How Do You See The World?

Good morning, Family Trails readers.
 I realize that I have not been meeting my goal of the "Weaver Wednesday" post very well. Sure, there are a few reasons for this….mainly LIFE. No complaints in that department for sure...life is good, and I wake up every day thankful for the gift of a new day. Though I may have missed quite a few posts deadlines, my mind is always looking for inspiring ideas to share with you.

For a long time, I have had some images in my mind from one of the trips that sister, Rebecca, and I took to Talladega. During the annual "April in Talladega" tour of homes, we had the opportunity to tour Manning Hall on the campus of the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind.  The main floor in Manning Hall holds a museum of the institute since its conception in 1858. There were many artifacts to view:  photographs, books written in Braille, portraits, school desks, old clothing, and old records, but one item stood out to me and its image has not left my mind. That is why I have named this blogpost,
"How Do You See The World?"

How do you see the world?
Do you wake up every day and look out of the window to check the weather?
Do you click on the TV to watch the news of the world?
Maybe you travel and experience the vast size of our country and even fly across the oceans to exotic destinations.
And of course, we all can see the world through books. A book can transport us into a secret garden, or Neverland, or a deserted island; we can ride alongside a cowboy or sit in a covered wagon, enter a spaceship and orbit the moon, or hike the Appalachian Trail with a man and his faithful four-legged companion.
We can also spin a globe of the Earth and run our fingers across the colorful countries as it spins.
Do I take these these opportunities for granted? I admit that I do, but touring this museum helped to remind me to "walk in someone else's shoes" for a bit and imagine how a child without eyesight sees the world.

In the museum in Manning Hall, there is a very old map of the world to help children begin to see the world. 

These maps grabbed my attention. They were hand-made in Louisville, Kentucky in 1882 by the 

American Printing House for the Blind. As you can see, the 2 sides of the globe were hand-carved to help children envision the vastness of the world in which they lived. Children could touch the shape of the continents, feel the mountain ranges, and rub their little fingers across the oceans to get an idea of just how large the Earth really is. 

Thankfully, these maps are preserved in this museum. There are only 2 of these sets that have survived in this country. 

As in a previous post, I would like to pay tribute to four of the Weaver ladies who taught school at the  Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. I am in awe of their commitment as teachers, and especially as teachers to children with such special needs. 

When I was a little girl, I understood in a childlike way that my grandmother, Ivera, taught children who were deaf. She taught me to sign the alphabet and to sign my name, which I can still do. And one of my most favorite memories has to be when she got frustrated with the 3 of us. I am sure we gave her fits at times. When she needed to discipline us and couldn't get the words out fast enough, her hands started signing. There is no telling what she was saying, but it sure got our attention! We would stop in our tracks and just stare at her red face and her little arms and hands just signing away!  

That's just a little memory of mine, and I hope you enjoyed it. 

And I hope we all continue to "see the world!"

With love,

Mariellan

Nina Lucretia Weaver Dodge

Good evening, Family Trails readers. As readers of this family blog, I am just curious…are you descendants of Nettie and C.S. Weaver?… Are you friends of the Weaver family?…. Or just interested in the ramblings of a family in search of its roots? Whatever your reason is for checking in this week, I am glad that you are here. This is a welcoming spot for anyone who finds our family or any of the topics in this blog interesting. If you have been reading along for the past year, you are familiar with the Weaver family…the family that we call the "roots" of this Family Trails blog.  We definitely dig deeper and beyond the story of Nettie and Charles Sisson Weaver, but for this week, let us meet and remember their ninth child, Nina Lucretia Weaver Weaver Dodge. Nina was the ninth of ten children. She is the smaller girl standing to the right of her mother in this picture below.

 As you have read before, I think this picture is stunning! Just think of it… a mother and father with their 10 children, dressed in their summer finest for an outdoor photograph in front of their house…the oldest sons looking very dashing, the oldest daughters very fashionable, the younger children so precious in their sailor tops and heirloom dresses. 

This photograph looks similar to photos taken of passengers on the Titanic or the members of Tzar Nicholas' family, the last royals of the Russian Empire…the clothing styles, the arrangements of the children, the sepia tones, the expressions on their faces. This is all enough to make one pause and think…this was a very remarkable time in history, and yet …this is our history. This photograph was taken of Our family in Talladgea, Alabama, the fastest growing city in Alabama at the time. The family members in this photograph are Our parents, Our grandparents, Our great-grandparents…

When we stop to think like this, it was not that long ago. 

In this picture,  four year old Nina is standing next to her mother, looking to her right. 

Nina is standing in this picture in the green dress. 

