Winter, Tom a Hero Cat, and the Crimean War, all on another cold Sunday!

Well it is Sunday again, it is freezing cold again, and they are predicting snow…AGAIN!  March is coming in like a lion…but could it go out like a lamb?

So I am sitting here thinking about getting my Sunday blog up and wondering what in the world to blog about that might be a bit uplifting, unusual, different.  Nothing came to me.  Sure I had tons of stuff to bitch about as usual…but uplifting…hmm.

Just then the little Tommy cat came bounding in the door…I had just named him after a very famous cat called Sevastopol Tom or Crimean Tom a British Hero!  So I decided that for my blog I would tell you the story of Tom…the only hero cat I know who is in a Military Museum…STUFFED!

During the Crimean War in 1854 after a siege at Sevastopol, a port in the Crimea, the British after successfully forcing the surrender or desertion by the Russian Army landed in a place they found totally devastated.  The inhabitants and the Brits were left starving, as well as freezing in the frigid Crimean winter.  They all knew it would be a long while before supplies could come, so men and stray animals were left to scrounged for food. 

At one point, men noticed a sleek and well-fed cat that became very friendly with them… they wondered about him?  One day they followed him to the wharf area where he disappeared under some ruble.   Curious, they began to dig and there under the rubble was a Russian stash of food that had been placed there and hidden for their soldiers.  Most of the food was good, there was also clean water and... Tom got to eat the mice! (Why he was so well fed and sleek.)

Captain William Gair of the 6th Dragoon Guards (the Carabiniers) and his men eventually followed him to other hidden supply locations finding food that saved their lives. Gair and his men officially adopted him as their mascot…naming him Crimean Tom. 

When it came time to return to England, unwilling to leave him behind, they somehow secreted Tom to England with them.  The cat was honored many times and died a well taken care of cat a year later.

Since he was of “heroic” stature, Tom was stuffed and mounted and today gazes at visitors from a display at the Royal United Service Institution Museum… where he is remembered for his service to the armed forces of England!

So there, a tidbit of history... and a cat you can adopt named for a hero cat called “Crimean Tom”!

Hope the weather improves!

Eaton, Thanksgiving, Plymouth, genealogy of the Mayflower relatives!

We have been getting ready for our Colonial Holiday Celebration this wee k and I have been going through the genealogy of a number of the early settlers of the Town of Eaton and vicinity it is interesting to note how many of the early settlers could trace their bloodline back to members of the Mayflower.  Myles Standish III directly from Myles Standish is buried in the Eaton Cemetery.  Patience Kent, who married Bigelow Morse, was related to three of them: the John Howland, the John Bilington, and the Isaac Allerton.  Some like Hanna Hall Clark are related to the first elected official, Governor Bradford.

Bradford was a very interesting person who was born in Austerfield, England, and who faced many hardships in his early life including the death of his mother and father.  William Bradford, who as a boy walked to a separatist Church in Babworth, broke at an early age with the Church of England.  This break eventually led him to Holland and on the venture of his lifetime with his fellow Pilgrims, to the New World.

Once here in America, Bradford was elected to office as Governor, a post he held for 36 years, the first ten of which he received no compensation for.

Bradford wrote a number of books of poetry and books on Congregationalism: his most important work, however, was a volume called Of Plimouth Plantation (Which we will talk about at a later date.)

Since the Plymouth Colony had no Royal Patent, they adopted their own system of government, a system that was drawn from their needs and from their faith.  It is this system that was set forth in the Mayflower Compact.

From The Mayflower Quarterly, the American historian Samuel Eliot Morrison says. “In 1636 the Pilgrims even created a Bill of Rights of their own.”

The article, written by J. Allyn Bradford, shows that in the rules they set forth which included that no laws would be made or taxes laid without the consent of the citizens (called Freemen), a free election of Governor and Assistants, the right to an impartial and equal justice, nobody was to be punished except by the law of the Colony, as well as a trial by jury, only called if there were two witnesses to the crime and or sufficient circumstantial evidence.

Between Bradford’s and the Colony’s reforms was the separation of Church and State, something we still employ today.

The key word in our pursuit of the history of the Pilgrim’s is DEMOCRACY.  Democracy, is the basis for the
Pilgrim’s government, carried through both the church and the state.

     The church of the Pilgrim’s was based on a primitive church discussed in the Bible in the Book of Acts.  In our Colonial terms it was called Congregationalism, a subject that Governor William Bradford discussed in full in one of his writings late in life called A Dialogue Between the Older and Younger Men.

     The Pilgrims were actually pushed out of England because they believed that the King was not the head of the church, but that Jesus Christ was.  The church itself was democratic in all of its dealings, and it left marriage a civil, not spiritual, right.

     William Bradford must have been a shrewd and valued leader in all aspects of the unbelievable hardships faced by this group of religious rebels who crossed a raging sea and forged a home out of unfamiliar, hostile surroundings.  Bradford’s election 30 times to the post of Governor of the Plymouth (Plimouth) Colony certainly proves that.

Nursing, Agatha Christie, Miss Marple, Hercule Periot & Me!

I was going through my Internet posting yesterday and came across one sent by my "almost a cousin" Emma Messere who works with the Red Cross in Italy. The post was from the UK asking for volunteers to help transcribe WWI card information on Nurses who served during that time.  The picture furnished was of a woman who had served at the hospital in Torquay, England.

Torquay had been a spot on the English coast that was a favorite spot of the wealthy because of its warmth and location near warmer waters.  I realized ...ah, yes Torquay...once home of one of my favorite writers as a young person.

As I studied the picture I realized that the card was the registration for that person ...Agatha Christie.

Agatha Christie was resident of Torquay while her husband was in the service and she indeed had served as a nurse and as a worker in the dispensary where they mixed potions and medication.  As a matter of fact she hated the mixing of medicines as she had nightmares of making mistakes.  This service did her a favor however, working there she learned about poisons.

It was in Torquay at this time that she thought of writing mystery novels and it is there that she wrote her first novel ... The Mysterious Affair at Styles... and it is there that the famous character Hercule Periot was born, a character who would appear in 33 novels and over 50 short stories.

My favorite of her characters was Miss Marple and I love and use Miss Marple’s wisdom that I believe to be true...that there are only 30 “types” of people (personalities) and they keep repeating themselves with each new person you meet.  Though with today’s cookie-cutter society I have narrowed in to 15.

Christie’s love of travel, something she had started as a child with her mother, and which she continued with her husbands, brought her to many locations and allowed her observations of different people that would lead to a career that would make her one of the world’s most prolific writers. …And interestingly enough…there were over 80 poisonings in her books…information she gained in her service as a nurse and dispenser of drugs in Torquay.