My Stolper Roots: Jeremias Schröder, the Rabbit Hunter - My 7X Great Grandfather, Part 2

 

Sometimes, what isn’t part of an ancestral record can be as informative as what is. Particularly, when you combine that with known historical facts. You and I don’t live in a vacuum, and neither did our ancestors.

Let’s start with the facts. From the genealogy that was compiled somewhere between 1935 and 1944:  

1. We know that Jeremias Schröder was born in 1648.

2. We know he died, 1 May 1724.

3. We know he was buried on 4 May 1724.

4. We know that he had a son named Anthonius Schröder.

5. We know he was a Jäger (Hunter).

6.  We know he was a renowned Rabbit hunter. The fact that this is part of the genealogical record is interesting. Normally, saying he was a hunter would have been deemed sufficient. At the time of Jeremias’ passing, a father and son duo were administering to the Parish, Rev. Martin Dreisow, Sr and Rev. Martin Dreisow, Jr. One of them felt this fact had special merit.

7. From the 1717 Hufenklassifikation. (The Hufenklassifikation was a survey undertaken from 1717 to 1719 in the Hinterpommern to assess land values for taxation purposes. The Prussian King, Frederick William I, ordered the survey.)

A Jeremias Schröder is listed as a halbbauer. He is the only Schröder listed in Budow and the only one listed in any of the villages that the Budow Parish served. (These villages included: Budow, Gaffert, Gallensow, Goschen, Groß Gansen, Jammerin, Klein Gansen, Kottow, Muttrin, Nippoglense and Wundichow.) It is possible that this was the hunter Jeremias’ son, but more likely, it was Jeremias himself as he was still very much alive at the time. 

1648, the year of Jeremias’ birth, was also the year that The Thirty Years’ War ended. It is estimated that eight million people died as a result of that war. They died from battle. They died from disease. They died from trying to save their homes, their livestock, their crops. And they died from starvation. Pomerania suffered heavily from the war with historians estimating that up to two-thirds of the population either died or fled the area.

The war, at least in the beginning, was a Religious War. After Martin Luther, a priest, nailed the 95 Theses on the Wittenburg Church Castle door in 1517, a religious movement was started. Protestantism was born. The original fighting between the Protestants and the Catholics came to end in 1555 with the signing of the Peace of Augsburg, which guaranteed the right of religious freedom.

Below you can see a map of the Holy Roman Empire from 1618, at the start of the war. The areas in orange represent Protestants and the gray area represents Catholics.

When Ferdinand II, the Archduke of Austria, was named heir apparent of the elderly, childless, Holy Roman Emperor Matthias, trouble began to brew. Ferdinand was known to be a staunch Catholic, and when he came into power, he declared the Empire to be Catholic. You can see by the map; his religious stance would disenfranchise a large number of his subjects. War became inevitable.

For the first 9 years of the war Pomerania, for the most part, was spared. However, in 1627, Ferdinand moved to house some of his imperial troops in Pomerania. The troops lived off the land, which meant confiscating livestock, food, and demanding payment in the form of taxes. This led to the burning of farms and villages, to rape, to torture, to death.

While the war initially started as a religious war, it quickly turned into a power grab, a means of filling coffers and confiscating property. Other potential combatants, alarmed at the power being accumulated by their contemporaries, jumped into the fray.

In 1630, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, a Protestant, landed in Pomerania. One would think that a combatant on the same side as the Protestant inhabitants of Pomerania would have brought some relief. The Swedish troops were every bit as demanding and imperious as the troops of Ferdinand II, and the Pomeranians continued their suffering under these “friendly” troops.

Finally, a series of peace treaties were signed. Known as the Peace of Westphalia, the treaties effectively ended the war. In 1653, as part of the terms, most of Pomerania was given to the Margraviate of Brandenburg, with the remaining portion in the West, given to Sweden.

Below is the map of the area in 1653.

War was over, but oh, the cost. In 1590, almost three decades before the start of the war, it was noted that the Parish of Budow had 161 farms. In the year 1710, sixty-two years after the end of the war, there were only sixty-eight.

