Happy Birthday, Mom!

Happy Birthday, Graham!

Graham was a big fan of Aladdin for a few years in the early '90s. Nice free-hand icing, mom!

Lookin' good.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Caitlin and Mark, 14 July 2007

Happy Birthday, Brighid!

Mom, Biddie, and Wheeler, 1996, Gettysburg, PA

Happy Birthday, Ben!

Caitlin and Ben, c. 1987

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Molly!

Amalia Pasqualina Hopkins

was born

Friday, 1 October 2010

at 11:52 a.m.

She weighed 9 lbs., 14 oz.

and was 22 inches long.

Posting/commenting may be sparse for a while, though I have "gravestones of the day" scheduled to autopost for the rest of the month.

Horst von Oppenfeld

Horst von Oppenfeld

Pete's great-uncle Horst passed away recently at the age of 97. He led a strange and wonderful life, and his biography may be of some interest to history buffs.

In Defense of Weddings

Getting all dressed up to get married, July 14, 2007.

Recently, I happened across an article bemoaning the high cost of weddings. In general, I think that critics of expensive weddings make some good points — the median cost of a wedding in America is $17,500, people could use that money for other things, the wedding-industrial complex has lots of arbitrary "musts" designed to fleece consumers, we don't need no piece of paper from the city hall, etc. I certainly understand the appeal of eloping and then spending nearly 20k on a fabulous trip (that $ wouldn't buy you a garden shed in my city, so I won't say "or house").

Yet, I will speak in defense of spending serious money on a wedding.*

I think that the sort of article that bemoans Americans' supposed stupidity for spending money on weddings or other celebrations — christenings, quinceañeras, graduations — often misses something important about living in communities. Sure, if we never threw birthday parties, we would have larger savings accounts, but that is a fairly cold measure of achievement. I think that assuming that the only thing that motivates people to spend money on celebrations is a self-centered love of conspicuous consumption overlooks how people create and sustain social bonds. A wedding isn't just a chance to show off — it's a chance to bring people you love together and to give them a opportunity to enjoy one another. For many people, marking the milestones of their lives with some amount of revelry is worth stretching their financial resources. It's not that they don't understand the magic of compound interest — they are making different (and reasonable) choices.

When Pete and I got married in 2007, we spent nearly $10,000 on our wedding and it was totally worth it. If I could live that day over again for 10k, I would do it in a heartbeat.

We did not have a fancy wedding — we got married in the little church up the street from my aunt's house and had the reception in her back yard. I bought most of my flowers at Stop & Shop and cut many of the rest in my mom's and aunts' gardens. Another aunt made the invitations. I bought my dress for $110 off the rack at Macy's. The bridesmaids' dresses were $100 each at the mall. We played music off of Pete's iPod over a sound system borrowed from my uncle.

Caitlin and Brighid in their fancy (but cheap!) dresses.

So where did all that money go?

We spent money on the things that would make the day great for our 150+ guests. We wanted to give our families and friends one wonderful day of enjoying one another and I think we succeeded in that.

About $1,000 went to cake. Rather than get an elaborate wedding cake, we bought about 30 cakes from our favorite bakery (Pastiche in Providence, RI) and had a cake buffet. Rather than choose one or two flavors, we ordered a bit of everything: cheesecake, carrot cake, lemon chiffon, chocolate, fruit tart, chocolate-raspberry torte, etc.:

Another $1,000 went to drinks: beer, wine, soda, water, and coffee. Three kegs of Sam Adams (Boston lager, stout, and summer ale) took up a chunk of that, as did 2 or three cases of wine. There's a local soda maker up the street from my parents' house, so we got a dozen different flavors of soda in glass bottles. We filled some big tubs with ice and put pitchers on a table and people helped themselves.

About $3,000 went to food. My mother and aunts made vats of pasta salad and potato salad, piles of cookies, and vast fruit plates. The bulk of this money went to a friend-of-a-friend who is a BBQ competition champ — we hired him to bring his setup and make pulled pork, spare ribs, bbq chicken, and grilled vegetables:

An additional $1,500 went to two large canopies. It turned out to be a spectacular day, weather-wise, but you can never tell in New England. If it had been drizzly, we would have been very thankful that we had those tents, so I can't regret the money we spent on them.

About $2,000 went to the photographer. It was a big expense, but we treasure the pictures we have from that day. We had her take family portraits of all of the nuclear families and extended families, with everyone looking their best and all together in the same place. We gave those pictures as Christmas presents and everyone has them framed in their houses now.

All the Galante cousins smiling and looking in the same direction — a rare occurrence.

