(written on July 3rd and 4th from notes taken previously)
There’s not really a whole lot to write about today… a bit like yesterday.
I was up and driving relatively early again this morning, and gratefully, I was able to get into town in time to take care of some errands before heading over to the temple.
As y’all know, I like to recycle when I can, and the desire is strong enough that I hold on to garbage, sometimes for weeks, sometimes longer (here’s looking at you, New Zealand 🙃) until I can find a place to recycle it.
Gratefully, I was able to find multiple recycling drop off locations relatively nearby the temple in Casper, so I was able to drop off the plastic bottles that I had gathered up from what people had left in… Dinosaur National Monument? and I was able to get rid of a bunch of cardboard box left overs from Amazon shipments that I’ve received, etc.
I drove to one additional recycling drop off location in the hopes of getting rid of the big glass beer bottle that I retrieved from high up the mountain slopes of Utah last week (as the first drop off location didn’t have a place for glass) but no dice.
Apparently, there aren’t any glass recycling facilities anywhere near Casper, so it’s a large expense for recyclers to ship the glass out of the state to where it can be recycled.
That means I still have the big glass beer bottle hanging out with me. Maybe there’s a place that I can recycle it in Hot Springs. 🤞
As I was on my way to the second recycling drop off spot, I passed a gas station that offered a pretty fat discount for cash, so I went ahead and filled up there.
Since I’ve continued (after my experiment) to drive 55 miles an hour in order to reduce fuel consumption and save money, I also find myself no longer worrying about whether or not I’m going to have enough gas to make the full round trip to Casper without having to stop at one of the much more expensive gas stations between Hot Springs and Casper.
Because I currently live probably 10 minutes from the nearest gas station in Hot Springs, and that gas station is the opposite direction to the route I usually take to Casper, and because I’m not often in Hot Springs (except on Sundays for church), backtracking to save money on gas means wasting gas to do that.
Anyway, that’s probably a lot more than needed to be written about fuel economy and gas prices. 😆
It’s just nice to know that there’s absolutely no concern about needing to fill up somewhere along the way, because my range per tank has increased substantially.
The temple was lovely. 😊
I caught up with one of the temple workers who used to be in the baptistry just about every time I attended the temple last summer. It was good to chat with her.
I also chatted briefly with the daughter of the 90-year-old Temple attendee, the daughter being the one who takes her to the temple Temple. I don’t know how often they go, but they’re there pretty much every single time I am.
It was nice to let the daughter know the same thing that I told her mother last week, that just seeing them in the temple brightens the experience.
Did I mention that there’s a lady that I also see pretty much every time who has one of the biggest, brightest smiles of anyone I’ve ever seen, and she’s pretty much always beaming light out to everyone?
If I haven’t, there is such a lady there, also pretty much every time I go, and I got an easy opportunity (she walked right by while I was talking to last summer’s baptistry coordinator lady) to tell her how much I love her smile. 🥰
It feels really nice to be in an emotional and spiritual place where I’m able, not just to look outward, but to do so with so much more light than I used to have.
Sadly, I did manage to put a little damper on the intensity of my light by allowing myself to be darkened by superficial fears after seeing myself in the mirror, and all my sun-damaged glory.
Fortunately, it didn’t have as big of an impact as it has had in the past, and one of these days, I’ll get over it completely and look with gratitude upon all those gazillions of super fine wrinkles as tokens of priceless experience and powerful opportunities to become who I want to become.
As I was walking out of the temple, I don’t know if she was waiting for me? but there was a lady who stopped me, wanting to set me up with her daughter who lives in Arizona. She had asked the temple worker I was chatting with earlier if I was single, and of course she had said, “yes.”
Yes, I’m single…ish. Single but not available. For now. What the future looks like for me… I just… don’t know.
Not really wanting to discuss my current path and perspective, I went ahead and gave her my Facebook information (which, I’m guessing was accessed rather quickly, as I think my Facebook page links to my blog? And my blog stats skyrocketed today with somebody reading a whole bunch of different posts, including most, if not all, of my biographical sketches, I think. That might do enough to scare them off. 😆).