In 1655, Friedrich Wilhelm, the Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, required an assessment from the landowners of the state of their holdings. Various members of the Von Zitewitz family-owned different parcels of land in the villages surrounding the church in Budow. The information from these reports was documented. Below are some of the remarks reported.

From Friedrich von Zitewitz:  He reported that on his 3 Muttrin farms, they were unoccupied except each were “inhabited by a strange man.”  He complains that the soil is poor, and that he must provide new seed every year.

From Martin von Zitewitz:  Among other things, he reported that he had two unoccupied farms in Nippoglense. In one of those farms lived, “a poor, miserable person who lacks bread even before Christmas.”

From Gneomar von Zitewitz:  He told of the miserable plight of his farmers in Klein Gansen. He said he had to pay for all their seed, taxes, food, etc. otherwise, he is afraid they will leave for Poland, like so many of the other farmers have done.

From Johan Adolf von Zitewitz:   In Budow, three of his farmers had run away to Poland.

From Gerd von Zitewitz:  Gerd had a fair number of complaints. He complained that the soil was so poor, that a family could not live from what they produced on the farm. He told of the hunger of his farmers. He said he hadn’t sold a sheep in 20 years, even though he would buy them but the land couldn’t support them. To add to his sheep herding woes, he complained that to get and keep a proper Shepherd you had to promise them whatever they demanded.

In other words, they reported that their farms should not be taxed at the rate they had been previously, because things had deteriorated thanks to the war.

 It would not be until Frederick the Great came into power that a concerted effort was made to repopulate the areas decimated by the war. It is said that in the first decades of his rule, Frederick imported 5312 families from Bohemia, Palatinate, and Saxony to colonize these areas of Pomerania. This, however, would not happen until 1740.

 In the meantime, Fredrich Wilhelm tried unsuccessfully to demand that those peasants and serfs who had fled to Poland be returned to the areas from which they fled. The next step was the issuance of The Servants, Farmers and Shepherds order of 1670. 

This order curtailed a peasant’s right to move from one place to another. It was illegal to leave the farm he inhabited to move to another place without permission. The punishments for doing so were severe. A peasant farmer was also required to render services, fees, and other goods to his landowner at specified times. The peasant could own his home, his livestock, his equipment but not the land. All these requirements of the peasant farmer were passed on to his children.

Frederick Wilhelm I (King of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg, 1713-1740) passed the Edict of 14 July 1718 and the Edict of 10 Nov 1722, which among other things, curtailed craftsmen from living in the rural villages. Only tailors, blacksmiths, weavers, carpenters, and wheelwrights could live in a village. All other craftsmen, except for millers, were required to live in the cities.

All of this presents a problem when it comes to Jeremias. I believe that Jeremias and his son, Anthonius, came from outside the parish villages of Budow. Let’s compare the information that we have about Jeremias to that of his contemporaries.

While his contemporaries, like Jeremias, were not given a specific birth date just the year born, the others listed in the same genealogy, done through the same church, with the same minister, during the same years had listed along with their birth year, the place they were born, the names of both of their parents, and the date of their baptism. Jeremias had none of those things. We also don’t know when his son Anthonius was born, where Anthonius was born or who his mother was.

We know that Anthonius died in 1733 in Budow, that he married Trin Liese Potratz in 1724 and that they had a son, Johann in 1725. Did Trin Liese remarry? When and where was she born? Did she and Anthonius have more children? Who raised Johann? While it’s possible that the pages that would have contained these facts were missing from the Budow Parish when the genealogist did his work, it seems more likely that they are missing because these events did not take place within the Parish of Budow. My guess is that Jeremias and Anthonius came to the area sometime before 1717 (when the Hufenklassification was done) but after Anthonius’ birth. But where did they come from, and how did they get there?

Was there a swap from one landowner to another for a service that was needed? Jeremias, after all, is listed as a renowned rabbit hunter. Did Jeremias come from an area that was not subject to the Farmer and Shepherds order of 1670? Questions, questions – all I have is questions. 

I fantasize that out there somewhere, in a forgotten text, tucked away on a dusty shelf is a sentence or two about a famous rabbit hunter who came with his son and settled in Budow. I know that there is only the tiniest of possibilities that my fantasy is true. I know that is only the teeniest tiniest of possibilities that should that text exist, that it somehow falls like a ripened fruit into my lap. But even the teeniest tiniest of possibilities is still a possibility . . .

