the-stuff-of-time.md 3.4 KB
+++ title = "Things That Have Been Around The House for 220+ Years" author = ["George Jones"] publishDate = 2020-05-11 lastmod = 2022-02-25T06:51:36-05:00 tags = ["family", "history", "tolkien", "life"] categories = ["blog"] draft = false +++
The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, For none now live who remember it. ”
― J. R. R. Tolkien
Life goes on, until it doesn't. Then those of us who are still here are often left with the cherished collections of a generation, or two, or three, or four, or... The oldest thing I think I have in the house is this page torn out of a family bible (I have at least 3 of them, big, old, once-cherished). It records the death of a William Gould in 1792, and of Joseph Dennis Gould in 1835.
{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/goulds.jpg" caption="Figure 1: left-behind" >}}
I also have lecture notes Joseph Gould took at seminary, as describe in this slightly edited email I sent to a relative a few years ago. There were some big things going on in those days.
And here, almost certainly is the Dr. Beecher in question. Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe [Uncle Tom's Cabin]. Calvinist evangelist at the head of the second great awakening, leader in the temperance movement and at the center of a controversy at a seminary in Cincinnati about slavery the same year [1834] these notes were taken...18 straight nights of debate on the topic, near riots, 50 students withdrawing en mass and moving to Oberlin college. The church and the nation [were] starting to pull apart.
And then there was this barn [built by my ?great-great? grandfather Morrison for my other great-great grandfather ?Ephriam Gouuld?] north of Marietta [Lower Salem, Ohio] that housed runaway slaves. It was a stop on the underground railroad just north of the Ohio river. And 27 years later another young man [my great grandfather Elisha Morrison, later to marry Lydia Catherine Gould] who enlisted in the union army....
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Beecher
.... I have a book that appears to have started as Joseph Gould's notes on "Dr. Beechers lectures on theology" in 1834, then used by Daniel Gould as his account book from 1847 to his death in 1851. Then it contains Ephraim Gould's records as administrator of the estate, later records of Morris Morrison and and E F Morrison through 1891, and finally entries from Anna Gould from 1923 to 1925. We have Anna Goulds will dated 1925. I think I was told she was a sister to [my great grandmother] Catherine Gould Morrison and cared for Ephraim Gould in his old age, which is probably also why I have his cane..... I guess paper was scarce....
I'm not sure what to make of all this. It's good to know where you came from. There are stories and values associated with some of these things. It's good to remember the trials and victories of those who came before.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Day 11 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/