This is the time of year when I really begin dreaming about warm weather and spring and sunshine and flowers and getting back into the garden. Plant catalogs are rolling in to tempt me with new cultivars, seed packets are showing up in stores, and gardening is just around the corner. One of my wish …
If you research your family history long enough, you’ll come to understand the thrill of finding a long-lost photograph of an ancestor. It’s so great to attach a face to the name you’ve spent so much time with. Many times we find these photos in the attics of family members, even relatives as removed as …
Herbs are plants, parts of which contain essential oils useful in food, medicine and/or cosmetics. Herbs usually grow in temperate regions, both in the wild and as cultivators. Herbs would have been plentiful and inexpensive in colonial American households. Herbs should be distinguished from spices, which are generally derived from woody plants that grow in …
Imagine my shock when I saw a fire-engine red lizard face sticking out of my rock wall in the garden. I yelled for my husband: “There’s a giant salamander out here!” Because of course I know we don’t have lizards in Delaware. Salamanders, however, are a different matter. I see them all the time in …
Going through some old emails and found this one from a LeBlond relative who was kind enough to share these two pedigree charts. The first one has the Gamage and Maze lines, most of which I had not known of. My research had ended with Jeanne Gamage and Robert LeBlond. The Maze line is quite …
These two precious kittens ignore their hundreds of dollars of cat toys and play in a shipping box.
Meet Yolanda, our backyard raccoon. She lives in a strip of woods behind our house that is owned by the county, so her actual home tree is not in our backyard, but we like to think she is ours, partly because of her many foraging trips to our yard. Her tree is a larger tree …
Mabel LaBarre Straub was born in 1878 in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, to parents David Walter Straub (1856-1922), a country doctor, and Laura Sherisky LaBarre (1858-1925), daughter of Jesse Labar of Slatington, Pennsylvania. Mabel’s parents, David and Laura, scandalized society when they eloped about 1875 as announced in the following undated and unidentified newspaper clipping: How a …
We’ve all got them. Moldering in the attic, orphaned in a drawer, tucked in with yellowing, handwritten letters. Yes, I’m talking about those family mystery photos that we can’t identify, whether a portrait, family picture, vacation photo or, in my case, shots of unidentified homes. I’m posting mine here in the hope that someone might …
1655 Dutch ship wrecked within the mouth of the Brandywine River, laden with brandy or “brandewijn.” 1684 Birmingham Township settled and incorporated. Chichester Meeting founded. 1686 Concord Meeting established. 1690 Birmingham Meeting founded. 1670 Andrew Braindwine received a grant of land near the mouth of the Brandywine River. 1704 William Brinton 1704 House built. 1710 …