Until Next Time

 

© 28 October 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

 

Map Attributions:

“Holy Roman Empire 1618” By ziegelbrenner - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6054043.

By Astrokey44, section cut by user:Skäpperöd - This file was derived from: Holy Roman Empire 1648.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12363902.

 

Sources:

1.           Archiv ostdeutscher Familienforscher, “Schroeder,” 1998 5/6, P 175

2.           Rolletiofe, E. Editor:  Ostpommersche Heimat 1933, “Aus der Geschichte des Dorfes Budow,” No. 17, P 4, Accessed 14 August 2023.

3.           v. Livonius, A.:  "Die Bevölkerung der Kreise Stolp, Schlawe und Rummelsburg kurz nach 1700", Ost-pommersche Heimat 10. - 15. Fortsetzung 1939, Folge Nr. 10-25, http://digibib.studienstelleog.de/sdo/sog/PM.livonius-nach1700.pdf, Accessed 29 Oct 2015.

4.           Pommerscher Grief e.V., “Einführung (Die Blankenseesche Hufenklassifikation)”, https://www.pommerscher-greif.de/hufen/. Accessed 12 April 2023.

5.           History.com Editors: “Thirty Years’s War,” https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/thirty-years-war . Accessed 23 August 2023.

6.           Burke, Frederick: “Pommern History,”  Pommern Regional History Group, https://www.prgmn.org/cpage.php?pt=17,  Accessed 10 April 2023.

7.           History.com, Editors : “Martin Luther posts 95 theses,” https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/martin-luther-posts-95-theses, originally published 24 November 2009, Accessed 14 October 2023.

8.           Sellke, G., “Villages in Eastern Pomerania following the Thirty Years’  War.” Original Post, Ostpommersche Heimat,  No. 35 -39  with included notes. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~mnprgm/Stolp/30YearsWar/index.html, Accessed  12 April 2023.

9.           Heyden,  Helmuth: ”Zur Geschichte der Kirchen im Lande Stolp bis zum 18.” Jahrhundert, 1965.

10.         V. Stojentin, Max : Geschichte des Geschlechts von Zitzewitz, Teil 1: Urkundenbuch., Stettin, Herrcke & Lebeling, 1900.

11.         Bottke, Karl: Heimatbuch des Landkreis Stolp, Albrecht, Stolp, 1926.

12.         Kuchenbecker Report, “17. Jahrhundert”  Accessed 23 Oct 2023.

13.         "Churfürstliche Brandenburgische Gesinde- und in etzlichen Punkten revidierte Bauer- und Schäffer-Ordnung im Hertzogthumb Hinter-Pommern und Fürstenthumb Cammin”, Titulus IV: Von den Bauernren und dero Weglaufenfen, von 1670.

14.         Stolper Heimatkreise e.V., “Gesellschaftliches und politisches Leben,” https://www.stolp.de/krussen_ortsgeschichte/articles/krussen_gesellschaft.html, Accessed 24 Oct 2023.

© 28 October 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

 

 

 

My Stolper Roots: Jeremias Schröder, the Rabbit Hunter - My 7X Great Grandfather, Part 1

 

I have been working on my family history for over two decades. This is going to sound a bit odd, but there are some ancestors who do not want to be found. They want to hide away with their assorted secrets, content to leave their descendants perpetually in the dark. From them, you must wrestle every scrap of information. There are also the ancestors who, if you prod them, whispering that if they want to be known, they need to give you a helping hand. I am always astonished (and sometimes, frankly a little spooked) when a brick wall will suddenly crumble after a “heart to heart” with these ancestors. Then there are the ancestors, who you are not looking for, have no knowledge of, and suddenly, there they are. Plop. Falling into your lap like ripened fruit tumbling down from a tree. That is exactly what happened in the case of my 7X Great Grandfather, Jeremias Schröder.

Each of us have 512  7X  great grandparents. There may be some family historians who know the names of all 512 of their ancestors, but I would guess, if they exist, there are not many of them. Jeremias takes two spots of the 512, as I descend from two of his great grandsons, Christian and Gottfried.

