Families through history

 Housing forms of Indigenous North Americans

A house in Texas at the turn of the last century

A jacal in San Benito, Texas circa 1905

a Delaware-Lenape Tribe longhouse outside

a Delaware-Lenape Tribe longhouse inside

by Carl Mydans around 1936 for the Farm Security Administration

Annie Oakley

by Dorothea Lange, May 1942 Woodland, California.

 Families of Japanese ancestry with their baggage at railroad station awaiting the arrival of special train which will take them to the Merced Assembly center, 125 miles away.

American documentary photographer and photojournalist, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), photographed in 1965 by American photographer, Ansel Adams (1902-1984).

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Today's quote:

Emily Dickenson

The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly;
The pretty people in the woods
Receive me cordially.

The brooks laugh louder when I come,
The breezes madder play.
Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?
Wherefore, O summer's day?

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For this week's Sepia Saturday 

Host Alan Burnett says this:

It's a sad state of affairs when you are so old you become a Sepia Saturday prompt. Nevertheless, that is me in the centre of the picture - not the one with the long ears, but the little cute chap taking his first ride on a seaside donkey. I don't look too thrilled at the prospect, and, if truth be told, neither does the donkey. However, like the brave little soldier I was, I posed for the photograph in the knowledge that it would come in useful over three quarters of a century later as a Sepia Saturday prompt. Find in it what you will - cute little chaps, donkeys with big ears, seaside sands ... or whatever. Whatever old photograph of your own it brings to mind, share it on or around Saturday 9th August 2025 and add a link to the list below. And here is a reminder of what is to come for the rest of the month.

 

Launched in 2009, Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind (they don't have to be sepia) become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images. If you want to play along, all we ask is that your sign up to the weekly Linky List, that you try to visit as many of the other participants as possible, and that you have fun.

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I always had great love of horses, ponies...but very seldom had any experience of them. A photo was taken of me as a little tot on one. A trail ride as a teen through a park once. Lots of horse adventure books growing up however, and once TV westerns came along, I was smitten. The 60s were certainly full of cowboys for entertainment.

The old photo of cowgirl me and my little sister:

I was 3-1/2 and Mary was 4 months  old.

Roger of Sicily -sources

Text available here:

https://archive.org/details/hubert-houben-roger-ii-of-sicily-a-ruler-between-east-and-west-2002/page/n15/mode/2up?view=theater (originally in German 1907) 200

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Roger_II_of_Sicily/Duwowbx1vuQC?hl=en&gbpv=1 (1997)

seems a duplicate

Alchemy of Clay's articles:

https://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/2017/05/normandy-and-sicily-for-rogers-roots.html

And:

https://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/2017/05/sir-roger-de-hauteville.html

And:

https://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/2017/05/roger-ii-king-of-sicily.html

and...

https://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/2017/05/from-sicily-to-england.html

and

https://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/2017/05/those-normans-in-italy.html

and

https://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/2017/05/sir-john-fitz-roger-13867-4-oct-1441.html

and

https://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/2017/06/our-rogers-ancestress-dame-elizabeth-de.html

New source about Roger II of Sicily

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Roger_II_of_Sicily/Duwowbx1vuQC?hl=en&gbpv=1

Roger, King of Sicily and others

Looking at the earliest records of the Rogers family tree, I find oh so many errors. Dates where a husband was born after the woman he supposedly married had died, etc!

This is a historic video of rulers of Europe from 200 bc to 2017 current era. 

I was particularly interested in the King of Sicily, Roger I. He's supposedly an ancestor of ours.

But my family tree has the dates all wrong, according to the time-line here. 

After the fall of Rome, for many years (centuries) various Arabic/Moor names were heads of Sicily. (see very bottom on map)

Then in 1072, Roger I is the King of Sicily (and other areas also perhaps)

I've captured several more years after that, as kingdoms of Sicily changed.

Roger I of Sicily, Roger Borsa southern Italy

Simon of Sicily, Roger Borsa some of southern Italy.

Roger II, Sicily, Roger Borsa of southern Italy.

Roger II

Roger II

Guillaume I

Guillaume II

No more "Rogers'" but Tancred I.

Someone in my ancestry has linked these Sicilian kings with the English Rogers. Interesting stuff.

Old cars and new dresses

When your grandmother is a seamstress, your mother takes your measurements and sends them off to here a few months before birthday, Christmas and Easter. Then surprise, a new dress arrives, for both yourself and your little sister!

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Old cars driving on crowded city street - for Sepia Saturday this week.