After leaving the temple, I headed over to Walmart, at that point about 24 hours into my water fast. I wasn’t there for food, however, but for electrolytes–sodium, potassium, magnesium (well, specifically potassium and magnesium, as Heather has sodium back at the trailer).
It took me a good long time to find stuff that would work that wouldn’t also mess up my water fast, as most everything that comes in store comes in pill form with other ingredients that can mess up the efficacy of a water fast.
Fortunately, between the supplements aisle and the seasonings aisle, I was able to find potassium and magnesium in powder form (without all the extra garbage).
There was a 2013 Honda Civic for sale for a super cheap price nearby, and I had arranged with the seller to see it today, so I headed from the Walmart over to the car (which was just a few minutes away). Unfortunately, despite it supposedly being a daily driver, the tires, though still new looking in terms of the amount of tread still on the tires were badly dry rotted.
That would be a significant expense immediately after buying a car. It had also been involved in the front end collision, and the seller had jimmy rigged a fix. I wasn’t too worried about the jimmy-rigged fix, except the damage was a lot greater than I’d hoped. I’m sure it totally would have worked as a beater car and has been working for him, but… it’s a lot more than I’d want to take on.
So I didn’t even take it out for a test drive, simply thanking him for taking the time to show it to me, and then heading on the long drive back to the ranch.
I don’t really remember much at all about the drive, but I had a great little conversation with Cory after getting back, and a great conversation with my mom as well.
I think it was during my conversation with my Mom that I suggested that I take responsibility for preparing for the efforts we’re going to be making on Whitney/Stanton branch of the family we’ve been working on for decades (and my mom taking responsibility for the Jurden/Carter branch).
Accordingly, I decided to use AI to try and learn as much as I could to best prepare for the trip. One of the thoughts that came to my mind was to ask AI who the foremost researcher was on the Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper in the United States (if I remember correctly), and the newspaper in New York City that, for whatever reason, had published a little blurb about my great-great-great-great grandfather’s death.
Gemini (the AI) was able to give me the name of the foremost researchers 🙏, but as I continued querying it, I realized that I wasn’t going to need the assistance of the researcher.
In chatting with Gemini, I found out that there were basically three reasons my ancestor would show up in a New York City newspaper, despite the fact that my ancestor lived and died in relative obscurity far away in upstate New York.
- He was black
- He wasn’t black but was famous
- The story got passed along via the newspaper exchange as an interesting/titillating filler story.
After letting Gemini know that my ancestor was neither black nor famous, it was pretty much positive that the story had to have come from the newspaper exchange, where newspapers would share free copies of their newspapers with other newspapers in the region in order for each to find hands additional resources for finding content to fill their newspaper editions with that their readers might find interesting.
Realizing that there was likely a previous source from which the Freedom’s Journal got the story, and that the original newspaper to publish the story might have included more information, I began searching for the original newspaper.
Gemini recommended three, one of them being the Black River Gazette out of Lowville, just down the road from Watson where Hiram died.
I think way back in 2017 or 2018, I had gone through that newspaper looking for information about Whitneys and Stantons, etc, but I think I had only used the key word search function on the website that offered the digital images of the original newspaper issues, and when keyword searching revealed no matches, I had given up.
Well, I decided to try again, skimming, at the guidance of Gemini, pages two and three of each four-page issue starting from May 15th and going to June 15th, a week prior to the June 22nd edition of the Freedom’s Journal which contained my ancestors death story.
I skimmed and skimmed and skimmed, but couldn’t find anything in the skimming. While I was working on that, my sister Heather asked if maybe AI could go through the digital images of the documents themselves.
🤓
So I started downloading the images of the June 12th edition of the Black River Gazette, uploading the first image to Gemini and asking it to transcribe the page contents for me.
It did! 🎉
Realizing it could read and transcribe from the image, I asked if that first image contained any instances of Whitneys found on the page.
Nope.
One down, possibly dozens and dozens to go. 🙃
Realizing that Gemini could read the page and transcribe it, I realized I didn’t need it to do any transcribing: I just needed it to let me know whether or not there were any Whitneys on each page that I uploaded.
