A Coincidence! Or is it!

Amongst the many ordinary business papers left by my grandfather are estimates from contractors, bills, and receipts, starting in about 1908. The actual letters are uninteresting; but this was the heyday fabulous business stationery, and a perfectly ordinary feed bill for a team of draft horses looked like this:

For many years, my grandfather, Will Carpenter, had threshing business with two of his brothers. When they first began, the big threshing machines were drawn by teams of draft animals. (Later, of course, they were replaced by motor vehicles.) My grandfather loved animals, so I'm sure their team was well-cared for.

Oddly enough, after quite a lot of investigation of the Swedish archives available online, I was able to discover that my 3x great grandfather in Sweden, ran a trucking business -- well, sort of trucking; he too used a  team of draft horses and a sturdy wagon for all kinds of haulage, from furniture deliveries to carrying livestock or produce to market.

And another great-grandfather owned a foundry in Mora, Sweden,and one of their biggest products was... threshing machines!

Now, I don't think my grandmother knew this about her grandfather's business , and I'm sure my father didn't. So it was pure coincidence that two descendants of expert team-drivers (because it was a recognized skill) with a special relationship to threshing machines from different continents met and married in the U.S.

"Noble" Ancestry? Really?

One thing I find quite startling after having been engaged in genealogical research for the past few years is the fact that many Americans really, really wish that they were descended from royalty. This seems odd; I mean, the reason a lot of our ancestors came here in the first place was to get away from royalty of various ilks. And a lot of the "nobles" you meet in history are not really the kind of people you want to be associated with.

Warwick Castle

And one thing DNA technology reveals is that it's not exactly unusual for certain early monarchs -- I mean, you would have to call Genghis Khan a monarch, wouldn't you? Not to mention the Irish Niall of the Nine Hostages -- to have descendants numbering in the millions. So what's the big deal? I can understand being proud of some great leader, like Charlemagne, but ordinary, garden-variety royalty? Why should an individual be admired for an accident of birth?

I will admit that as a person of Swedish heritage I'm sort of proud of the Swedish royal family; they seem to be modest, hard-working royals, and don't make any trouble. And in typical Swedish progressive fashion they have changed the primogeniture rules so that the next monarch will be Queen Sophia. The main stories I know about them are about the time the present King rescued a lady from a snowdrift on a skiing holiday, and the romance of the prince and the showgirl, which is rather sweet -- when Princess Sophia was officially named the heir, the King's brother was able to marry the former actress who had been his lady friend for about thirty years, because he was no longer in line for the throne. But I'm sure I'm not related in any way!

Pretty fancy Anglo-Saxon metalwork

I have also been rather charmed to discover that some few ancestors were, apparently, descendants of old Saxon nobility, before the Norman Conquest; this is pretty cool. But it's mainly because they all sound like characters from Ivanhoe -- Wigot and Gunhild and Edgitha. And being related to characters in Shakespeare -- not just people of the same name, like Lovell and Percy, but the actual guys -- is also pretty cool, but more for celebrity value than anything else. All of these people eventually picked the wrong side in English dynastic wars, so lost all their power and prosperity, anyway.
What I am proud of in my ancestors is a pretty strong tradition of usefulness and providing goods and services the community found desirable. The "noble" ancestor I am intrigued by was the last in the direct line of an old English family named Petley. By the early 1500's they had dwindled and only the widow and Agnes, the young daughter of the last Petley in the direct line, were left -- and to me, their next move was something of a triumph, because this aristocratic girl married John Manning, the head of one of the most prominent families in the area. And this family went into trade -- really, really skilled trade; one of Agnes' sons. Henry Manning, became the armorer to Henry the Eighth, and held several other pretty profitable offices; I'm a direct descendant of his brother, George.

