Where do Fish Stories Come From?

         Where do fish stories come from? How do we find the vehicle to tell a story and make it compelling for the listening experience.  I am a performance storyteller for all ages, my current project is for a curriculum guided school based program. Whose voice should the story represent and what message do I need to focus on? Will children grasp the complexities and what new vocabulary will be introduced and  explained via the storyline. Do I have adequate research on my topic to tell the story?

          I was inspired by Mark Kurlansky's book Cod to delve further into the world and history of fishing and fishermen. Then an opportunity presented itself to construct a story for performance to  third grade children around the  topics of  Wildlife, Water, People and more specifically immigration and the ecology of the sea. Cod would be the perfect vehicle to  help tell this story. At the outset I was not even aware of the children's version of this book and was so excited to find it! Here is a look at that version from Amazon http://amzn.to/Q4xdcL 

        That was just the beginning, a story is a complex intertwining of facts from multiple sources. Cod gave me my background knowledge. Then I needed characters, I found mine on the list of passengers on the Mayflower voyage to the New World in 1620. Here I researched the children of the Ancient Time as it was called and selected two. The characters themselves required more research as they are historical not fiction. My characters are Remember Allerton and Richard More, each have left a long lineage and a place in the history of the founding of our nation.

My next question to answer was, What does Cod fishing look like? How do you fish for Cod in the old ways and the new?

      I journeyed into the realm of salt water fishing and the life and habits of Cod. Here is where You-Tube came in handy to give me some visual reference. Here is a link to a story about the decline of Cod populations. http://youtu.be/cLE56imBjJs  This next link is a moving video full of the visuals I needed to be able to tell my story with an accuracy and  true representation. http://youtu.be/Git-48_CPww  From you-tube it as a long read in several nautical history books and a visit to  Mystic Seaport http://www.mysticseaport.org/  and the Essex Shipbuilding Museum  http://www.essexshipbuildingmuseum.org/  . I got to know the Cod itself by drawing and painting them so I would remember their distinctive fins and chin barb.

Cod Watercolor on textured paper by Carolyn  Stearns '14

      This is heavy material and  my focus audience for the premier of this story is third grade. I need a way to take the  depth of history and content and make it memorable and fun to hear and retain. I have added music to the story, interspersed to introduce new sections of the story and as a culminating piece to  spark conversation about the ecological and financial damage done to the Cod legacy by over fishing the waters. The music I chose for this is an old sea chantey "Cape Cod Girls", hear a version at this link; http://youtu.be/VQ_rFz9djz4  As with all chantey music there are many versions and arrangements so I took the liberty of adapting this song to fit the story a bit more and have our sailors/ fishermen bound for a "New World". The music to close this piece is one verse of a sea ballad called " Peter's River"  by Mary Garvey (c) 1995 and used with  her permission. The sheet music and lyrics are available here: http://www.timberheadmusic.com/disc/boatspetersriver.htm      I heard this song  a few years ago and it haunted my mind but in a weekend filled with music I could not remember the melody. Then in June 2012 I shared the stage at Mystic Sea Music Festival with Mary Garvey, it was from that meeting that I learned the song that has become one I hum often when working.

      Spring of 2014 this story will debut and be added to my regular repertoire of stories to tell. The story has such depth I will be able to offer an adult version with more content as well.

My review in 2013 of the book Cod is here: http://carolynstearnsstoryteller.blogspot.com/2012/09/rape-of-sea-book-review-cod.html

Interested in booking this story and other sea tales? www.carolynstearnsstoryteller.com
    
     

 

At Atwoodville part 2 in Family Tree

The vault released so many vital data bits our heads were swimming with names and dates. For me at least there was the understanding of the sections of town the boundaries and the places mentioned. Laura was baffled by the geography of the search and relied on my clarifications for what was nearby etc. From a deed in 1820's I was able to tell where the farm was simply by the description. Not that many to choose from so we were able to add it to the list of places to go see. In the end of the day with minutes ticking to closing and with a ream of copies of materials she still did not have hard evidence that Daniel was the son of Ebenezer.

The Town Hall closes at 12 on Friday's and we packed up and left. Only hours left of Laura's stay in Ct. and so much to see. We met up with the family and I climbed in their car for an auto tour of their family heritage. We went around our farm and the University. We drove down to the village of Atwoodville and I pointed out the trail that leads to the ruins of early Silk Mills and industry whose birth was in the town of Mansfield. On this day with the 3 children in the car it wasn't the mills that were the intrigue it was the swimming hole in the Mount Hope River. Here for 200 years family members have escaped the dog days of summer with a cooling dip. Great Grammy used to tell of her brothers hoeing corn and shedding layers as they ran toward the river and the giant rocks, the leap and the refreshing water. Scampering over the rocks the children were soon in and taking turns sitting where the small water fall poured over their heads making a umbrella shaped splash about them. The giggles echo off the rocks and the time goes to fast.