So I uploaded the second page, and it came back with a story about a Whitney from another city, but not my Whitney.
Two down…
And then after uploading the third image, Page Three of the June 12th Edition of the Black River Gazette, Gemini returned the following:
“Yes! On this page, the name Hiram Whitney appears explicitly in the far right section of the sheet under Column 4.”
😶
😲
I went over and looked at column four, and what Gemini had said was there wasn’t… but it was in column three!
Holy. Moly.
🥳
Only the third image into what could have been a long long process of uploading image after image after image, there it was, the likely original (still very brief) story.
“AFFLICTING ACCIDENT.
“A Mr. HIRAM WHITNEY was accidentally killed on the 6th inst. in the upper part of Watson in this county, by the falling of a limb from a tree under which he was lying asleep.”
🥳
(excitement at finding this, not at his death, of course 😅)
Heather and I were super excited, and I called my mom, and she was excited, too. We’ve spent so much time and energy trying to find even little bits of information about Hiram Whitney and his wife Susan Stanton, and though this wasn’t much, it did give us additional details that we didn’t have from the account in the Freedom’s Journal that I had found many years ago.
We now know the exact day he died (assuming the newspaper got it correct), which might help us find additional information, and we know that he was in the “upper” part of Watson.
Gemini volunteered that it would make sense for him to have been there and to have died that way, because at that particular time there was a lot of land clearing going on in that area. I haven’t verified that, and AI is wrong pretty regularly, but it was certainly helpful today!
Super cool. 🥳
And it’s really cool to be making these connections, the one here with Hiram from today as well as the ones we made in Arkansas a month or two ago for the Carters and Jurdans, right before we head out on our trip to search those exact lines. 🎉
The genealogy efforts were a nice distraction from the fasting headache that I had that had quickly turned from being a very light fasting headache into a migraine (my headache started getting a fair bit worse, I started getting a little slap happy, and I started having trouble speaking, my mouth not doing what I wanted it to do, which is a common symptom of migraines for me).
Because of the shift from fasting headache to migraine, despite taking some magnesium (I hadn’t yet taken sodium or potassium, even though I was something like 32 hours into the fast), I ended up breaking the fast, eating some food, and taking some migraine pills.
Gratefully, the migraine pills short-circuited my physical deterioration, getting me pretty much back to normal, before I finally went to bed. 🙏
Speaking of finally going to bed, I ended up staying up until I think something like 3:30 in the morning working on genealogical efforts.
And not in vain either. 😁
Despite the fact that my genealogical efforts in the wee hours came with a fair bit of frustration 😅 (I think it’s likely become a fairly widespread and overused joke, but it seems like the programmers who work for the LDS church purposefully design their websites in such a way as to test the patience of the website users. 😅), I made what feels like another big break through. 🥳
I started researching more about my Whitney line, and made another connection! James Duane (JD), One of Hiram and Susan’s sons, mentioned in a brief biographical sketch that he had gone to live with his Uncle Hutchinson in Jefferson County New York when he was about 13.
Years ago, I spent a lot of time looking for Hutchinsons in that area and found some, but I’d never made the eureka! breakthrough connection.
Well, before going to bed in the wee hours of the morning, I did! I don’t have actual proof yet, but the circumstantial evidence is now so powerful that it’s all but a done deal for me.
JD mentioned “Uncle” Hutchinson, and that he had worked as a tailor for two years. Well, Harlow Hutchinson, who lived in Jefferson County, is listed in the 1850 census as being a tailor, but not only that, when I started searching out family trees with that Harlow Hutchinson, I found a family tree that named his stepmom as being Mary Stanton.
😲
🥳
Though that would make him a step cousin of JD and not an uncle, he was 20 years older than JD, and it was quite common in those days (and perhaps even still?) to call a cousin who was significantly older than you an aunt or an uncle.
The timing all fits, the names fit, the relationships fit…
I think we found “Uncle” Harlow, Aunt Mary, and many many others. 🥰
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 