I read Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby a few weeks ago, back when I got word that my students would be returning to school in-person for four days each week. I had spent the year alternating back-and-forth between remote learning and hybrid teaching, and I wanted normal. Not-staying-home-not-wearing-a-mask-not-teaching-second-grade-online-and-in-person-at-the-same-time normal. We're all in the same place; [...]
So, remember that last post I shared in August? The one when I apologized for missing one of my weekly posts? The one when I promised that I could--I would--keep up with it all? Visiting my sister at college in November Ha. Let me tell you about my first year of teaching. I'm not sure [...]
So, I dropped the ball. Because for one year, I was writing a post every Friday about my newest find of the week. And this week? I didn't. I know what I wanted to write about--I found a few records indicating that one of my relatives spent the last years of his life in an [...]
Ok, this one is making me angry. I'll set the scene: I was searching for an ancestor to write about for Amy Johnson Crow's "Namesake" prompt this month, and I eventually decided that it had to be someone on the Merrill side of my family tree. I mean, there's my great-great-grandmother, Celestia Melvina, who was [...]
At the age of 17, my great-grandfather deserted the U.S. Army, packed his belongings into a rucksack and made his way by foot to Lockport, New York. He changed his name to John Gates during a stop in Ohio, married my great-grandmother in Buffalo and raised five children of his own. He didn't tell anyone--not [...]
Applegate Genealogy 
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