Walking the Berkshires

Gone Fishing

These words are written on my grandfather's grave, carved on local field stone plucked and scoured by ice and sea.  There is a family story that goes with it, and this other meaning will pass from general knowledge when none of us now living is around to explain it.  That is one of the reasons I started this blog nearly a decade ago, back in the fall of 2005 when my head and heart were full of ideas and memories that needed a new outlet for expression.  It was to leave a record, even in this most ephemeral of electronic media, for others to find and follow.

Since then, my interests have taken new directions and found new outlets.  I started writing a nature column for the local paper,  and that is where my environmental writing has gone ever since.  There is enough material now to compile into book form, a project I hope to pursue.  Social media supplanted blogging as an outlet for the short form post with immediate reader feedback.  My personal life took new directions as well, and I no longer spend nights up late at night, avoiding unhappiness at home.

I stopped writing here on a regular basis several years ago, but I still blog elsewhere.  Instead of a general purpose blog I have three specialized ones.

My interest in 18th century material culture research and living history finds serious expression in the newest of these: "Another Pair Not Fellows; Adventures in Research and Reinterpreting the American Revolution."  I am still proud of the historical research I conducted and present here at Walking the Berkshires, especially the series which was recognized with a Cliopatria Award in 2008 and the documentation behind four posts on the march of Burgoyne's Convention Troops through Connecticut which was accepted in research paper form as an addition to the collections of the David Library of the American Revolution.Over time, I will probably archive relevant material from Walking the Berkshires here, possibly after first reformatting them as .pdfs on Scribd.  There are a couple that ought to be presented as scholarly research papers, and a seventeen post series with broken links is not really the best way to present that material. 

My irreverent sense of humor and love of the scholarly send up produced the fictional Journal of Constant Belcher, a wholly contrived character whose misadventures during the American Revolution make such convincing use of actual documentary evidence that I inadvertently mislead the entire Revolutionary War Reenacting community when I announced its "discovery."  I had assumed that entries such as the following made with tongue planted firmly in cheek would have been a dead giveaway - Maj. Bloomfield bid me make a place for his horse in the boat for crossing to Cuckoldstown /  Gave it green pippins from his haversack So that it might ease our passage with a copious wind/.  Sadly it was all too believable, and there are places in the hobby today where the mere mention of Belcher's name causes eyes to roll and brows to furrow.  There is a Facebook Page for Constant Belcher, too, where the social media are alerted to my latest discoveries from his journal.

Finally, there is a blog called Cornflower Blue & Corduroy; Wargaming the German - Herero and Nama Wars of 1904 -1908.  This is a new direction for two old interests - a love of painted miniatures and of Namibia.  I have a very small circle of people with whom to share this area of historical inquiry and recreational pursuit, but it has involved my learning to decipher and translate German in the old Fraktur font and presenting my findings, sometimes for the first time,  in English translation.

As for Walking the Berkshires, it is so well diffused in the electronic media stream that I still get contacted through email by people who have found one of my old posts.  I see my role for now as its curator, tending the archives without adding new acquisitions.  This blog made many important connections and friendships for me, in particular with the genea-blogging community, many of whom I still find on Facebook.  It deserves to be cared for rather than abandoned.

Gone fishing was requested as an epitaph by my grandfather, Robert Howard Barker, after talking about the great uncertainties of death with his young son Robbie.  The idea of burial and what happens to the body and spirit is a lot for any person to absorb, particularly a young child.  Robbie had been learning about the water table in school, and so resolved this great mystery by announcing that after he was buried, he would go fishing in the water table.  My grandfather announced then and there that "Gone Fishing" is what he wanted on his gravestone. 

Three decades or so later, I'd like to think he got his wish.

Of Feral Tannenbaums and Schmelts

The Great feral Christmas tree hunt took place last weekend at Windrock, and much to the delight of young and old, a suitable white pine was soon brought to bay.  Scofflaw-in-laws were amused that this did not require any timber trespass on adjacent landholdings, nor were we compelled to declare it "dead, dying, diseased, down or hazardous" as it was not on our conservation restricted land (or that of our neighbors).

