"WW II I absolutely love this museum. I visited twice this year; once I visited for the Christmas trains exhibit, and again to introduce my sister to the museum. If you are looking for something to do, go on over and visit for the new exhibit.

Exhibit" "The Museum of American History at Deptford, NJ " " " " April 1st through June 5th, 2021 The Museum of American History at Deptford, NJ Address: 138 Andaloro Way Deptford, NJ 08093 Phone: 856-812-1121 E-mail: sjmuseum@aol.com Website: www.southjerseymuseum.org "

STILL IN PANDEMIC MODE, SO OUR 'THING TO DO' IN THIS POST IS A BOOK SUGGESTION!

You could say this book suggestion bridges both February: African American History Month, and March: Women's History Month.

In an essay I read recently, it was suggested that one of the things we could do to improve our understanding of RACE in America, was to READ READ READ. Well, that is always a welcome suggestion to e, and I ad taken the suggestion up with CASTE, by Isabel Wilkerson. Throughout the book, the comparisons with the situations in which women have found themselves were apparent to me. Recently, in the spate of articals about current attempts by the Republican Party to pass laws that in effect suppress voting rights, I had to think of the two hundred years that women had no voting rights in America and few if any legal rights.

Thos that we have at present were hard won. An excellent documentary by the poet of American history in documentary, Ken Burns, is NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Along with their struggle for voting rights, the documentary gives a warm portrait of their life long friendship.

The book I just ordered is DOUGLAS'S WOMEN, By Parker-Rhodes. Frederick Douglas married a free Black Woman named Anna who not only bought his ticket to freedom but supported him as he made his early career in Abolition, and raised their five children and kept his house. When others claimed that becase she ws 'illiterate' she was not his equal as his wife, he (allegedly) defended her. Nonetheless, he brought another woan into their home to be his mistress and his comrade in the struggle, a German immigrant and the daughter of German intellectuals, Ottilie Assing. She supported his efforts both financially and as his personal secretary. However, when she returned to Germany to secure her family inheritance, Frederick Douglas married a much younger woman, another personal secretary, the daughter of his neighbors who were Abolitionists and apparently, approved of their daughter's work as a clerk for Douglas but not their marriage. Her family disowned her. Ottilie, nonetheless, after securing her inheritance, set up a trust for Douglas to support him and then she committed suicide. It wasn't only her despair of hearing of Douglas's marriage, she had also been diagnosed with breast cancer. She took cyanide.

Throughout history, the sacrifices of women like Anna, Ottilie, and so many others, bot financial support and home-making, child raising, secretarial and emotional, have been neglected or underestimated. Without Anna, Douglas may never have succeeded in escaping slavery or beginning his career in Aboliton. Without the help of Ottilie and his third wife, he may never have had the time to complete his books,essays, speeches or articles.

LIVING IN EXTRAORDINARY TIMES - MY FIRST SHOT OF PFIZER VACCINE - TODAY, March 10, 2021!

Today, I was fortuate enough to receive my first vaccination against covid 19 with Pfizer's two shot vaccine. When I say fortunate, I mean it. If it hadn't been for a friend of mine, Nancy, who is particularly competent and who had found a way to schedule hers through something called MyChart, I wouldn't be vaccinated right now. I had signed up with the conty registration, the state registration, I had telephoned ShopRite, Walgreens, CVS, Urgent Care, and any place anyone or any e-mail alert said you could get innoculated. None of it panned out until Nancy sent me the MyChart link. It turns out that because I was in the hospital at Virtua in November for diverticulitis, I have a MyChart patient rgistration, so I was able to schedule my appointmet for today at what is termed "Mega Site" at the Moorestown Mall.