My Stolper family were, to be blunt, peasants. Hardy peasants, as my existence will attest, but peasants, nonetheless. Some of them may have been tied to the local landowners as serfs. As such, the records of their existence are minimal, confined to tax and church records.

The earliest surviving German church records are from St. Sebald in Nuremberg dating back to the year 1524. Lutheran churches began requiring the records of baptisms, marriages and deaths be documented in about the year 1540. The Catholic church started requiring the same record keeping in 1563 and by the year 1650, most Reformed Churches required the same.

For my family, most of whom belonged to the church in the village of Budow, the records appear to have been kept beginning in the year 1643. Until the very end of World War II, those records were intact. They encompassed three hundred years of the lives of my family and their neighbors.

In many areas of Germany, the records, or sometimes their duplicates, managed to survive the war. In the district of Stolp, however, it has been reported that two-thirds of all records (not just church records) were lost.

A series of maps will give you an idea of where the Stolp region and the village of Budow were located.

Below is a German map of the Weimar Republic which represented Germany from 1919 to 1937. The Baltic Sea (Ostee) is located along the coast of Pomerania, and in fact, is located directly below where the Baltic Sea is labeled.

A closer look at the area of Pomerania as of 1939 shows you the exact location of the District of Stolp. Stolp is the second furthest Eastern Kreis. There is an area in the southcentral portion of Stolp, that dips a finger down along both the borders of Rummelsburg and Bütow. It is within this area that some of the villages of the Budow Parish sit, with Budow located Northeast of the area.

Here is a map of Stolp Kreis. The blue area marks the location of Budow.

In 2010, during my long-extended blogging hiatus, a genuinely nice German woman reached out to me. When I say reached out, I mean she did a very credible search to track me down. Can I just say that my experience has taught me that either a Schröder gene or a Quetschke gene must be where we get our research chops from, because invariably, these are the people who are particularly good at finding people and places.  

It turned out that she and I were third cousins. She descended from Great Grandfather Leo’s eldest sister, Bertha. We exchanged pictures and information, and she sent me two genealogies. One represented the line of Bertha’s father, Wilhelm Heinrich Schröder and the other was of Bertha’s mother, Caroline Wilhelmine Quetschke.

I, of course, was overjoyed. I marveled that there had been a genealogical interest in the family in earlier generations. It was at this point my cousin told me that genealogy was required by the government. The government in question was The National Socialist German Workers’ Party or more commonly known as the Nazi Party. She told me that the genealogy was completed in 1933, the year the Nazi Party came to power. My cousin told me everyone needed a completed genealogy. I don’t think that was strictly true in the beginning. However, a genealogy was, in fact, required of all Party members, and for all public officials, which included teachers.

Bertha Schröder had two sons who were teachers. They would have been required to prove their Aryan status by genealogical means. There was a booming business for genealogical work while the Nazi’s were in power. Carrying around a sheaf of genealogical papers that had to be produced on any kind of a regular basis turned out to be a bit unwieldy. The Ahnenpaß came into being. It was a small book, like a passport with all the relevant genealogical information, the entries on each page stamped and signed by the appropriate entity.

Eventually, more people were required to have an Ahnenpaß. I don’t know what percentage of the population carried genealogical passports, and I don’t know how many survived the war, but for those of us whose ancestors’ records were wiped out during and in the aftermath of war, they provide information that is no longer available.

In the information that I was given, Jeremias was not listed. The genealogy only went back as far as Anthonius Schröder, whom I now know was the son of Jeremias. There were no dates given for Anthonius, but his son, Johann Schröder, had a birthdate of 5 March 1725 and his place of birth was listed as Budow. This let me know that my family had been part of the Parish in Budow since at least the early part of the 18^th century. In a place where the surviving birth records do not start until 1838, this was information I never expected to receive.