The woods at Windrock have grown a great deal in my mother's memory, and even I can recall when the spot where we found the tree was called "The Fish's Road" and was still drivable.  Now there are thirty year old conifers in the old roadway.  The few firs that were planted there long ago have reached the canopy.  Then again, the old clay tennis court nearby is now used for overflow parking and is well on its way to meadow.

White Pines are spindly and leggy and even Charlie Brown might think twice if there were other "noncommercial"  offerings in the lot.  But there is great satisfaction in cutting and using what your land produces, and the advantage of this species becomes clear when large ornaments and garland fill in the open spaces before the big picture window.

The ornaments at Windrock are not of the "beautiful ball" school of decoration, but rather what my grandfather dismissively referred to as "schmelts" : the tattered adornments of Easter bonnets, cardboard fish,  armless Kewpies.  A lot of this Victorian clutter came from my Grandmother's Grandmother's tree, and I am always amazed as I ease the motheaten Santa's and tarnished twists of tin out of their boxes how right they look on a tree like this.

  One man's schmelt is another one's treasure. I introduced Elias to the joys of "bottle mining" at the centry old farm dump in the woods at Windrock.  We came back with this exceptional haul, including a gorgeous amber glass bottle of "Warner's Safe Liver and Kidney Cure" (made in Rochester NY).

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and we sit in another house, with another tree, waiting for "the bound".  And on Sunday, we will head back down to Windrock, and have another celebration, beneath the generous, twiggy boughs of the tree we bagged and brought home to adorn and adore.

 

The Family That Sings Together

When the extended Barker clan gathers in the big house on the bay, complete with numerous dogs and cousins in the 2nd and 3rd degrees, we love to sing and make music together. 

This is a tradition with deep roots in our family.  My parents are among those who met through glee clubs, and my mother and her siblings all are wonderful singers.  One aunt plays guitar and an uncle has a polychromatic harmonica, and when I was growing up they provided accompaniment to the evening sing-alongs.  Now my cousin Margaret's husband Nicholas and their son Elihu strum the next generations through an ever growing set list of old standards and new favorites.

We know and enjoy some very odd songs.  We sing "The Ship Titanic" with great exuberance, belting out its maudlin lines with glee and gusto. We love "The Cat Came Back" and The Old Family Toothbrush (That dirty old toothbrush...)"  One of my aunts had a roommate at Smith College during the folk revival who introduced her to many songs that are now classics: "Tom Dooley"; "Dirty Old Town"; "Sloop John B". We know a lot of show tunes, ranging from Rogers and Hammerstein to "Corner of the Sky" and "The Rainbow Connection." 

Through the years, new songs have been introduced that are as beloved for the current generations as the Kingston Trio, or for my grandparents (who courted by attending musicals).  Elihu brought us "Barrett Privateers" from a sailing camp he attended, and it now is in almost nightly rotation (with me and my strong pipes singing the lead).  We have relatives who live and work in Eastern Kentucky, so we are partial to Appalachian roots and mining songs of the likes of "Shady Grove" and "Dark as a Dungeon".  The occasional Tom Lehrer and Flanders & Swann make it into our review.  Last night, my Daughter Emily and I sang "I'm a Gnu" and "A Transport of Delight", and she managed to overshadow her Dad - no mean feat - to the delight of all.  I also pulled out "With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm" for the family's delectation.

Somethings requests were made for songs to which we did not remember all the chords or lyrics.  For this, we have both an old school and new media solution available.  We consult a well-loved copy of Rise Up Singing, and if that fails the iPhone generation can easily locate what we need only, I sang "If I were a Rich Man" and "Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat" while peering at an iPhone screen (the later for the first time since I owned the stage as Nicely Nicely Johnson in my sophomore year of High School).  The family encourages me to step up and put my pipes to good use, though there are many excellent singers and others who are delighted to join the chorus.  My cousin Leila, for example, has become a wonderful songsmistress and carries us forward in grand style.

I do love a stage, but I also think they know I need to feel that love right now.  The elephants in the room get to sing as well, even if they blend into the background.  On summer nights when we gather together, well fed and sleepy from days of sun and sea, the music is love.

