By the Shore

Sitting by the sea is such a nice relaxing thing to do. I've driven for hours to do so, got hot sandy salty water all over me, or cooled too quickly, got too hot, too sandy, too dried out from the wind.  But I love to do it, and will someday again.

Check the people from the Sepia Saturday site to see what they've come up with related to this photo!
But my collection of beach photos has already been posted here before, so I'll just show a few again.

First a Florida shot (I know I lived there for years, but these ladies most appreciated a van ride from Tampa to Clearwater Beach, where there was a great little pier that wheelchairs could tool along.  This was in 2003, before I retired, when I loved working with elders as an activity director for an assisted living residence.

These following shots are all of Galveston TX. Come see if the rest of the Sepians have anything more interesting to share HERE

Old map of Galveston

Strolling on the beach below the seawall

The seawall of Galveston.

West beach, Galveston TX June 2018. My cousin, a long distance truck driver, shared this to her facebook page, so I have to include it even though it's pretty fresh off the press (as they once would say.)

1833 birthday of Elizabeth Pulsifer Granger Sweet

 
Oh I'm kicking myself.
I haven't tried to enter information about my genealogy for months, maybe years.
So I had 6-7 paragraphs all nicely delineating my Great great aunt Lizzy Sweet (perhaps another great).

And wanted to try to pull up something I'd just deleted.  Ctl-z is the command.  But oops.  It erased the whole posting.  I tried immediately to close it, hoping it hadn't saved the blank screen yet.  Nope.

So I'm not going to do all the work I did before.  There was a great woman who mothered not only her own children, mainly in Galveston TX, as well as her great niece, my grandmother, and during the 1900 storm of the century.

Red and white striped awning at 1709 Winnie St, photo from Google Earth 2013

Elizabeth Sweet (age 69) was living at 1709 Winnie St. as of June 7, 1900 census, with her son Chauncey Sweet, (age 37) his wife Ada Phillips Sweet, (age 34) nephew, Lucian Chamberlain, (3) nieces Ada Swasey (14) and Stella Swasey (12).

Sept. 8-9, 1900 was the worst storm to hit that island to date.  This was before storms were given names, but it was known by my grandmother Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers and her family as the Storm of 1900.  I've posted about it before (HERE). And a lot of Galveston's history is on this blog HERE,  and Here.

Then I looked over at Ancestry, and got involved in finding out Elizabeth Sweet's husband's parents had recently been entered, including his birth place in Massachusetts.  Lizzy herself was from Newburyport, MA.

And I also got into trying to chase the roots of his uncle, who lived and was one of the main founders of Sabine Pass, TX...and is buried there.

So that's what I spent several hours doing, instead of playing with clay, or cleaning my apartment, or other blog posts.  I did take a break and went to a potluck dinner at the church...and got to talk with some lovely people.

Now I'm going to go unwind some of those Sweets ancestry lines, which believe you me, are a tangled web at this point!  The ones in Connecticut and Massachusetts are my ancestors...it's the ones who went to Texas and fought in the revolution of Texas Independence that I want to get straight, even though they are just uncles and aunts.

Great Aunt Lizzie, aka Grand Aunt, died in Galveston, at the age of 77.   She was survived by her son Chauncey Sweet.

notes are by my grandmother, Ada Swasey Rogers

Of course I could also spend a few hours looking at the Granger family tree from Newburyport, MA.  This is such a fun and enveloping endeavor.  If you don't hear from me for a while, just send some food and water...I'm back in the 18th century with ancestors!

The ocean beckons

Taken on April 21, 1948
Galveston beach, TX
Top photos have Uncle Chauncey on the left, smallest sunbonnet is Mary Beth, and I'm the blond with bangs, then my dad, George Rogers.
You can see the water was barely getting our feet wet.

In the bottom 2 photos I'm on the left, Mary Beth in the middle, and Gummy, my grandmother Ada Rogers is wearing not only a dress as we sit on this driftwood, but gloves!  What a lady!

Mother or Poppy must have been doing the camera work for this visit.

We spent about a month of that summer traveling to St. Louis, MO and Stevens Point, WI, going through the Smoky Mountains for my first view of mountains.  We then moved to St. Louis.  After I grew up my first job was in Miami...

All my adult life I've had to think whether I wanted to live near the beach or the mountains.

When I lived in Knoxville TN, I'd go visit the beach for vacations, but once a month would go hiking in the Smokies.

I would yo-yo between mountains and beach almost yearly.  If I lived in the vicinity of one, I'd go visit the other.

Then I moved back to Florida for about 12 years (in different cities).  I just recently found a post card which actually has the house in which we lived in St. Augustine, FL.  Sorry I didn't scan it, but just took a photo with my phone.

At the top of this photo is Anastasia State Park, which not only has a beach, but a campground.  In the middle you see the fishing pier. There is no entertainment.

Close-up view of Hampton Inn and our apartment

The four story red brick hotel (Hampton Inn) to the lower left was built while I lived there (1996-2000.)  The little street just above it going toward the ocean is 15th Street, and directly across that street is the small 2 story grey house with dark grey roof which was our apartment (ground floor). This photo even shows one of our cars in the parking lot.  We were the 4th house from the Atlantic Ocean.  As you might notice, we didn't exactly have a swimming beach unless it was low tide, as there was a pile of rocks making a sea-wall next to those waves.  I would walk up to the state park and wade in that water between the rocks, or drive to one of the beaches further south where you could drive a car and swim.

And the reverse side of the post card is as follows:

Thanks to John Nyberg for the great photo!

The apartment was empty and for sale when I last drove by the area a few years ago.  I hope the real estate market has improved and others are enjoying by now.

I have some really great memories from my living there.  But now I'm happily retired and living in the mountains of North Carolina.

And I contribute this to Sepia Saturday, where you may also visit other posts from bloggers all over the world.  Come check it out!


 Sepia Saturday says..."It's alright for us up here in the northern hemisphere: it's summer and the chances are that - if you are anywhere else but West Yorkshire - the sun is shining. It's time for holidays; time for the sea and the sands. To illustrate this I have chosen a picture of one of the most iconic beaches of all, Bondi Beach, but you will have probably noticed that it is in the southern hemisphere which is in the middle of winter at the moment. So your theme can be summer, sun and sands or winter, snow and cold or old postcards, or waves or the Bondi Vet (I have included that last one in for my wife who is madly in love with the Bondi Vet). All you have to do is to post a post on or around Saturday 25th July and add a link to the list below.