Back to the real world, ancestors
October 3, 2009

Island attire of shorts, tank top and flip flops has been put aside (wah!) in favor of that more suitable to landlubbers. Endless vistas across the water are replaced by horizonless views of trees, trees and trees (double wah!).

We have landed (so to speak) near Durham with the Totee, but spent the day in Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital. This was our second trip to the State library and archives. When we researched there three years ago, we found loads of great ancestral material. Since that time, the entire thing has been reorganized to be much easier to use. Before, pretty much everything was on microfilm; beings such as us were not allowed to view original material. To my great delight, one item I wanted was on a missing microfilm roll, so the staff trotted out the original 1745 will of our ancestor, John Pipkin, for my perusal and copied it for me. I got the shivers just touching it.

Now they seem to have gone away from the microfilm route (unlike everyone else in the world) and have laminated the originals so that one now finds their guy’s or gal’s will in the card catalog, writes a request and in a short time has delivered into one’s hands the real deal. In this case, we were handed a 1782 will of Jacob Cantrell (that’s 327 years old, folks!). Other families we found stuff on include Moon, Bracken, Brown, Armfield, Pipkin and Cantrell. Some that we hoped to obtain were not there, and a few that we suspect are ancestral we copied to see if we can make the connections in the future.

Unlike the two full days we worked there before, we needed only a few hours today because we were working on fewer ancestors.

Museum, pirates . . .

Finishing mid-afternoon, we opted to walk over to the Museum of History nearby after fine dining at a hot dog vendor’s cart. The museum is housed in a gigantic building; I expected something rather grandiose and spectacular, but was pretty disappointed. Truth to tell, it’s just not much of a museum, but we did enjoy the special pirate exhibit, very timely for us after just returning from Blackbeard’s place of demise and the site of many acts of piracy by a whole bunch of those lads and lassies (yes indeed, the fairer sex was involved in those dastardly acts, as well).

We learned quite a lot about the habits and activities of those men (and women) of the sea and about the lives (and mostly untimely deaths) of those who plied the trade and how they did so.






















I had my portrait done with one of those swashbucklers and later shot Chris attempting to catch a ride with Orville Wright on his maiden leavetaking of mother Earth, however short.











Oh yes, we did enjoy the Native American exhibit at the museum, all dozen or so items hidden in a hallway. We were rather astounded to see a nearly 3,000-year-old dugout canoe, about 20 feet in length.





Building codes . . .

Now we’re on our way home, stopping in Chapel Hill (I think) to pick up a few groceries. In every place I’ve ever been, that is a simple matter, but very different here. Finding the grocery store is a bit of a sticky wicket here: seems there must be some kind of code that disallows markets, malls, shopping centers or other places of commerce to be visible. One is driving along down the road hoping to spot ye run-of-ye-mill food purveyor, but nothing is seen besides trees. Then one notices a itty, bitty, tasteful sign tucked into the greenery. It says something like “Chapel Hill North”, as if that will allow one to be instantly alerted to the fact that there is a shopping center nearby. In reality, one is alerted if one happens to live here and knows said fact. Otherwise, one drives right on by obliviously.

At any rate, we’re wise to them now and Chris is inside picking up some victuals whilst I sit in the Toter typing.

I must mention how deftly Chris parked the trailer yesterday. It’s a very difficult spot to get into - downhill and diagonal, but he backed that puppy in to the exact spot we wanted it as if he’d done it a hundred times before. My hand signals helped some, I think; however, I had to be on the side with the odd mirror that makes me look tiny (at least that’s what Chris said it made me look, to which I responded, “not tiny enough”). Anyway, between the “things are closer than they appear” mirror and my swatting at mosquitoes while signaling, it was doubly difficult for him to distinguish whether I was signaling or swatting. Actually, I was doing both simultaneously; the little whiners were out for blood (hysterical laughter).