Aunt Nina was a school teacher at the now Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. She was a good cook too! Any time her family and friends came to visit, she and her sister, Lora, baked home-made treats to serve their company. Nina continued as a teacher to her extended family long after her retirement from school. She indulged her extended family with educational gifts at Christmas and on birthdays. 

We have written about Clairmont Springs many times in our family blog. When I think about Clairmont Springs, I, of course,  think about Aunt Nina. She loved going to Clairmont. She and Tee received so much joy having children spend time there. Nina and Tee drove us all down narrow country roads to find wild blackberries, then they baked deep-dish blackberry cobblers for us. Nina and Tee took us to neighboring farms to meet the farmers and their wives. We helped milk a cow, and we watched as the farmer's wife strained the warm milk before she churned it. The farmer allowed us to gather eggs from his chickens and his quails. Aunt Nina and Tee knew that learning how other people lived was part of having a good education. 

Then back to Clairmont Springs for swimming and catching frogs...These ladies never got tired!

Family Trials is honored to remember Nina Lucretia Weaver Dodge during her birthday month of September. 

Love,

Mariellan

Celebrating!

Alma Rebecca Weaver
age 18 months

Welcome back to Family Trails after quite an extended time since the last post. Flu season arrived in our home and reached out to our children and grandchildren and my mother in law! Four generations with the flu in a time span of 3 weeks! Whew! Fortunately, there was always someone well enough who could look after the others, and I am glad to report that I think it is all behind us. 

This week I thought we could remember our great-aunt, lovingly nicknamed "Auntie."

Alma Rebecca Weaver

 was born on January 2, 1904. Here are some cute pictures of Auntie through the years.

Auntie with Nancy Harper DeWine
Christmas 1954

i

Alma was the 8th child of Nancy Antoinette and Charles Sisson Weaver. She taught school for the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. She also moved to Philadelphia, PA to own and operate the Coulter Inn Hotel for some time. Having never married, she doted on all of her nieces and nephews and later on her great-nieces and great-nephews. She was a family favorite!

Two articles from C. S. Weaver's scrapbook

These 2 articles were glued next to each other in C. S. Weaver's scrapbook. The article on the left may be from the Talladega Daily Home or from a publication from the School for the Deaf and Blind. Here is the mystery, though… the article states that" she will still be nearby." Maybe Auntie also taught school for the deaf and the blind in Philadelphia. I do remember learning that she heard Helen Keller speak in Philadelphia, so maybe she was employed as a teacher there also.
 The article on the right is typed so small, that it is hard to read. The date is March 23, 1944 and looks to be a notification of purchase of the Coulter Inn Hotel. The last sentence reads, "The name and address of the person owning or interested in said business is Alma R. Weaver, 3400 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa."

Auntie at the Talladega Country Club

Oak Hill Cemetery, Talladega, Alabama 

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Now about those family recipes…. a few blog posts ago, I said that I would share some favorites from our family cookbook, Seasoned With Love by Lucretia Malone Mount Davenport.  I did remember to take one or two pictures to share with you. I wish I had taken more pictures… 

Among the many dishes from the cookbook enjoyed in our home and made by many different family members over the holidays were: sweet potatoes, green bean casserole,  beef tenderloin, cheese grits, pineapple casserole, cranberry relish, the Weaver Christmas salad, cheese straws, dill oyster crackers, and pound cake. Are you hungry yet?
I recently made "Beatrice's Cubed Steaks" on page 95. This is the epitome of comfort food! I was fortunate to have watched Beatrice make this for lunch one day. She was an excellent cook and never hesitated to pass on any of her cooking tips to a beginner in the kitchen. 

One of my favorite pound cake recipes is Lassie Weaver Malone's Sour Cream Pound Cake found on page 179 of the first edition. Sister Rebecca loves to make the Faye's Pound Cake on page 178. It is a favorite of mine also, but I was hooked when I first baked the cake with the sour cream!   Here is a picture of it. I make it for many occasions and EVERY SINGLE TIME  someone asks me for the recipe! 

Now before we end our visit this week on our Family Trails, I need to make a huge correction to the last post. I do not know how or why I made this mistake, but I typed my parents' wedding date incorrectly! They were married on June 30, 1954.

I hope you all have a good week. Here in the South, we are having very typical January weather. It has been bitter cold for a few weeks, then this week it has felt like Spring! The daffodil bulbs are popping through the ground and the forsythia is about to bloom! I darted to the local nursery and bought violas! Ready to dig in the dirt!  Then suddenly today, we are back into the Winter grey days… the days that don't see the sun all day! These are the days that call us to stay inside and read a good book!  So while I wait for the next sunny day to be outside, I will dig through interesting Weaver lore for next week's Weaver Wednesday's edition of Family Trails. Lots of love to you!

Mariellan