My forementioned friend, Nancy, also sent me a photo of what the entrance looked like an directions to the part of the Moorestown Mall where the innoculations were being given. It was the former Lord & Taylor Department Store. I left at 1:00 for m 2:15 appointment because I didn't want to be late and now my old car and I go slow. My plan was to go down Main Street to Lenola Road and cross route 38, but I got anxious about the time and took route 38 dirctly to the mall. Parking lot was full. The two friends who had previously gotten their shots had said it was remarkably empty but that was not the case when I got there. Groups of about 24 to 30 people were moving along through the maze of cordoned off corrals from station to station.

I had received and printed out and brought with me my e-mail confirmation of the appointment, a scanning symbol also e-mailed to me and designated as my identification, my driver's license with photo on it, and my medicare card. As it turned out, I was asked over and over for a 'white card' which I didn't have, but I kept handing over the stuff I had brought with me. The clumps of 20 to 30 people moved from station to station, all of which were manned by National Guard troops in camoflage uniforms, fatigues, I think they are called. They were all uniformly polite, businesslike, patient and helpful.

At each station there were several tables and soldiers, so there was basically no wait at all, and we moved along efficiently from question station to station until we got to the stations where we got the shots. It didn't hurt at all. After the shot, we were given a white sticker with a time written on it and taken to a large area, actually the whole place was monumentally large, where about a hundred folding chairs were placed about 5 feet apart. We were waiting there to make sure we had no adverse reactions to the inoculation. After 15 minutes, a guard came and told me I could leave. I had been talking to a lady 4 feet in front of me. We were talking about people not taking the coronavirus seriously, and I mentioned that my mother's mother had died in the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1919, though actually she died a couple years after it in the epidemic of pneumonia that followed. The lady told me her own mother had died last April in a nursing home of corona virus. I said what a shame that was and how sorry i was for her loss. She said in some ways it wss a blessing because her mother was in the home because she suffered for some years from dementia. We all know there is no getting better from that, only getting out

When I left, I took a wrong turn somehow, although I was sure I was going the right way, and got lost on route 73. So I had to pull over into a parking lot and use the gps to get me to route 70, so I could find my way home. For some reason I had a raging thirst, so I stopped at McDonald's in Collingswood and bought a Shamrock Shake and fries and drove across the road into the park where I sat and ate the fries and drank the shake in a little silent celebration.

The whole experience reminded me of refugee centers and immigration detention camps. Also it had a kind of sci-fi feel to it, the abandoned luxury goods department store, the empty glass counters where perfumes and jewelry once sparkled, the roped off maze of corrals and the stations with the questions asked by the soldiers. It was as if afer our inoculation wait, we would all be herded onto a space ship sent to colonize Mars.

Fortunately we had glorious spring weather today which made the whole trip so much easier. It was warm and sunny, 60 degrees! In my morning dog walk I had stopped to chat with a couple of neighbors out in their yard enjoying the weather. They were also ove 70 and had not yet been able to struggle through the underground cavern of twists and turns that is the scheduling system. I told them to try MyChart, which by the merest coincidence I had because of my emergency visit last autumn when my duaghter found Virtua while looking for closest and best hospitals to take me to. She saved me then, and inadvertently saved me again!

There is an old quote, which sadly I cannot attribute that says "May you live in interesting Times" is a kind of curse. Well I believe all the times I have lived haved been interesting, and from this side of the innoculation divide, i feel hopeful about enjoying even more interesting times.

Happy T

Foreign Soldiers

Lately, as I mentioned in my previous posts, I have been watching TIME TEAM, an archaeology program set in England. Many of their digs involve Roman Forts from the Roman conquest which took plae at the turn of the around 100 AD and the occupation lasted until 400 AD when the Roman Empire disintegratedd and the Anglo Saxons invaded Britain, followed by the Danes. They were, in turn, invaded by the Normans (who were North Men, or Vikings, who had stayed in France long enough to become Normans) and they were in turn defeated by Britons (the earliest invaders and inhabitants for whom Britain was named) and a cooalition of Anglo Saxons and Danes who had settled there so long they had become something new, a cohesive British force, under King Alfred, who united Britain. Everybody settled down and the United Kingdom went on about its business which was taking Scotland from the Picts and Ireland from the Irish.