Stuffies: Quahogs for the Masses

Down in our corner of Buzzards Bay, I am known as the king of baked stuffed quahogs.  For some reason, I have the mojo needed to find them in their hundreds when there are scores of hungry relatives, and the stamina to convert these hard shelled clams into their finest culinary incarnation.  This week, with more than 40 relatives at Windrock, I figured we needed about 350 medium sized clams to make 120 stuffies.  My brother-in-law Peter and I made our target in under an hour.

I scrubbed each clam and steamed the whole lot in two vast kettles with a bottle of beer and a goodly amount of Wye River (Original Red) Seasoning, the Eastern Shore's answer to Old Bay.  Each opened clam produced a midden of shells and a mound of meats, with the clam juice reserved for those who like it straight, those who like it with tomato juice and vodka, and the cook, who needed some for the next phase of the process.

Here we hit a snag, as someone in recent days seems to have melted the Cuisinart in a position that no longer allows the blade to engage.  An ancient KitchenAid with meat grinder attachment could not overcome the tenacious clams, so they had to be hand cut and minced, a process where I had the indispensable assistance of cousins Margaret and Leila.  Cynthia, meanwhile, scrubbed out over 100 half shells to contain the stuffing.

I sauteed some garlic and onions in a roasting pan with olive oil, and added more Wye River.  The clams were enough for several meat loaves had we felt so inclined, and I stirred in some unseasoned breadcrumbs until the mixture reached the desired consistency . I'd estimate that the ration was 6 parts clam to 1 part stuffing: a generous proportion making these premium stuffed clams the way Ben and Jerry's make premium ice cream.

I filled the shells on three baking trays, sprinkled on some vermouth and dusted them with paprika.  Then into the ovens they went for 15 minutes until there was a nice crust on top and they were ready to transfer to serving trays and distribute to the assembled throng.

Even finicky eaters devour my stuffed quahogs.  An inter-generational soccer game came to a screeching halt when the platters arrived on the field.  Having enjoyed a more intimate dinner with clams from the same waters just the week before, I was in my prime with this batch.  Favorite nephew status is now assured, at least until dinner, when my cousin John and wife Megan are serving us hundreds of chicken enchiladas.  Ah, summer.  Ah, stuffies.  For the next few hours, all is right with the world.

Enter Obliging Gull, Stage Left

I was blissfully in an eddy of time for the past week, out on an Island 12 miles from shore in the Gulf of Maine.  I shared this time with dear family and good friends and with no electricity, no white noise, no workaday crises to detract from the here and now.  Monhegan for me is one of those enchanted isles that rises to the surface every other year or so and offers me a 1930s summer for a brief and blessed space of time before receding back into the mist.  It restores my soul with a sweet expectancy that that can neither be rushed nor conjured at will.  It is a place that I carry in my heart through the long seasons ashore until the next time I surface on its rocky shore.

It had been three years since the last time I was able to take my children to Monhegan, and watching them respond to its wonders and make it their own was one of the great joys of our time together.  Emily the seal girl swam out over the cold blue water with such joy she forgot she would eventually be chilled to the bone.  Elias explored every tide pool and found young urchins, went to the library for a book about dolphins and picked all the blueberries and red raspberries in sight.  There were six children aged 6-9 (2 girls, 4 boys, 4 cousins,2 great friends) and five adults, including my sister and her husband who I love and see far too rarely.  It was a time of fresh discoveries and views so familiar I know every crease in the rock and contour of the cove like I know my own sun-bronzed smile.

I love this island of gaslight and fog.  One afternoon I pulled out the red kayak and slipped over the dulce and Irish moss into Deadman's Cove and paddled out along the shore toward the Seal ledges while the rest of the crew took the shore path behind our scampering children.  I went out toward Eastern Duck rock with its harbor seal colony and watched them arched on the rocks or bobbing in the swell watching me with their dark, curious eyes.  The wind was stiff behind me and fog coiled around the next headland, reminding me that I was in a little craft low in the water and far out to sea if I let the mist close behind me, so I did not linger.  But a seal followed me all the way back to the shelter of the cover when I hauled back out on the rocks below the cottages.