Here I stand proudly on my 8th birthday in a new outfit (red and blue plaids) made by my dear grandmother back in San Antonio TX. My little sister has the same plaid I think. We're in front of a beautiful Studebaker on the street of our first apartment (5530 Cates Ave) in St. Louis MO. Yes,  I remember not only the address but probably the phone number and another license plate!

When, in 1975, I attempted to show my own sons (then at age 8 and 11) the old apartment building, it had burned down and was an empty lot. You really can't go back. (We drove our camper from Tampa throughout the summer of '75 as far as Wisconsin and Montana to Arizona and back.)

Back to the 1950 photo... besides the AAA emblem on the license tag, I'm not sure if it was still from Texas, or then Missouri. No amount of stretching, changing contrast etc. would let these old eyes figure it out. But the dark colors do remind me of 50s Missouri tag colors.

The main emotion I have? Why on MY birthday did my sister also get a new dress? What about turning 8? Wasn't that something special?

OK, maybe that’s petty. After all my family moved away from Houston, I was without any friends, about to start going to a new school, and my parents were looking for work to support us. I also remember that mid August it was so cold we tried lighting a fire in the fireplace in the new apartment…with disastrous results. Either we didn’t open the damper, or the chimney had been closed off above us. Many coughs and wearing all our sweaters later…

We also had to wait to get our furniture, as it had been put in storage when we arrived and so we stayed in furnished places until we found this apartment in walking distance of the school we would be attending (private, for Christian Science kids.)

I think we had some WW II surplus army cots to sleep on.

Boy life was so different then.

No air conditioning either, and hanging out clothes (washed in basement 2 floors below) was in an ugly back yard. (I was too short to do that.) Mom tried to plant some zinnias, but the ground was pretty awful. No hanging out clothes in the winter, because everyone heated with coal (including us.) Lots of dirty coal dust floated down on everything! Clothes were hung in the basement to dry.

And then that winter we got to walk to school in snow. Nobody plowed the sidewalks! And often they had more snow because the plows went by on the streets! Well, we had at least one day when school was closed...maybe more! We had galoshes for our feet, not that great when snow was more than 8 inches deep! But my dad got us a sled, and we found Art Hill in Forest Park, which was great long sliding down...but then someone had to pull the sled (and my 4 year old sister back up the hill - Daddy of course!)

I did have a good life, all in all. I survived childhood illnesses without any medicine...being prayed over only. My parents stayed together and I eventually figured out their way of silent communication was a form of love.

And my sister and I got a good education.

Sitting on the edge

 People are being rescued who have fallen from our many waterfalls these days. After Hurricane Helene changed the paths of many of our water courses, the falls and pools below them are much more dangerous. But the park service which looks after the grounds, paths, parking lots and restrooms are diligent and trying to keep things safe.

What about those who want a photo with the pretty scene in the background?

Did you notice this is a winter-time shot?

Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station. Who is taking this photo?

Granddaughters dangling their feet over the inland waterway in St. Petersburg FL.

Two granddaughters at the fort in St. Augustine FL

Second cousins about 10 years ago.

The many overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway aren't having as much traffic this year, as some of the road has still not been repaired.

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week, where a young man doesn't look particularly happy sitting on the fake balustrade.

A studio photo of my youngest son at around 3. At least he isn't posed on a fake parapet! 

Today's quote:

When we’re feeling lonely, we’ve lost the idea that we’re all one, and none of us are separate from the whole

Getting there is the journey

 A couple of "before and after" shots...

Starting with Rte. 66 across America:

TAMIAMI Trail (U.S. Highway 41) opened Feb 1, 1929

Actually US 41 across Florida to Miami, is pretty dull.

A postcard of the Western North Carolina railroad between Old Fort and Black Mountain!

My mother, holding the Keystone motion picture camera (8 mm) next to a train which might have carried her grandfather, Charles Herman Miller, in Texas as the passenger conductor. The train was in a museum in Missouri when we visited in the 1950s.

When Great grandfather Charles Herman Miller got married back in 1896, there was this notice given in the Houston Post.

The Houston Post Oct 30, 1896 - perhaps a bit fallible, since Charles Herman Miller came from Germany as a child (unknown how old) and no information has yet been found on his parents. One story is that he stowed away on a ship to Galveston (a big port at the time). Perhaps he had foster parents in Bellville, TX.  Or this was convenient...since the marriage was in Hillsboro TX where the bride's family lived.. quite a way from Houston. But it does give him membership in a secret benevolent order, as a Knight of Pythias. 

