Seeing has I was playing catchup last week, I am again. This time I am playing catch up in the hope that I will be ahead for the next month. I don't want to be constantly behind. This weekend is all about trying to get ahead.
The movie that I chose to watch for this month is a movie I have watched during my Best Picture Challenge, You Can't Take It With You.
Money. Not a lot of things in this life screw everything up as money does. You need it to live, you work yourself to death to get more of it, and when you get more it never makes you as happy as you think. However, the Sycamore family is not like that in the least. They do what they love because they love doing it. They explore their talents and the things that they want to do and do them even if they are terrible at them. However, Money can't stop love no matter how bad you want it to. The Kirby family is in love with money and always getting their hands on more. However, the son is not that way at all. He has fallen in love with Alice Sycamore and is going to marry her. When it's found out that they don't' have money and they can't be bought, the Kirby parents want the engagement to end. The hilarious outcome of the night concludes in the engagement over. However, love always find a way as long as you have a loving family on your side.
I love this movie, it's got a special place in my heart. I was excited to see it again and I love how this family works. They welcome everyone into their home with all of the lovely ideas they bring. With how they see the world. The family shows those that they welcome that not everything they do in life has to get them rich or they have to stay were they are told. They can enjoy their hobbies and not be ashamed of them. I love that they are supportive in all that they do even if they don't share the same love of music or art. They do love each other enough to encourage everyone in the house to grow in that art. It remind me of my family and friends. Once I came clean 5 years ago about watching the movie to try and predict the Oscars they didn't look at me like I was crazy. They encouraged me and asked me about the movies I was seeing and what number I was on. My dad went with me to see my 100th film and my mom bought me a "100" cookie cake to celebrate. I would not have thought that would have happened at the beginning of that year. My friends did the same. They kept up with what I was doing and asked questions and thought that it was amazing what I was doing. All of my family and friends in the years after have been very supportive about all of the stuff I did or my projects. Now they are helping me with them this year! This is why family is important because they will support you even when you do things that seem crazy sometimes.
Last month we talking about someone on my mom's side of the family. This time I am going to talk about someone on my dad's side of the family.
Today we get to talk about Joel Church and his wife Caroline.
So, while my mom and her whole family are really from the St. Louis area, my dad and his whole family are from Grundy, Virginia area. When I say that everyone know everyone they really do. My dad has some amazing, and often times shocking, stories of growing up on a mountain in Virginia during the 60s. It's great to hear some of these stories cause on the rare occasion that we do go back there it's really like some things have never changed. Like all of those houses are still standing, and all of the roads are the same. How you did live now is pretty similar as it was then.
I always seem to forget the the stat of Virginia plays such a historical part of our country. Our nation's capital in in Virginia, it's part of the original 13 colonies, and it's where my family lived, grew, and died for 100s of years. The problem with researching that area of family members is that it all starts to circle in the tree, and there are so many similar names you get confused as to are you starting a circle or is this really a different person. I am starting to get there with the circles and confusion. However, not before I got to know a little bit more about my 5 times great grandparents Joel and Caroline.
Someone, a distant cousin I am sure, on ancestry has greater knowledge, and more patients than I do found a lot of interesting information about these two. Unfortunately, there is not a lot to say about Caroline. It appears that she lived until the age of 54 and died of measles. Joel on the other hand there seems to be some information about. There is a book called Looking Back One Hundred Year" by Hannibal Compton. It's all about the area where by dad was born, and many other family members. I don't have my hands on this book yet but I will be getting it and reading it. Joel is written in this book to be one of the first Mountaineers in Dismal area in Buchanan County Virginia. He was a trapper and a farmer. He was also an excellent bee hunter. I had to look it up too. It's someone who finds, traps, marks, and follows wild honeybees so they can find their honey in a tree in the forest. He built a cabin in what is now known as Bill Young Branch. I am not sure if the cabin is still there. However, the story goes that during the Civil War his wife dies of the measles and she had to be buried. However, there weren't many many around at the time to build a coffin and help to bury her. So, the story goes that Joel got permission from a land owner to bury her on his property. He was given the ok. However, the lack of a coffin means they had to place her body in a hollow of a large log and buried her.
I do not have any pictures of them, however, I do have a picture of their burial site.
It's not the greatest of pictures but it's something I would love to go and see one day myself.
I will say, that I really am enjoying learning about my dad's side. I love it because my dad has this crazy insane memory of all sorts of stuff that he experienced or was told when he was young. I mean we have unsolved murder mysteries in my family. One day I would like to like voice record him telling the stories so that I have them and that I can add them to ancestry when I get to those names. The reason I say this is because while I was writing this I was asking my dad questions if he knew where the place might be where Joel's cabin might have been built. I asked him if any of the old names, and some "modern" ones, rung any bells. He told me that he used to work in Dismal, the area where the cabin was built, and knew the name of the road. He also knows where Ward's Cemetery is where Joel and Carolina are buried. It would be cool to go back where dad grew up and get a "grand tour". I will give myself on one day if I can't with him. I need to get all of the stories down first.
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