I have been coming to Monhegan since 1974 when I was younger than my son Elias.  It used to be a week or 10 days every summer for at least a decade, and I remember when the cod and pollack were so large and plentiful than three hours of jigging off Sherm Stanley's "Phalarope" or his son Shermie's "Desperado" would fill a skiff to overflowing with 20-30 pound fish.  I remember the island before the dwarf mistletoe decimated the spruce forest, opened up the headlands as they were a century before when sheep grazed above the surf.  Eli and I walked the graveyard below the Lighthouse where the Islanders had to build up enough fill and soil to bury their dead in six feet of earth atop this granite mountain in the sea, and saw that I knew many of the names on the markers as individuals as well as representatives of old Monhegan families.  As with our beloved Windrock, I have strong place memory here that allows me to be simultaneously in an older time as well as the present.

In a place where some things seem immutable, there are always changes in the wind.  The community is fiercely debating the merits and concerns about a possible wind generator on Lighthouse Hill.  The "poop and power" discussions are critical to sustainable living on an island where there is no more topsoil for leaching fields than their is to cradle the dear departed.  The small winter community has its own dynamics and relationships with those they support during the summer and with each other during the long stormy lashed winter.  There are just 13 working lobster boats in the harbor, where once in the 1950s there may have been three times that many making their living from the sea.  Now there are more artists in residence than fishermen.

There are parts of this Island, not 2 miles in length nor a mile broad, that get very few visitors.  Out by green point and some of the spur trails, one can be alone with the sound of the bell buoys on distant ledges and the mist dripping from spruce tips in delicious solitude.  There are trails where I know to look for lowbush blueberries, or a rock that looks like a smiling seal, or a weathered pile of driftwood above the wrackline, and lose myself in my five visceral senses, and the inner sixth sense that spins like a gyroscope to keep me centered in time, be it fast or slow.  What I carry forward refreshes and reinvigorates, even as there is longing when the time comes to sail back to shore.  On our return trip there were porpoises and a minke whale and diving gannets to send us over the water and back into the mainstream of our lives with joy in our hearts.

"Cannon To the Left of Them, Cannon in Front..."

The quest for revolutionary war Salisbury Cannon took me to the waters of the Brandywine and the fields of Valley Forge last weekend.  At the former I found nothing beside three European gun barrels inside the sadly depleted museum - a victim of state budget cuts- though I did find my way to the "Plowed Hill" where my Ogden and Dayton ancestors held the line in Stirling's Division against the British and Hessian onslaught.  However on Sunday a friend and I struck gold, or rather what was occasionally gold painted iron, at Valley Forge.

I made an effort to slip loose the surely bonds of gender and ask for directions at the visitor center, only to be informed by the official I had selected that there were no American made revolutionary cannon at the National Historical Park, nor yet any cannon at all for that matter.  My companion commented that had I selected one of the young, buzzcut rangers instead of the sedentary fellow at the tourist information desk, I might have gotten a different response - gender fail - but as it turned out we needn't have been discouraged because the place is swimming in artillery of a decidedly locally made character.

We came upon the 3 gun battery in the picture above at a redan near where Conway's Division encamped  in the winter of 1777-1778, and determined that they were of two different calibers (4 or 6 pounders, perhaps) and at least one was a wooden replica (at right), which I believe rules it out as a Salisbury survivor.  We ate our lunch and as we wove our way along one way roads through he part on various genealogical errands as well as on the look out for more guns we found many more iron cannon, ranging from light artillery to siege guns and mortars.

I wanted to pay a visit to the Washington Memorial Chapel, when my ancestor Thaddeus Thompson was said to have had a memorial tablet placed by his daughter Rhoda, one of the last real daughters of the Revolution still alive near the end of the 19th century.  We asked after it at the gift shop, and while the volunteers there were initially uncertain whether we would find anything, I was able to say I thought it would be in the chapel itself and sure enough, it was one of just two large brass plaques in gothic script on either wall and had been polished by our guide without her really knowing its history!  Old Thaddeus was just one of thousands of men who endured that winter, and was later wounded in the trenches at Yorktown and one of the first veterans to receive a pension for his injuries after the war.  Whatever pull his daughter Rhoda had as one of the last tangible links to that era got him his solitary plaque on the church wall.

At the site of Knox's artillery park were a number of 4-9 pounders arranged on their gun carriages and painted a flat yellow in imitation of bronze although they all were of iron.  I am analyzing my images to see whether there are any patterns which will help us determine which batches may have come from the same foundry.  I found few distinguishing marks, though one large cannon by the Chapel had what looked like 20 C engraved just before the vent.