There were other expenses here and there that made up the last little bit — church fees, gifts for the bridesmaids and groomsmen (we gave them the shirts/ties and necklaces they wore for the ceremony), a few hundred dollars on flowers, etc. In general, we didn't spend much on anything that wasn't directly related to making this a good party. I've been to plenty of un-fun weddings where I have eaten overcooked chicken and cardboard cake while attempting to avoid the dance floor, and I didn't think my family would have appreciated enduring that on my behalf. Instead, we blew 10 grand on the best barbecue ever and it was awesome.

Perhaps I remember my wedding with affection because my beloved grandfather had a devastating stroke a few weeks later, so it was the last time we were really all together as a family. When I look back at the pictures, I see my mom talking to my mother-in-law's friends and my grandmothers eating lunch together while my high school friends play badminton with Pete's cousins and the younger kids splash in the pool. Both of our families are musically inclined and many people brought instruments, leading to an hours-long cross-family, friend-inclusive jam session. Everyone got to chat with everyone else and enjoy free beer and good food.

So, I suppose it's true that if we had eloped and saved that $10,000, we could have invested it and spent it on Snapdragon's college education in 18 years. But we wouldn't have had that day, and we would have been the poorer for it.

Happy Three Years!

*I should note that we were married in Connecticut and live in Massachusetts, so marriage is an option available to all of our neighbors.

Happy Birthday, Wheeler!

Wheeler in his D'Artagnan phase, c. 1996

Happy 18!

Pownall Family Hat

Ramona and Edna Pownall, Rochester, NY, c. 1922

This is Pete's great-aunt, Edna B. Miller Pownall, who married his great-grandfather's brother, Raymond Pownall, right after WWI. The scowling little girl in the squishy hat is Pete's first cousin twice removed, Ramona Pownall.

First Communion Hats

It's spring! Since spring is the season of first communions, I bring you a number of communion veils/headbands from my family.

Dorothy Champagne, c. 1930, Waterbury, CT

Meg Galante, c. 1962, Waterbury, CT

Michelle Galante, c. 1965, Waterbury, CT

Caitlin DeAngelis (on left), c. 1991, Mansfield, CT

Brighid DeAngelis, c. 2002, Willimantic, CT

Faces of America

Are you watching Faces of America on PBS? You should be (also check out African American Lives and African American Lives 2).

Pete and I watched African American Lives with his family two Christmases ago and it inspired us to get our own DNA tests.

Faces of America has been pretty interesting so far, though it does tend to highlight family members who pulled themseves up by their bootstraps and succeeded in America because they just never gave up, at the expense of the louts and ne'er do wells that exist in every family tree. I can just imagine Prof. Gates doing my "Book of Life": Well, shall we start with your syphiltic great-grandfater or those DeAngelis cousins who were executed by the Allies after WWII? Maybe those draft dodgers in Argentina instead?

Still, I like to watch. It inspires me to use my research skills on my own family tree and, exhausting that, Pete's family tree.

Episode 3 airs tonight (Wednesday, February 24th) at 8:00 on PBS.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I am a bit tardy in posting this, but only because I spent the day with my mom instead of blogging, so I guess that's ok. My mom is the baby being held (and mocked) by her grandmother.

Hats of the DeAngelis Family

This week's edition of "Kids in Hats" features some good hats from my own family. The dashing fellow in the fur-lined cape and jaunty fedora is my great-great-grandfather, Benjamin DeAngelis. My great-grandfather, Americo Ilario DeAngelis, is the young teenager in the middle of the back row. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1892, so this photograph was probably taken between 1905 and 1910. The other people in the picture are my great-great grandmother, Maria Carmine Venditti, and my grandfather's aunts and uncles: Maria Antonia (the eldest), Andia (the scowling 11-year-old), Giovanni, Manfredo, Italia, and Reno. The man second from the left is Maria Antonia's husband.

Besides Benjamin's sartorial splendor, there are several notable hats in this photo. I am particularly fond of the Pillsbury doughboy look on Italia (bottom left).

Emma and Judy

I apologize for the lack of new posts lately. Gravestones usually get pushed to the back burner during this time of year.

In our family, this hidden week between Christmas and New Year's is often devoted to working on family history and going through old photographs. This year, I've been helping Pete's mom scan several hundred photographs from the Pownall family (Pete's paternal grandmother's family).

There are plenty of wonderful photos in the set, but by far my favorite is this picture of Emma Mathilde Rathke Pownall (Pete's great-grandmother) holding her daughter, Judith Jean (Pete's great-aunt). Judy was born in November of 1915 and her mother died in March of 1919 while giving birth to Pete's grandmother, Amy. In this photo, Judy is almost 2 years old, Emma is not visibly pregnant, and they are outside without coats, so I think it was taken in the late summer/early autumn of 1917.

We have boxes and boxes of studio photographs of this generation, but few candids. Though this picture is posed, you can't pose the smile on Judy's face. It's tragic that these two little girls grew up without a mother and heartbreaking to find a photo of their happiness before it was shattered. Still, it is a lovely photograph and I will be making a copy for myself, even though I'm only associated with them by marriage.