Back on the road we have one last stop, the Atwoodville Cemetery. The children cool from a swim are happy to stay in the car with a movie the eldest , Laura's son comes to join the search for the missing link. We walk up and down the rows of markers. Laura's voice calls out with a catch, I found him. We all gather in front of a stone, it is the father Ebenezer Baldwin next to his a stone for his wife and the dates coincide. Daniel is buried in Wisconsin but it was said he and his wife lost 4 children in one week before they moved west. The children should be here. But there was no place with four small markers.I had sent a picture of one stone but it was not clear enough to read in the on line image. If we found the children and they said they were Daniel's it would indeed be proof. The stones next to Ebenezer and his wife are small and crusted thick with lichen and moss. From 1824 the plant life has had a fair chance to take hold. In the car I have a bucket, water and scrub brush for just this moment. Soon we are washing away the years of growth and there is the missing link. Four little children who perished in a plague buried in three graves with markers with their names and saying they were indeed the children of Daniel and his wife Serviah. Here they are buried right beside the grandparents and there is proof Ebenezer, Daniel and the children raised here and in Wisconsin are one family, ours! 186 years later. they are remembered and for us show the way, a link to the Mayflower and a history lesson these children will never forget.

In The Vault We Found........

The phone call came a couple months ago from Wisconsin. The caller, Laura found my name on the town website listed as the Cemetery Sexton and she was searching for records. On a long quest to follow her family genealogy she soon discovered the Mayflower Society and how to trace back and show your roots as founders of the Nation. Their acceptance is pending and the strength of the tie dependant on finding some pertinent dates for a few members of the family tree, and the missing link is in my jurisdiction.

So I get a few of these a year and know the town family names well so I ask , "which family are you trying to follow?" Her reply Crane, makes me laugh. "well hello cousin!" We discuss the lineage and sure enough the town isn't and never has been that big, it just has to be, and we find the common ancestor for indeed some sort of cousin we are.( actually my husband's side) She asks what I know of the Crane family, my husbands grandmother was a Crane, and we lived in the big farm house with them for 10 years. She was born on her parents farm and it is still there. Laura is looking for particular people and headstones, info and any dates that might help n the quest to put her missing Daniel here in Mansfield at about 1820. She thinks it should be at a cemetery called Attwoodville. Well that one is closed and I don't have the records but assure her it's not that big, I will go look.

I send photographs of a variety of family stones and what info I can. Finding John and Abigail's stones at Pink Cemetery dating 1765 and sending that along the grim angels from many stones staring out through time in the photos. To support her quest which is so close to completion they planned the family vacation in the east.

Yesterday towing the pop up camper and with three travel weary kids in the van they arrived in town. Laura and I headed to the vault of town hall and the incredible record of our town and its people. Dad and the kids went off in search of a hotel and swimming pool. We emerged from the vault a couple hours later when their closing sent us on our way. We found land and deed transfers, we found births, deaths and marriages. We found many references to Daniel and Ebenezer but no actual proof it is the one and only we are looking for and no record of dates of birth death or marriage surfaced yet.

I was paging through the yellowed text with the fancy script writing and the name Baldwin popped up, here is a tie we are looking for could we find him in the group? We have several sir names to follow depending on which generation and the women's maiden names so I am scanning lists looking for Baldwin's Crane's, Eldredge, Hall, Swift, there are a lot of all of them from 1690 on into the present. Here is a Daniel Baldwin and what is this roll of names for, why does he have a Beaver?!!!! I begin to really read the page and laugh right out loud. "your kids are going to love this....the family dog was named Beaver! Sure enough I stumbled on the record of dogs kept by the ancestors of 1860 and there was the Baldwin family owning a mid size black and white spotted dog named Beaver! How funny and they had to pay a $2.00 tax on that dog! Just for fun I read a bunch of the descriptions and bounding off the pages come long lost hounds, best buddies and herd dogs. So long forgotten and joyfully frisking in heaven but recorded and preserved forever in the town vault a testimony to man's best friend.

Today we will return to the vault seeking that lost link to the family tree, just a date or absolute record of our Daniel, where he was and where he went that somehow led that branch of the family out of town and into the nations heart. They didn't go so far that we can't find pieces of their lives and know that trotting along side the family was a faithful dog named Beaver!

After the vault today an auto tour with stops to see the Crane farm, the family swimming hole the old cemeteries, the general store, the church our farm where the family name continues in a sign over the barn door - CRANE BARN. Beaver is coming with me,there is a story there and I think I will work on that after the pop up camper heads west to Wisconsin and the road dust settles.