We also came upon a monument to Maxwell's New Jersey Brigade, with my ancestors Matthias Ogden in command of the 1st and Elias Dayton in charge of the 3rd NJ regiments.  The bronze soldier atop the pedestal is wrapped in a blanket and seems to be wearing woolen stockings.

The enemy never attacked Valley Forge, which is today besieged by an invasive sea of microstegium and excessive herbivory by white tailed deer but is treasured as open space by joggers and sunbathers.  I had an absolutely delightful time, even if the answer "Yes, we have no artillery" proved unfounded.

Ancestor Approved

Heather Wilkinson Rojo at "Nutfield Genealogy" has very kindly recognized Walking the Berkshires with an Ancestor Approved Award.  What tickles me most about this honor, aside from the very kind words about my writing style, is the dour faced look of disapproval sported by the matronly mascot of this genea-blogging distinction.  That old girl's no Mona Lisa: more American Gothic.

The idea behind the Ancestor Approved Award is to highlight excellent blogging from the genealogy community and challenge those so recognized to list 10 things we have learned in their course of our ancestral research that have surprised, humbled or enlightened us.  Here then, are my 10 lessons learned.

1. You've Got a Friend:  I think many of us are drawn to genealogy for the thrill of the chase and the opportunity to personalize the past.  Our own bloodlines may be the hook, but genealogists tend to be a generous bunch and are just as excited to learn about each other's stories and research as in documenting our own.  And we do love a good story.  Finding this supportive community online was a pleasant surprise for me when I added genealogy to the rotation of post topics at Walking the Berkshires.

2.  God Bless Google Books:  Genealogy is not simply a matter of vital statistics.  It is more about the lives of the people that these names and dates represent.  Applying the skills of the historian, the archeologist, the social scientist and psychologist really animates family history for me.  To that end, as a non academic researcher I swear by the gold mine of source material represented by Google Books.  Querying this trove has delivered untold data on countless ancestors, the communities in which they lived.  In many cases this results in completely new information that changes my understanding of who they were and what they did,  Idly searching for information on one of my Revolutionary War era ancestors with Google Books, for example, revealed evidence in Washington's correspondence of a court martial.  Among the many happy results were this 11 post series on the Court Martial of Matthias Ogden and a connection to a group of avid reenactors who depict the New Jersey regiment that Col. Ogden commanded.

3.  Trust but Verify:  I am often surprised as how much family tradition gets right about my ancestors that subsequent research verifies.  If cousin Archibald Gracie did not exactly get his head taken off by a cannonball in the Petersburg Trenches, he was killed by an exploding shell which fractured his neck and struck him three times in the shoulder.

4.  Maybe it Ain't So: There is still no substitute for primary source material.  It is amazing how much bad history gets repeated as subsequent authors take at face value the claims made in other texts .  Sometimes the silences say more than false claims.  A privately printed genealogy of the Walker branch in my mother's pedigree from the early 1900s identifies the revolutionary war service of a collateral relation, but neglects to mention his subsequent and much longer service as an officer in the Pennsylvania Loyalists.  The only clue was that his father's will provided for grandchildren in New Brunswick, Canada after the war.

" 5.  Ancestor Worship is not Good History:  A good genealogist respects good data even while paying respect to one's forebears.  We take tours through the intimate details of our ancestor's lives.  We look in their underwear drawers and read their private letters.  If it turns out that they were more complex human beings with real flaws and contradictions - in other words, that they were human -  we have an obligation to treat them fairly and honestly.   

6.  Let Us Now Praise Famous Women:  It is "herstory" as well as "history".  I am the beneficiary of women in my family who have been keepers of the genealogical record for their own lines and those of their husbands for many generations.  Women's history can be found in the pension applications of Civil War Veterans, in the letters women wrote and the causes they championed.

7.  Sooner or Later, You Become the Source:  Good bloggers are good aggregators.  People searching for topics of an historical or genealogical nature are often lead to my blog.  On matters having little or no family connection, like the Morro Castle Disaster about which I blogged four years ago, I still get daily hits.  Once you go back a half dozen generations or so, the odds of sharing a common ancestor with others doing family history expand exponentially.  A post I wrote about my grandfather's experience as a doctor in wartime  lead the son of one of the officers he served with to my site, as well as the grand-niece of a man who died on the Liberty Ship later that took my grandfather to the South Pacific.

