Catherine Sevenau's Blog: Writings~Rambles~Rhymes, page 30

Got Eggs?

Easter 1999 ~ I’m in the back seat of Ed’s green Pathfinder with my friend Kayla, who is three, and we’re on the way to an Easter gathering at Wally and PJ’s place. Ed and Elaina (her grandparents, who are raising her) are in front. Kayla shows me the contents of her colored wicker basket […]

Dead People, Fairies, and Hitler

Dead People ~ “Oma, there’s dead people under those rocks, you know.” I glance over my shoulder to see what Satchel is talking about. My grandson, who is four, is commenting from his car seat about the small cemetery to our left on East Napa. “I know Satchel, that’s where they put our bodies when […]

Matching Red Noses

2006 ~ My grandson is three, and this is my second time to have him for an extended period at night. Brooke and Matt are in San Francisco, returning around 11:00. We spend the afternoon and evening at my house doing all the things we love to do together: cooking, eating, and reading the books […]

Dragons and Tutus

The Grandkids • July 2009, Sonoma, California ~ Brooke and the kids are visiting in Sonoma for a month. My son and his family moved to Vancouver, Canada last year—they had the nerve to not only move there, but to take my grandchildren with them—and this is their first time back. Satchel is six but tall enough […]

Disturbing the Dead, Annoying the Living

What calls us to find the ancestors? It goes beyond a simple curiosity. We are taken over, compelled, as if possessed by something bigger than us, begging to be revealed. There is one of us in almost every family called to be the scribe. I am but one of many in our clan’s long line […]

Lord Love a Duck

There once were three brothers, from England did flee, Sailed on the St. John in good company. Our line comes off George—ten progeny past— Begetting the Chatfields from which I am cast. They’re an interesting bunch, left their mark in the world With a wide path to follow, a history unfurled. Why bother to gather […]

Lineages

(Listen to Audio) I am. I am from Leinen and Nigon, from Chamberlin and Hoy. I am from Clemens and Chatfield, from Surdam, Sumner, Smith, Shade, Mastick, and Tomlinson too. From Matthew, Isaac, Finley, and Charles. From Barbara, Eliza, Emily, and Nellie. I am from soldiers who fought for the Union and from a nurse […]

The Chatfield Story

Dec 26, 1894, Fruita, Mesa County, Colorado ~ In a ceremony in her parents’ home, twenty-one-year-old Nellie Chamberlin, married Charles Henry Chatfield, a ranching man of twenty-four. Nellie was a no-nonsense Catholic girl and exceedingly religious, but she also had a mind of her own and refused to consummate the marriage. In frustration, Charles took his new bride to the priest who […]

Civil War Journal of Finley Chamberlin

Finley McLaren “Frank” Chamberlin: 1845 – 1905 ~ My maternal great-grandfather, the father of Nellie (Chamberlin) Chatfield, my mother’s mother. Military: Civil War, Union Army Aug 15, 1861: 9th Regmt Mich Infantry, Co I; private (age 15 yr, 11 mo) Dec 7, 1863: Re-enlists in same company; sergeant (age 18, 1 mo) Finley Chamberlin’s Civil […]

Isaac and Eliza Chatfield

Isaac Willard “I.W.” Chatfield: 1836 – 1921 Ohio to California ~ Isaac Willard Chatfield, my paternal great-grandfather, was born in 1836 in Middlefield, Ohio, the first of four children of Levi Tomlinson Chatfield and Lovina Mastick. Isaac married the elegant Eliza Ann Harrington on May 20, 1858, and over the next five decades he and Eliza […]