Green Leaves/Roots | zilphia's Blog

Today we are watching Tropical Storm Fay very carefully.  It is supposed to just miss Savannah.  This will still mean lots of rain and flooding, although we don't get alot of that, I worry because of the big old oak trees which break in the wind and the wet--the branches are as big as a tree in themselves.

In the rain, I can't run t he dogs and they become pests.  In the rain, I have to dry off muddy dogs every time they come back in from taking a leak.  Thus I am a bit moody...try me by Friday, when the storm really hits, and I will be really grumpy!

For some reason my husband is sitting on the couch and not going to work.  I haven't yet ask what's up.  He works about every hour that God sends, so I know that he is doing what is right and this isn't something I have to nag about.

My husband's name is Brian.   He is my second husband and I am alternately very fond of him, and very irritated by him.  I married him about 3 years ago on Valentine's Day.  It may have been 4.  I am sooo vague about time. He is very paternal, but is actually 5 years my junior.  He doesn't look it though.  Life has not been kind to Brian.  He once had botched back surgery and was told he would never walk again, when he was 21.  It didn't stop him.  He lost his 13 year old son, to a drunk driver, and his high school sweetheart wife soon afterward.  He almost died from not ever eating and overwork.  When he got out of the hospital he came here to Savannah, a place he had only ever been once in his life before.  The psychiatrist told him to follow his bliss, and he came and got involved in construction, doing renovation on old houses, because woodwork is his passion.  

So he's a grey headed bearded ol' fart. And I am an old fart now, and I love it that someone takes care of me.  That was not always the case, believe me.  I wish Brian was even more normal than is he.  He doesn't listen to some very important things which may land him in jail one day--don't DWI--wear your seatbelt--(hell, I really hate the seatbelt, but would hate the raise in insurance even more.) Lock up your tools!  But no one is perfect.  Brian has a great big heart, and even tho he is a great big boy, he gets hurt easily and I try to shield him if I can.  That's what I consider my job with him.  'I can't make it things possible, but I can make them holy', as the old song said.

I don't work now, although I doubt that will be the case forever, with this economy.  I don't like the enviroment of people and work.  I am a hard and loyal worker and it never seems to get me anywhere much, and eventually I get disillusioned and I move along. 

Today, I am going to ride my bike to the Natural Food store, and buy some culinary type herbs. I am also going to keep a promise I made a few weeks ago and get involved with the Food Bank, by volunteering there.

And now for the first page of my catch up blog.

                                       Roots

Before I talk about me, I would like to introduce some of my ancestors.

There was a woman named Priscilla Gibbs, up in Robstown NC, back before the war of 1812.  She married a man named Ward, and had two sons.  When Ward died, she married an Englishman named Christopher Hargrave and had two sons. 

Hargrave was kind of stranded over in America, because the seas were so dangerous to cross during a war.  When the war was over, Hargrave wanted to return home to England with his wife and their two sons.  He wanted her to leave the sons she had with her first husband in America.  The oldest was 16.  I would assume that they were old enough to be apprenticed, and that he didn't just intend to abandon them.  The plan didn't sit well with his wife, Priscilla.

She got her self a covered wagon and joined a landrush from New England to South Georgia, took the name of Mother Jones,  and took all four sons with her, and never looked back. 

When the sons were old men, after the Civil War had come and gone, a Pinkerton detective showed up who had been  hunting for the Hargrave sons all those years.  The Hargraves inherited alot of money from an Uncle, and they were now rich, in the poverty stricken, reconstruction era south.  The Wards were not.

And this matters, why?  You see, Priscilla was my families fore mother.  My father's people were descended from the Hargraves, and my mother's people from the Wards.  To make things worse, the inter-marrying continued...my father and mother for instance are second cousins, and my grandmother and my grandfather on my mama's side were first cousins, and their parents were double twins that married double twins.

Down thru the centuries the two factions in my family tree have been at odds with one another, because of the feud that started with the English Gold. 

The inbreeding didn't do us much good either.

My sister and I joined the ranks and the beat goes on.  Tune in later for the points of interest of childhood.