8.  Expect the Unexpected:  When searching the 1860 Census Records to try to close a gap in my primary Abbott line, I found that my Gr-great grandfather had an older brother. Since I was at the National Archives, I searched under his name for a Civil War service record, and discovered that he had enlisted in the 9th NY Hawkin's Zouaves.  Not only that, but his pension record gave me additional data that helped with my inquiry into his parents, and also revealed where he died out in Montana.  A few years later, I was vacationing at Glacier National Park and called up the nearby Old Soldiers Home that had been his final residence and in about 30 seconds found the number and location of his grave.

9.  All in Good Fun:  Remember, no matter how passionate our interest in the lives of our ancestors, not too take things too seriously.  19th Century Facial Hair and old family photos have tremendous comic possibilities.   For me, this prompted a long running and very popular Family Archive Caption Contest.

10.  Life is for the Living:  The family history at greatest risk of disappearing is being made now, and is still in the minds of those still with us.  Every genealogist I have ever known regrets not asking more of those now departed who could have told us more.  The memories we make now will enliven the past for those who come after.

And now the fun part.  To share the love and pass on this award, Here are 10 worthy genea-bloggers whose fine work has inspired me and who do their family history proud:

Bill West of West in New England; Sheri Fenley at The Educated Genealogist; Jasia at Creative Gene; Apple at Apple's Tree; Craig Manson at GeneaBlogie ; Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings;  Footnote Maven; Thomas MacEntee of Destination: Austin Family ; Grant Mishoe of Lowcountry Ramblings and M. Diane Rogers of CanadaGenealogy, or, 'Jane's Your Aunt'  Congratulations, and see if any of you can get the old lady to crack a smile.

A Patriot Gage or Two Revealed in the Family Tree

Every now and again, I shake the branches of the family tree and another Revolutionary War veteran falls out.  The Barker side of the family has long acknowledged Thaddeus Thompson (bombardier and drummer in Lamb's Artillery, wounded at Yorktown), but has not retained memory of the patriot service of Nathaniel Gage (1763-1844). Nonetheless, this ancestor received an annual $20.00  pension beginning in 1833 for service in the Massachusetts Continentals. 

Piecing together the specifics of this service is a work in progress, made complicated by conflicting secondary source material and the peregrinations of the Gage family during this period.  Nathaniel Gage was born in Pelham, New Hampshire on June 13, 1763 and at the age of five his family had removed to the vicinity of Saratoga and Stillwater, New York.  They remained in the region for the next decade which included Burgoyne's Albany Expedition, though they may have been displaced at this time. 

In 1779 he moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Nathaniel Gage's pension application reportedly states he enlisted "as a private with various companies" between 1779 and 1780.  From this statement one might assume his was militia service, yet the pension list from 1835 claims he was in the Massachusetts Continental Line.  The records of the Onondaga Historical Society , the community where he spent the last years of his life, list him as taking part in the Lexington Alarm from Amherst, which is geographically improbable and not supported by his pension claim.  There was a Nathaniel Gage at Lexington, but he was an officer from Bradford and had a company of minutemen at Bunker Hill.  Bradford, incidentally, was also the community where Nathaniel's father Jabez was born.  The Gages were early settlers of Ipswich, MA.

Having established that Nathaniel Gage was not in service before 1779 and had previously resided in Saratoga, it occurred to me to wonder whether there is any evidence that Jabez Gage (1723-1786) served in the Revolution as well.  There was, in fact, a Jabez Gage serving as a second Lieutenant under Col. John McCrea in the 13th militia Regiment (Saratoga district) who seems a very promising candidate, but this will require further confirmation.

For those in the family who are curious about how we are connected to Nathaniel Gage, the following may be of interest:

 Nathaniel Gage and Mehetabel Tefft had a son William Gage (b.3/22/1790).  He had a son with the marvelous name of Rensselaer Watson Gage (1804-1860) who was born in Olcott, Niagara,  New York.  He married Mary Ann McElwaine and their daughter Sarah Ann Gage married John Thomas Martin.  That ought to be a familiar name to the Barker clan, as his daughter was Alice May Martin aka "Grandma Barker", my great grandmother.  My Aunt "Marty" and cousin Cynthia Gage Canham carry on these family names.