Henry VIII's armor

It seems that this opened up a whole social world associated with the latest technology -- metalworking. Henry Manning's daughter, Phebe, married a promising young man, James Waters - an ironmonger. They had six children. James died in 1617. And then came what might have been quite  a romantic story; Phebe's oldest son, Richard, married Rejoice Plasse, the daughter of widowed ironmonger William Plasse. And then Phebe married William, thus causing a couple of centuries of confusion for their puzzled descendants.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony

The whole group decided to move to the New World, probably not for religious reasons but because their skills were very much in demand in the new Massachusetts Bay Colony. Metal tools and equipment -- and especially guns, of course -- would probably have been prized above rubies, if there had been any rubies. The colonial governor, John Winthrop, wrote to his wife about what she would need to bring with her from England, and topping the list is a frying pan. Imagine what it must have like in the colony, having to make everything from scratch without even a metal cookpot! The fascinating wills that are available freely online now usually mention disposal of all sorts of iron goods, from kettles to fireplace accessories to axes and muskets. And Richard Waters was a gunsmith, leading to his being provided with housing in Salem.

Very fancy pistols from 1650

Through the years the Waters family took up many skilled and indispensable trades, up to and including bootlegging hard cider. My branch of the family moved to Sutton, Massachusetts, where there is still a historically preserved Waters Farm -- where they did everything. They had a stand of timber which supplied firewood and building materials, which were milled right on the farm.

The Waters Farm Shingle Mill

They produced apples and cider, and had sheep and cattle for wool, food, and for use as draft animals.
In my family tree, the Waters family joined with the Carpenter family, who had both a comb-making business and later a broom factory.
Imagine how valuable all of these things were in early New England! You could make your own food from scratch, and to some extent your own clothing; but metal cookware, planked wood, cider, combs, and brooms -- how welcome they must have been! These people did more for their neighbors in the future Unites States than a dozen kings and queens.

Wild Blue Yonder: Wiley Post and a Bit of Family History

Wiley Post

Wiley Post is remembered today as the pilot who flew the beloved Will Rogers on his last journey. But Post   was famous throughout the late 1920s and 1930s as a dashing aviator who was the first to solo around the world -- and he looked the part, a tall, handsome man with a pencil mustache and a devil-may-care smile. His gallant appearance was enhanced by an eyepatch he wore after losing his left eye in a crash. But he was also a respectable spokesman for the practical application of advanced engineering to the new business of flying. He himself was particularly interested in high-altitude flying and developed an early pressure suit design. His work in aviation was practical; he trained as a pilot in WW1 but the war ended before he reached the front, and he spent several years in traveling airshows. He began winning important air races by 1930.
In those days, money for experimental designs of aircraft had to be raised privately, so competitions were held all across the country, a combination of fund-raising for actual development and ballyhoo. Post was a regular competitor, and also worked directly as a personal pilot for Oklahoma oilmen Powell Briscoe and F.C Hall, who put up the funds for Post's famous plane, the Winnie Mae (named after Hall's daughter). These air races had cash prizes, which served as salary for the pilots and money for equipment and development.
And throughout the 30s, Post took advantage of his personal fame and went on occasional fundraising tours, where he would appear at local airfields and offer to take anyone up in the Winnie Mae for $5.00 -- which was big money in those days. For that kind of money, he could pretty much count on eliminating the more frivolous joy-riders.
So one day in the spring of 1935, Wiley Post arrived in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And one of his passengers was a 14 year old high school student -- in fact a future valedictorian and winner of Bridgeport's famous Barnum Prize -- who had been saving his paper-route money for months. And  up he went, sitting in back of Wiley Post in his eyepatch, leather helmet, and white silk scarf.

The Winnie Mae

What has this to do with family history? The teenager was my father, Carl Sandahl, and for an extremely nearsighted, bookish type of kid -- he was a straight-A student from the moment he hit school -- he was pretty darned fearless. In his future were more adventures with skiing, skin-diving, surfing, mountain-climbing, and even folk-dancing with Baroness Maria Von Trapp. Despite growing up during the Great Depression, he had an amazing ability to take advantage of every amazing opportunity that came his way.