Rain!

Ah, it's raining a bit now, should be kind of dreary for the next few days. Weather. What can you do?

Can I get any more inane on this thing? Weather talk. If you're really interested in the weather, go to here. Really.

I'm on the verge of finishing the present book I'm reading, "The Pirate Coast," the story of the liberation of about 300 US Navy sailors from Tripoli in the early 1800's. It's one of those events in history that people kind of know about ("...From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli..." and all that), but that is really sketchy on the details when pressed. The book focuses on William Eaton, former American consul to Tripoli, and leader of a semi-US sponsored effort to overthrow the government of Tripoli. The book generally does a good job with the story, but the author is really in love with Eaton as a character. Not a real detraction to the book, but it's certainly not a really balanced account of the events. I am glad I read it, though. I have about 10 pages left.

That's the excitement here for now. More to come later, I'm sure...

NP: Adrian Belew - Big Blue Sun

Headstones!

Here are the two headstone photos that should have been in the blog the other day. This first one is for James and Sarah Lang. James died in 1861, and Sarah in 1884.

Below, you'll see the small headstone for John Lord, my G3-GF, who died in 1890. He was born in Ireland, and served in the Civil War for 3 years.

Exercise!

Tonight, I used our new elliptical machine for the first time for exercise (trying it out when it was first put together doesn't count). I exercised for about 14 minutes, and that was good to start. I'll try to increase by 5 minute increments over the next few days, until I'm up to 30 minutes.

That's about as much of my daily life I'm willing to give up to exercise. I have better things to do with my time that that. Like writing here. Or picking belly button lint out of the appropriate places.

Too much?

I had off from work today, while Sue had to work. We spent yesterday in Hoboken, hanging out in a park by the Hudson playing checkers, and then eating outside at a Mexican place. To prove we did all that, here's a picture of a boat on the river.

Ah, now isn't that pretty! Let me take a drink of water, and I will be right back...

Ah! H20.

Today, since Sue had to work, I did what any normal person would do on a beautiful, sunny day. I went to 3 different cemeteries!

My first stop was at Hollywood Cemetery in Union, NJ. I was looking for the plot of Thomas Lord, a cousin of my grandfather. Supposedly, according to another cousin, Thomas is buried right near his parents William and Elizabeth, but on exploring the area, I could not find a headstone for him. When I've asked before, the main office does not have a record for Thomas's burial in their cemetery. Very strange.

I then went to Fairmount Cemetery in Newark. I've been there numerous times before, but I wanted to see if I could find some headstones on Lord plots, that are there according to cemetery records, but may be overgrown. Here's an example of a cleaned up headstone, that was getting covered with grass. (NOTE: Blogger is having trouble with photos, so I will have to see if I can upload them later, perhaps tomorrow morning. The same goes for the John Lord photo mentioned below.)

Of course, for a real comparison, I should have taken a photo before I cleaned it up. Live and learn. The above photo is for the grave of James and Sarah Lang, my great-great-great-great grandparents. They lived in Harrison/East Newark in the 1860's, after having immigrated here from Ireland.

And just to round out that trip, here's a picture of John Lord's headstone, from the same plot. John is my great-great-great grandfather, also born in Ireland, and he married Jane Lang in Newark in 1851. According to the Fairmount records, Jane should have a headstone in the same plot, but it's not there. Seeing how much these were covered with grass in just about a year since my last visit, I could imagine that there are some headstones that are just buried under an inch or two of grass.

I have a 3 foot long dowel that I put a nail into one end, in order to poke around in the ground to see if I would feel the distinctive "stop" of a nail hitting stone. However, I'm not sure if the nail is long enough to reach stones that may be under more than an inch of dirt or grass. I'll have to look for a longer nail.

Or, could there be any metal detector type thing that can find cut stone under dirt? Or would all the coffins and other stuff mess that up? Side scanning sonar? Something? There's got to be money in there for something like that, to have someone invent it, if it's not real already.

Also on the genealogy front, I've dug up a possible second marriage for one of my great-great-great-great-great grandfathers, Alexander Lindsay. Alex's (I am on a first name basis with these people) first marriage was to my G5-grandmother, Marion Dyer. However, based on Scotland census records, I discovered 3 additional children of Alex's, born appreciably after his first batch. And, Marion was nowhere to be seen. Therefore, I thought, the 3 additional kids may be from a second marriage. Today, thanks to the Mormon's, I think I found that second marriage. It would be to a woman named Helen Hosie.

And, in reviewing Alexander's 1841 and 1851 census records, I saw that his neighbors were a family of Hosie's. So, once I can get the official marriage record from Scotland's People, I can possibly confirm this second marriage. My hope would be that the marriage record would say something like, "Alexander Lindsay, widower of Marion Dyer, married..." blah blah blah...

Genealogists live in hope.

In random television news, I watched the premiere of Battlestar Galactica on Friday night. Even though I haven't seen the second half of Season 2 yet (it's next on my Netflix list), I was able to follow along with the plot pretty well. I won't get into a detailed analysis here, but it was quite good. There was a bit at the end, with Starbuck's baby, where I thought that perhaps the baby and the Cylon father were in cahoots, that the accident the child had wasn't "real," but we'll see where that ends up...

NP: Soundgarden - Fell On Black Days