
Of scenes like these, I say, who writes—who e’er can write, the story? Of many a score—aye, thousands, North and South, of unwritten heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first-class desperations—who tells? No history, ever—No poem sings, no music sounds, those bravest men of all—those deeds. Nor formal General’s report, nor print, nor book in the library, nor column in the paper, embalms the bravest, North or South, East or West.
(If…
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Our Unbounded Heritage: 12th Century & Beyond 