Emma Mathilde Rathke Pownall

1893-1919

Judith Jean Pownall

1915-2005

In a good hat!

Amy Dolores Pownall

and

Judith Jean Pownall

My Brother is Famous

Not really, but he is a manager for the UConn football team, so he keeps showing up in press photos. A few weeks ago, he celebrated a touchdown against Rutgers (see photo #33 — he's the one jumping in the background). Now, he's on the Sports Illustrated website — click through to photo #9 to see the full photo of Graham talking to his new friend.

Father of All Living

In Good Wives, Laurel Ulrich writes about colonial New England women's role as Eve, Mother of All Living. In that chapter, she argues that the fulfillment of a woman's role as mother came when she saw her children's children flourish.

I have found several references to women's abundant fecundity and matriarchal achievements on their gravestones, the most notable example being the Lois Cook Bartlett stone in Brunswick, ME.

On occasion, I also find this theme on men's gravestones (see Daniel Tyler, Brooklyn, CT). My most recent addition to this collection is the Elijah Shattuck stone in Pepperell, MA.

ELIJAH SHATTUCK

DIED

OCT. 30, 1841,

AE. 88.

He was the father of

8 Children,

13 Grandchildren

& 33 Great Grand

Children.

Sharing a Grave

Usually, when a gravestone is dedicated to more than one person, the people are related. They may be spouses, siblings, or parents with their children.

Very rarely, I come across gravestones where the people are not obviously related. They tend to be young people of the same sex.

In some cases, I think they might be cousins. For example, Elizabeth Titcomb (d. 1781, age 20) and Elizabeth Dummer (d. 1779, age 22) of Newburyport, MA may have been cousins. According to the Newbury Vital Records, Hannah Titcomb married John Dummer in 1755 — she may have been a sister of Elizabeth Titcomb's father, Samuel. I can't tell for sure — all of these North Shore families are entangled and there are multiple Elizabeths, Samuels, Hannahs, and Johns in each generation.

SACRED 

to the Memory

of M[is]. ELIZABETH

TITCOMB Daughter

of Capt. SAMUEL

TITCOMB and Mrs.

ANNA his wife who

Departed this Life

May 29th 1781 In ye

20th Year of her age

SACRED

to the Memory

of M[rs]. ELIZABETH

DUMMER Daughter

of JOHN DUMMER

Esqr. and Mrs.

HANNAH his wife who

Departed this Life

April 19th 1779 In ye

22d Year of her age

In other cases, the deceased do not seem to be relatives. Instead, they are buried together because they died together. For example, Paul Harrington (age 19) and John Ball (age 17) of Waltham, MA drowned together on June 24, 1771:

Here lie ye Remains

of PAUL HARRINGTON

Son to Mr. Benjamin

Harrington, &

Mrs. Elizabeth

his Wife.

Aged 19 Years.

Here lie ye Remains

of JOHN BALL, son

to Mr. John Ball

Decd, & Mrs. Anna

his Wife.

Aged 17

Years.

These Young Men were both drowned

on the 24th day of June 1771.

"Great God! how awful and how Just

"Thy law that turns our Flesh to Dust!

"O let me learn how frail am I

"And all my life Prepare to die.

This stone is quite beautiful — the carver made the two faces distinctive, though I do not know whether they truly resemble the boys. If they do, that would imply that the carver knew them, that he had portraits of them, or that he was in close enough consultation with the families to get a general description.

Paul Harrington:

John Ball:

Have you ever seen a stone like these?

What's Her Name Again?

Eighteenth-century epitaphs dedicated to women, children, and slaves often speak of the layers of dependency that bound the deceased to their husbands, parents, and masters. Adult, free, white men are very rarely identified by their relationships to others, but women are nearly always called "wife of . . ." or "daughter of . . ."

This Norwich, CT stone takes this idea to an unusual extreme — the names of "Simeon Warterman's Wife & Child" are not specified.

Here is Buried Mr Simeon

Wartermans Wife & Child

Who Died May 30th 1764 in

ye 21st year of her age,

Altho Death Desolved ye uni

on Betwen them nipt him in

the Topmost Bow, in the heigh[t]

of his Filisity, yet Comfort Re

mains in ye foloing Epitaph

Silent She lies Here in this Place

And so to Rest Till CHRIST Shall

Come To Raise her Dust & Crown

that Grace; Which in her

Life so Nobly Shone

J Manning

The spelling of "Warterman" is also a nice little indicator of how 18th-c Connecticutians may have pronounced "water."

Mrs. Waterman and her baby aren't the only nameless subordinates commemorated on Connecticut gravestones — this 19th-century stone from Hanover, Connecticut is dedicated to "A Niece of Benjamin Franklin." Charming.