Anyhow, Amongst the rubble left by the Romans, are the bits and pieces, Roman coins, some burial headstones, broken pottery and the ghosts of all those soldiers stationed there, not to mention their offspring since many of them claimed wives while they were settled in their fronteir forts.

Today when I finally had the time to read the Sunday New York Times and the Book Review section, there was a review of a book about the lives of the Roman soldiers. Apparently, according to the review, a lot of the Roman soldiers were surprising literate because the army demanded detailed records of everything (kind of reminds me of the Germans in WWII). According to gravestones mentioned in the review, the soldiers in Britain came from what is now Spain, Bulgaria and Hungary as well as Italy. Watching another tv series about the Roman occupation of what is now Germany (but was then Gaul and Barbarian Northern Europe), up to the Rhine, I learned for the first time that not only did the occupying Roman army demand tribute money, they also demanded slaves and young men to serve in the military. I wondered how many of those men from Spain, Hungary or Bulgaria, had also been captives forced into the military. The book is called GLADUS.

That reminded me, as history tends to stretch from one topic and period to another, of the Hessian forces forced to fight in the British colony of America during the Revolution. When I volunteered at Whitall House in Red Bank Battlefield, National Park, NJ, I was very curious about those poor young men, conscripted by their ruling aristocratic princes into armies which were then sent to fight all over the place and even rented out! A very large proportion of the fighting forces arrayed against us colonists in the Revolution were Hessians (from that same area of southern Germany once occupied by the Romans, along the Rhine). I always wondered what happened to the ones left behind after the battles, the wounded the deserters, the imprisoned. There are a couple of diaries of soldiers, officers, which I have read, but it is the everyman, the Joseph Plum Martin of the Hessian army who I would like to hear from.

If you are looking for places to visit, and if you haven't already been there, don't miss National Park, Red Bank Battlefield. It offers a splendid view over the Delaware, a beautiful colonial Quaker farm entirely intact despite the battle that took place in the apple orchard, and a fascinating story. The house may be closed still due to the pandemic, but the battlefield is a lovely place to walk and have a picnic lunch, and there is a great playground if you bring the kids. There are restrooms and informative signage to help you get an idea of the place.

Today is International Women's Day, so let me mention Ann Whitall, the Quaker farm wife who endured the battle in the apple orchard and is said via oral history to have helped care for the wounded soldiers after the battle (of whom there were about 400.) The same oral history says that the pile of amputated limbs rose to the level of the window in the room taken over as a surgery in thei Whitall's house. The family had taken refuge with other family members in Woodbury during the battle. Ann Whitall left a diary from 1762, unfortunately not from the time of the Revolution, but I transcribed it at the Gloucester County Historyical Society so it could be accessed on the computer. Mainly she deals with her religious experience. Ann Whitall was an old time Quaker in the sense that she believed in hellfire and damnation and she strove passionately to work on her soul and the souls of those around her. She was an avid attendant at Quaker Meeting a few times each week. Needless to say, a diary is only a very narrow window on a full life, and Ann, being no doubt, certin that God was watching over her shoulder, rarely dealt with the mundane details of her ordinary life, which is too bad, because I wanted to know what she cooked how she got along with the indentured servants who worked for she and her husband, and what she did during the day. The house has been loaned her actual desk by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the DAR, the same desk where presumable she wrote her diary.

Since today is Int'l Woman's Day, and I mentioned the Roman invasion of Britain, let me also mention Queen Boudicca, who also attempted to pull together the fractious tribes of Britain to fight off the Romans, and was briefly successful before being ultimately defeated. England is notable for the heritage of warror queens such as the first Queen Elizabeth who fought off the invasion of Spain via the armada and who sent out the explorers who invaded and settled in the New World. And speeaking of explorers, it was Queen Isabella who sent out Columbus to invade in the Carribean. The tv is replete with series dealing with British royalty at present, such as the eries, THE CROWN, and for a bit of Anglo Saxon archaeology in England there is a good movie called THE DIG.