Wikipedia lets us know some vague facts about the order...

Membership has historically been open to males in good health who believe in a Supreme Being. Maimed individuals were not admitted until 1875. Members are accepted by blackball ballot.

A member must be at least 18 years of age, and must take the following oath:

I declare upon honor that I believe in a Supreme Being, that I am not a professional gambler, or unlawfully engaged in the wholesale or retail sale of intoxicating liquors or narcotics, and that I believe in the maintenance of the order and the upholding of constituted authority in the government in which I live. Moreover, I declare upon honor that I am not a Communist or Fascist; that I do not advocate nor am I a member of any organization that advocates the overthrow of the Government of the Country of which I am a Citizen, by force or violence or other unlawful means; and that I do not seek by force or violence to deny to other persons their rights under the laws of such country.

By the end of the so-called "Golden Age of Fraternalism" in the early 1920s, the order had nearly a million members. By 1979, however, this number had declined to fewer than 200,000.

In 1892, the Supreme Lodge ruled that the work of the order would only be conducted in English. This upset some members who were accustomed to using German. After this ruling was reiterated at the Supreme Lodges of 1894 and 1895, a number of German-speaking Pythians split off and formed the Improved Order, Knights of Pythias at a convention in Indianapolis in June 1895. The new order was reportedly not very popular, and a movement toward reconciliation occurred a few years later.

The fact that enough Knights of Pythias wanted a German language organization for a while at least, would have been attractive to Great Grandfather Herman Miller, since that was apparently his native language.

Knights of Pythias Castle, Houston, Texas (postcard, circa 1898)

Two other interesting documents are on my Ancestry file on Great Grandpa Miller:

On Sept 11, 1937 he applied for US citizenship, stating his birthday as July 18, 1868.

But wait, he again applied on Oct. 9, 1939.

This time he had witnesses, Willis E. Long, and Jack E. Adams both of San Antonio TX. I would imagine this time there was more caution about Germans becoming US citizens, since Germany was beginning the events that led to WW II.

So finally this widower at age 68, and then age 70 by 1937 may have become a citizen of the USA. 

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For this week's Sepia Saturday post

I love riding through the mountains...much as this person did so many years ago!

Father's Day memories of ...

 Thomas Joseph Naglieri...my daughter-in-law Michelle's father.

In blue is my daughter-in-law's mother, Joanne, with her husband, Thomas Naglieri. Jerry Fiori on far left is Joanne's cousin, with his wife, Liz.

I would need help from Michelle (my daughter-in-law) as to who all of these relatives are. The man in the middle in red striped shirt is her father, Thomas. She is leaning forward over his back, with high curly hair, wearing white. Her mother, Joanne is right above her with short dark hair. I don't know who the two little children are he's holding. **

** UPDATE: Michelle gave me some identifications. Back from left to right: Grandfather Joe Fiori, John Nichols, wife Debbie, Joey, Joanne, Grandma Rose Fiori, Vicki (Joe's second wife.) Children are Michelle's cousins Justin and Stephanie.

For a man full of life, Tom was killed in a boating accident when he was only 56 on April 17, 1994. Michelle was almost 26 and living in New York City. Her parents were living in Greenwich CT. I think the publication refers to the Greenwich newspaper where Tom worked for 10 years.

Michelle speaks so fondly of her father whenever he's mentioned. You can tell they had a special relationship. I wish I knew more about Tom Naglieri.

Tom and Joanne had friendships with another couple who lived nearby. Gerhart (Gerry) Kurth and his wife Carol Jaroszewski Kurth. The story I was told was that the husbands had an agreement, that if either would die, and one of their wives might die, they would take care of the other's family. Perhaps one or the other of them was sick at the time. Gerry and Carol had more children than Tom and Joanne (who had 2). I can't find more details about Gerry and Carol's family, except the two sons who died - as living relatives on Ancestry are kept private.

Anyway, Carol Kurth died in August of 1994, a few months after Tom Naglieri. Gerry's address for the next few years was in Hawaii.

In Oct 1997 Joanne Naglieri and Gerry Kurth got married. 

Michelle keeps calling him Gerry, which is normal enough for a step father of a grown woman. Joanne kept her Naglieri name as Tom's widow. My son Russ and Michelle were married 25 years ago, in 2000.

Joanne and Gerry now live in Florida, having sold the family home in Connecticut several years ago. 

Joanne's wedding to Gerry, with her daughter, Michelle