Not quite a year ago, a friend on a German Forum that I belong to, published a page of genealogy from a periodical that published family genealogies. It was in German and I used a program to translate it into English. Jeremias was in this genealogy, but for some reason I missed that Anthonius was also there. I remarked that it was interesting, thinking that it was not my family line. I have no explanation for why I didn’t realize the significance of what I was reading, but let’s just be blunt. I blew it. If Jeremias was doing any orchestrating of events, he was shaking his head at what a slow witted descendent he had.

Then, about a month ago, I noticed a DNA match. It was only a twenty centimorgan match. Usually, a match that small I don’t spend much time on, but I did notice that the match was on my father’s maternal side, my German side. I cannot pinpoint the moment I decided to reach out with a message, or any real logic behind my reaching out, but I wrote a brief note. To my surprise, a truly kind man answered me back. It was his father that I matched. 

We exchanged family trees, and while we had similar family names, neither of our trees went back far enough to figure out our common ancestor. However, on exchanging our information, he realized in the process of his research, he had found a genealogy that didn’t belong to his family line, but that a handful of the earliest ancestors on that tree were also My Ancestors.

That is when the pieces started to fall into place, and I realized what a wonderful gift I had received – from my distant cousin, my forum friend, and the son of a DNA match. I received the gift of my family - German ancestors that I might never had known except for the generosity of others.

In my next post, I will take a closer look at the information on Jeremias, delve into the history of the time, and draw conclusions about my rabbit hunting ancestor.

Until Next Time . . .

 

© 27 October 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

  

Map Attributions:

Weimar Map Attribution: By kgberger - own drawing/Source of Information: Putzger – Historischer Weltatlas, 89. Auflage, 1965, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3414361

Von Hellerick - Eigenes Werk, based on a map from [1], CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65077963

Hardow, Rudolf, Karte de Kreises Stolp mit Bildern aus der Erdgeschichte, Urgeschichte, Kulturgeschichte, Volkskunde, Naturkunde, der Industrie, des Erwerbs u. des Sports. 1932, https://bibliotekacyfrowa.eu/dlibra/publication/3530/edition/3717#description, Public Domain, accessed 16 Sept 2023.

Sources:

Pommerscher Verein Freistadt, Stadtkreis Stolp / Kreis Stolp, https://www.pommerscher.org/cpage.php?pt=71.  Accessed on 2 Sept. 2023.

Germany Church Records, https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Germany_Church_Records#Overview. Accessed 5 Oct 2023.

Stolper Heimatkreise e.V,  Kirchspiele – Budow, https://www.stolp.de/kirchspiele/articles/kirchspiel_budow.html, Accessed on 2 Sept. 2023.

Genealogy created in 1933 for descendant of Bertha Tuschy née Schroeder received by Terry Snyder, 2010.

Archiv ostdeutscher Familienforscher, “Schroeder,” 1998 5/6, P 175.

© 27 October 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

 

Happy 16th Blog Anniversary to Me 🎉

 

I’m not sure what exactly made me look, but I realized that I had just missed my 16^th Blog Anniversary. Some of you may know, I started out blogging with a local newspaper, and because I wanted some control over my posts, I asked and was told there was no problem with setting up a duplicate blog on Blogger.

My original blog was called Desktop Genealogist, so naturally the duplicate blog was named, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged.

I took a big, long break from my blog writing.  There were a lot of reasons for the break.  I had pretty much lost my focus.  I got caught up in the likes and clicks.  I had health issues.

The group I was part of had decided to go on Facebook, and I was then and am now, diametrically opposed to Facebook.  I get why others use it.  My children have bemoaned that I was missing pictures of their babies, my foreign friends have hinted strongly that it would make life easier, and family and friends have repeatedly told me how “out of the loop” I am.

Meh.  I have always done my own thing, and my thing has never been about doing what everyone else is doing.  It is one of the few personal quirks I have come to value in myself. (Please don’t ask me about the personal traits I don’t value. The list would be tediously long!)

So, Happy 16^th Blog Anniversary to me. (Only a little late.)

If you are interested, here are the top all-time viewed blog posts. 