HAPPY TRAILS - if you want to contact me to continue the conversation, use my e-mail the blogspot comments function is awful. wrightj45@yahoo.com

JO ANN

REFERENCE TO PREVIOUS POST ON TIME TEAM

Once while hiking with a geocacher, we stumbled upon the ruins of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. What was left was the concrete base of some buildings, and most interesting to me, some mosaic tiles. I had read and studied quite a bit about the CCC and how in the training camps they taught the men basic trades such as carpentry, laying tile, and so on.

While watching season 4, episode 5 of the Time Team, they were searching for the remains of a mosaic floor left by the Romans in a now time erased villa and it reminded me of the CCC Camp discovery we made in the woods and how enchanted we were by the engagement with our own history though 2930 is barely hisory by British standards. Still my point is that these interactions with our history are so meaningful and they are everywhere. The initial camp we found may have been at Bass River where they have a lot of information on the CCC. There is also a good deal of information on the CCC at Parvin State Park and a bridge that was built in the park by the CCC. The CCC men cleared out the waterway at Parvin and built the bridge you cross if you follow the trail.

wrightj45@yahooc.com

A Lesson in how to interest people in HISTORY - TIME TEAM

Okay, I will admit it, I am an anglophile. Several years ago I discovered I am 50% British dna, so that may explain my affection for British Mystery Books, and British Archaeology. Also, I LOVE British tv shows. Currently I am watching TIME TEAM, which has been hugely successful in Britian and is now on amazon prime. The measure of the success is in the number of seasons - 20! The only show I watch that has beat that many seasons is a mystery, Midsummer Murders.

Strangely enough the Time Team don't ever seem to find very much but what they find, they can deduct whole worlds of information from. They dig trenches and come up with bits of pottery no bigger than a couple of inches and they can tell when and where the pottery was made. They dig up bits of metal, or even slag, and they can tell what ore, and what period, and even why it was there. The Time Team responds to letters from members of the British public who have parts of stone walls in their gardens, or who have heard myths about their pastures housing Roman forts, or they have nearby churches or chapels with mysterious gravestones, or they have, themselves found mysterious items when plowing or fishing, or metal dectecting.

The Time Team, presented by the ever spry and game Tony Robinson is composed of an archivist, an artist (my favorite - this artist can do the most descriptive and evocative renderings from the bits of information given by the time time, so that you can see the Anglo Saxon village or the Roman villa as it would have looked. I am an artist too, so I am wonder struck by this talent.

The Time Team has a geophysics expert who scans the fields looking for places to dig, an archivist, who finds all the pertinent historic records, blueprints, historic accounts, letters and so on to help the story emerge. There is a osteoarchaeologist, a bone expert, who has branched out with her own program called DIGGING BRITAIN and I have watched it as well. And there are diggers, like Phil, and other archaeology experts in various fields of expertise. In many episodes, Phil or one of the others, will engage in an activity relating to the dig such as smelting or brewing, or even stone blade knapping.

Inevitably, kids and other townsfolk will gather to watch the goings on, often joining in and helping. Sometimes there is a party afterwards and all the community join the fest. Even though they have rarely, as long as I have been watching, come up with more than bits and pieces and a terrific story, people are captivated, even people like me who don't live in a land with two thousand years of history in the garden. It is inspirational and I always end up wishing I had gone into archaeology!

You may have noticed that I have learned enough html to create paragraphs now that blogspot has quit opensource and given us this new format where apparently a lot of the programming must be learned and done by us. Fortunately, many many years ago in the early days of free websites, I had learned a little html by creating sites with angelfire and geocities - remember them? Happy Trails! (underground, overground, or on the tv screen)

Jo Ann

ps. I will learn more so I can enlarge the text and add images, I promise! If you want to contact me, use my email, thanks, the comments feature is robo-hacked and is awful sorry I don't know how to make my e-mail address a link yet, but I will learn - I bought a book.

wrightj45@yahoo.com