Windrock Saved!

Things have moved remarkably swiftly since the logjam with the Wareham Selectmen gave way last Tuesday, and all 5 of them gave their unanimous endorsement of our Conservation Restriction.  This morning my Uncle Rob learned that all was ready for closing, and this afternoon the papers passed and so at long last our hopes have been realized. After two years of active negotiation -  and several more before that building consensus among ourselves, the extended Barker family has successfully sold a conservation restriction over 19.55 acres of woodland (a purchase authorized not once but twice by the Town voters from Wareham's Community Preservation Act funds).  The restriction is co-held by the Town of Wareham, Massachusetts and Wareham Land Trust and is the first of what we all hope and expect will be numerous conservation restrictions to go in place across Great Neck as our neighbors and their conservation partners work to conserve not only their own lands but a significant portion of the large Sacred Hearts property adjacent to ours as well.

I am tremendously proud of this family.  It is an extraodinary achievement, not only because saving family land is inherently challenging, but also because this process has made our close family even stronger.  Its willingness to look hard at our relationships to this place, to each other, and to the best way to honor my grandparents vision while providing the next generations with a way to keep it has been the key to our success.  Saving family land is meaningless if you lose the family, and I am deeply grateful to each and every one of them for their care and commitment.

While we had the benefit of an excellent local lawyer, a surveyor and an appraiser along the way, in addition to that we had a superb family negotiating team.  My Uncle John who himself is a skilled attorney was a very careful reviewer, especially when we had the Town's lawyer, the State's reviewer, the Land Trust and our family all tweaking the language of our agreement practically in real time.  My Uncle Rob was a tireless representative of our family's interests at interminable town meetings as well as in the regular flurries of e-mail negotiations that at times occupied as much of our time as our regular jobs.  His appreciation for the nature of Town government and fervent belief that what seemed like insurmountable obstacles might become mere setbacks were a tremendous help to us.  Both Rob and John's time and talent were critical to our success and I am deeply grateful to both of them for their love and support.

We made a great team, and the ability to work so well together across generations was an added pleasure.  This was no simple task, and there were many (many) convolutions along that way, but the outcome tonight is very close to the one envisioned at the outset, and one which I know would make my Gran and Grandpop very proud. 

For me personally, it is profoundly meaningful to have been able to place my professional skills in service of this great family and its wonderful conservation accomplishment.  I know, too, that there is no greater contribution I could make than to help us save Windrock.  Knowing that my children and their children can look forward to knowing this place and finding their place in the ever growing family that revolves around its center is a source of deep joy and satisfaction.

Windrock Watch: "God Bless Us, Everyone!"

Christmas came early for our family, and in of all unlikely places a meeting of the Town of Wareham Board of Selectmen.  Those of you who have been following the 2 year odyssey of our negotiations for the sale of a conservation restriction or easement to help keep this family land intact and in the family for generations to come know it has been a journey fraught with twists and turns, setbacks and strong resolve to find a way to make this happen. 

Last week, with a renewed vote of the citizens of Wareham at their annual Town Meeting this Fall to go forward with this transaction, the Selectmen decided that the sign-off that they had received from their attorney was not in the form they needed from the firm that provides Town Council and held up their formal endorsement of the conservation restriction, which is an absolute requirement under Massachusetts Law before it can be recorded. 

Last night, with very little discussion, they gave it their unanimous approval and signed.  With any luck, we could go to closing as early as next week, or if vacation schedules make that difficult then in early January. 

One of my cousins remarked that the Selectmen have actually done us a huge favor by delaying this project by six months until they were fully satisfied they could sign it, because had we been paid in June we would have lost a very large chunk of the proceeds in the stock market crash.  As it is, with careful planning we should have enough to rebuild the original trust that cared for my grandmother and now can help keep the land and the family together while adding a critical piece of conservation land to a remarkable 300-acre land protection effort among our neighbors and several conservation entities.

We all is signed and sealed, we shall sound the tucket.  My grandparents, wherever they may be, are most assuredly smiling.