1. “Tri-Racial Isolate: A Hidden Ancestry” posted 12 Jan 2009

2. "My Seneca County Ohio Roots" posted 1 March 2009

3. “How about it,  AncestryDNA, wanna be my hero?” posted 30 Sept 2014

4. “Looking for Catherine” posted 1 Feb 2009

5. “Death Certificates - Sources of Primary & Secondary Information"  posted 31 Sept 2007

6. “In Honor of the First US Woman Becoming a Presidential Nominee of a Major Party ” posted 7 June 2016  

7. “What do Fill Dirt, a 1500 Year Old Indian Mound, and the Wal-Mart Corporation have in common? Nothing Good!” posted 11 July 2009

8. “A Webinar, a database, and the forgotten African American Ancestor” posted 16 Feb 2009

9. “This Little Piggy” posted 14 April 2008

10. “Because the Boat Rocked” posted 24 May 2009

The most viewed blog post that I have posted in the last year? 

"Wordless Wednesday - Christmas Massacre" posted 21 Dec 2022
 

When I write, I write for myself.  If other people find the blog and like something I have written, that’s great. But in the end, and I forgot this at one time, I write what I feel I need to say. And that is enough for me.

© 6 September 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Today is our 34th Wedding Anniversary!

 

The Art of Painting Pictures

The little girl hurt. She thought she could hear her daddy's voice. She wanted to tell him about her pain, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't talk and tell him that her throat hurt. She opened her eyes, and saw the sheets of her bed and thought it strange that a hospital would have red sheets.

Her mother in the waiting room didn't have the luxury of her daughter's confusion. When she saw the nurse running through the hall, she knew instantly what the red soaked nurse's uniform meant. Something had gone wrong. She knew, as only a mother could, that the red blood splashed over the front of the nurse's clothing was that of her child. 

It was a simple procedure, a tonsillectomy. Children had them all the time. The little girl, 7 years old, had suffered repeated bouts of bronchitis, and the family physician had said the young girl's tonsils were bad and needed to be removed. It would be an adventure, the mother had told her daughter, and the 7-year-old listened to her mother's words and believed them.

Instead, when the physician finally came and found the woman, his own eyes laced with concern, he told her they were trying to stop the child's bleeding and doing everything they could. He shook his head, patted her hand and walked back to be with his patient. 

The mother stood there by herself. Her husband, lulled by the routine nature of the surgery, had gone to work that day. The mother dazed and in disbelief, waited until they came to take her to her daughter's bedside in recovery. 

The little girl looked small and fragile. The mother thought her heart would break. The little girl moved in and out of consciousness, only vaguely aware of her surroundings those first two days in recovery 

The mother left that first night exhausted, and came back early the next day. She stayed at her daughter's bedside, leaving only long enough to shower, change and occasionally sleep. The child, once reunited with her mother, felt the comfortable safety that she always felt in her mother's presence, never once understanding how close she had come to death. 

The child never saw, never felt the fear behind her mother's smile, she heard only her mother's comforting voice, talking of things they would do when the girl was better. The mother's words were strong, and the picture painted in the little girl's head so clear, that not for even the tiniest of moments did the little girl think it would be otherwise. 

Slowly the little girl recovered. The surgery, the hospital were just a bad memory for the girl, nothing more. 

As the daughter grew, again and again, as life presented each new difficulty, she would come to her mother, listening intently as her mother found ways to paint a picture of a positive outcome, no matter how serious the problem. 

When the girl grew into womanhood and the problems became larger, the mother's words continued to create positive pictures. Even when the young woman didn't believe, her mother's words were so powerful, so filled with detail that the young woman moved forward on faith alone at the sound of her mother's words. 

It happened when the young woman lost her own baby daughter. The mother drew the picture of another baby, this one healthy framed in the young woman's arms and it was so. 

It happened when the young woman, in the midst of a broken heart and marriage, listened as the mother painted the picture of another love, a perfect partner for the young woman, and this too became so. And so it went, the mother teaching the daughter how to paint the pictures in her mind.

It would come as no surprise that the mother, who for years had been painting pictures in the mind, now put those pictures on canvas, sharing her talent with friends, family — charming even strangers with her work. 

And the daughter, who had not inherited her mother's artistic talents, found her own way to create pictures, creating them with words. 

Though many women have had an impact on my life, none more so than my own mother. It has been her strong words that have propelled me through the rough times (tonsillectomies and all) and helped me soar through the good. 

This tribute is written for you, Momma — for your wit, wisdom and warmth and most of all, for teaching me to paint pictures. I love you.

🎕 Happy Mother's Day, Momma.  🎕

Note: This post first published 13 March 2008 and republished in honor of Mother's Day. 2023.

© 13 March 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

Happy Birthday, Fly Killer

 

I’ve created a killer, a fly killer, that is. A few weeks ago, in the natural course of an energetic four-year running in and out, a quick thinking fly managed to breach our inner sanctum. Quick thinking yes, but maybe not so quick moving. After my own thwarted attempts at swatting the little pest, the grandson begged me to let him try. 

So I handed over the white fly swatter. And what do ya know? Deadeye managed to do in a few well-aimed swats, what Grandma had not. He killed that darn fly. 

 “I’m really quick, right Maw?” 

 “Yes, you are.” 

 “You couldn’t get him, could you Maw?”

 “Nope, I could not.” 

 “We don’t like flies, do we Maw?”

 “No, we do not.” 

 “Hey, are you goin’ to tell PaPa Al, that I’m quick?” 

 “Yes, I am.” 

 A few weeks later, when one of the deceased fly’s buddies made it in through the opened screen door, the grandson was not pleased when I managed to shoo the fly back outside. 

 “But, I wanted to kill him,” grumped the peanut gallery. 

 My explanation of a win-win philosophy was lost on a four-year old who thought I was just mucking up his chance at another fly victory. Later, as we played outside, the little guy got his chance when a hapless fly landed on one of our outside toys. Deadeye, took aim, and swatted the fly with his BARE hands, and put another notch in his fly killing belt. After a brief discussion about why it was good policy to wash one’s hands after such a heroic act, I said, 

 “Hey, I’m going to have to start calling you Fly Killer. Yep, I’m going to call you, Fly Killer Snyder.” 

 Silence, as the two of us walked the length of the stone driveway.

 Then, “Its okay, Maw. You can call me Fly Killer if you want.” 

 A few more steps, a quick kick of the stones, and then my buddy looked straight up at me and said, 

“I kinda like that name.” 

 Glad to oblige, kiddo. Glad to oblige.

Happy Birthday to FKA Fly Killer Snyder.  I love you, sweet boy. I don't know where the time has gone. 

Originally published 6 Oct 2008.

© 6 October 2008 and 10 May 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Happy Birthday, Mikey Boy!

 

Ah, Michael, you are the child who is so unlike me. Sometimes I have looked at you in awe, wondering how it is that I have produced such a child. By the age of two, it was obvious that you had outstripped me in mechanical genius, when you took it upon yourself to replace a dead battery in the toy train engine, that had finally, blessedly gone silent after weeks of constant use. You opened up the battery compartment of the toy, took out the old battery, went to the drawer where we kept batteries, pulled out the right size battery, put it in the correct way, closed up the battery compartment, and went toddling away with that pleased smile I’ve come to know so well and the train engine running, pressed noisily up to your ear. I watched the whole thing in shock. I, a woman who barely knew what a straight edge screwdriver was, had produced this child.

I remember one particularly trying day, when I had gotten out late from class. I had to pick your brother up at day care, you at preschool and your sister at elementary school. Nothing was going right. We were finally on our way, racing across town to get to the elementary school when we were stopped at a railroad crossing waiting for an approaching train. You had been begging me to turn the radio on, which I finally had done. Now, you were tugging at my sleeve asking me to turn the radio off. 

 “But, Mikey,” I said with all the exasperation I was feeling, “you just asked me to turn it on!” 

“Mommy, just listen.” 

 So, I turned off the radio, and did just that. Wrapped in the cocoon of our car, you and I sat listening in companionable silence to the clickety clack of the train. You with that silly precious grin pasted all over your face, and me suddenly engulfed by your pure sense of joy. 

There are so many little slices of the world that I would have missed, my son, had you not been there to show me. Today is your birthday, Michael. I celebrate it not only for you, but for what having you has brought to my life. Happy Birthday, Mikey Boy!

Love, Momma

Originally published,  10 May 2009.

© 10 May 2009, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder