The Post Family Reunion, Part I

I have never been to a family reunion. In fact, I've met very few members of my family outside of my parents, brother, grandparents, aunt, and uncle. Because I see relatives so infrequently (I don't have any cousins, by the way), researching genealogy has always helped me to make up the difference. Thankfully, my great-grandfather (My father's mother's father) Willard Post did a lot of the work for me. Somehow, in the 1920s or 1930s, he managed to trace the Post family back to Peter Arnold Post, born in Amsterdam sometime in 1500.

It fascinates me how human migration has shaped people, including me specifically. While that great-grandfather's family had been in North America since Richard Post migrated to Long Island in 1640, another great-grandfather of mine Raphael Taddei (Or Taddeo depending on who you ask) was born in Casalottico, Italy between Rome and Naples (Thus one of my soccer teams is SSC Napoli). Maybe I'll touch on the story of my great-grandfather Ralph (As the authorities at Ellis Island thought he should be named) another time.

Here I want to touch on one record left by great-grandfather Post. Amongst his research, now sitting in my father's office in Virginia (As opposed to Pittsburgh, Newark, and New York City where that family's roots are, another story of migration), was an account of a Post family reunion on August 23, 1900. I found it fascinating, so I will be dividing it up into parts and posting it here over time. It will be posted as transcribed onto the computer by me based on the exact wording, grammar, and punctuation of my great-grandfather, to include how he numbered his paragraphs for some reason.


1. Seventy persons by actual count gathered at the home of Miss Mary E. Post, in South Franklin Township on August 22, for a family reunion. They came from far and near to an old homestead, to bring back the former things and former days. The oldest person present was in their ninety-first year, hale and hearty, and enjoyed the day as much as the youngest present. The Post place is one of the oldest in the county and is now owned by Miss Mary, is the original tract of land. The location of the fine brick mansion is on the top of a hill for which the surrounding country for miles is in plain view. Dinner was served in the yard, under the shade off lucusts and a very large linden tree. After this suptious repast was partaken of, the pohotographer made his pictures. Miss Ettie M. Post, of West Finley, read an interesting history of the family connections. The family history follows:

2. Munson Post, the ancestor of the Posts, in this community, was born in Essex county, N.J., and was the father of five children; Jeremiah, Joseph, David, Benjamin, and one daughter. In the year 1781, he removed in wagons with his family to Morris township, Washington county, Pennsylvania, the journey occupying several weeks.

3. Politically, Mr. Post was a Democrat, which is largely the characteristic of his descendents. Just what his religious faith was is not know, but he is supposed to have been a member of the Church of England and many of his descendents have been members of some branch of the Presbyterian church.

4. Jeremiah Post, son of Munson, was born in Essex county, N.J., September 10, 1769, so was twelve years of age when he came to Pennsylvania with his parents. His education was somewhat limited. In 1794 he married Martha, daughter of Dr. Charles Cracraft, who bore him four children, William, Deborah, Charles, and Joseph. In 1804, he married his second wife, Mary, daughter of Abraham Enlow, and their children were, Martha, Jemimie, Martin, Jesse, Luke, Sarah, Mary A., James R., and Phoebe. Jeremiah Post lived for the first few years of his married life on a small farm near Van Buren, but selling that moved to a small farm near Dr. Charles Cracraft, where he afterwards lived, and is now occupied by one of his descendents, and where our reunions are now held. He was one of the charter members of the Bethel [County Presbyterian] Church, and dying June 1, 1848, was buried in the Bethel cemetery as also was his wife in later years after her death, November 30, 1854.

5. William Post, eldest son of Jeremiah, was born November 12, 1795, and married Margaret, daughter of Benhamin Lindley, Morris township. To this unison were born six sons and three daughters, Sarah, Mary, Martha, Charles, Jeremiah, Jackson, Joseph, Clark C., and B. L. Post.

6. Charles, son of William, was a tailor by trade, married June Hays, and lived in Washington until their death. They had seven children, two of whom are deceased (Lindley and Margaret); Manda who married Will Curdy (Mc), resides in Washington, D.C.; James in Montana; Dr. Silas in Canton, Ohio; and Will and Harry are residents of Washington, Pennsylvania

I got bored.

I have decided to tell a random fact about the first ten people to show up on my newsfeed on Facebook. This will be interesting since I'm not going to name them on this blog.

1. I met this guy in Newark, New Jersey. He was completely guidoed-out and gave me a shot.

2. Steve tried to hook me up with this girl in middle school. I never found her to be very intelligent.

3. Due to this gentleman's distinct birthmark and Dorian's inability to remember his name, this guy was referred to as Harvey Dent behind his back. Or in one Doriantastic instance, to his face.

4. I met this girl at a party that Garris brought me to. It was a highlighter party. When she ran out of room on her shirt, she took it off and let everyone start over.

5. This guy came down from New Jersey when his chapter decided to hold their crossover in our house. Thankfully, I did not see him naked that night as it was the night of the most imfamous naked attic party.

6. I still don't know why this guy was called Stumpy throughout high school, but it always seemed appropriate.

7. Based on the one TauDelt this girl dated and later the former roommate of mine that she also dated, I question this girl's taste in men.

8. This girl once let Mullin stay on her couch when he came down to visit from New York. She had to go out of town 14 hours before his bus left, so Elliott and I spent the rest of the day keeping him entertained. Were it not for her, I never would have seen the movie Donkey Punch. God bless her for that alone.

9. This girl was a central character in one of the most epic nights of drinking in my life. Bad pictures were taken and I woke up the next morning to find my bathtub covered in blood.

10. HA! Holy crap! I'm the tenth person! I didn't even plan that!

An Explanation of My Sports Cheering Patterns

First and foremost, my team will always come first. I love an underdog and a feel good story, but when it looked like the Cleveland Indians were going to be the 2011 surprise success story, I was ecstatic when the Angels were the only team to demolish them in the first month or so of the season.

Second, if my team is not playing, the team from the South will generally have my support. If the team has a Richmond or Louisiana connection, they will have my support over other Southern teams. Richmond, because I am obssessed with myself, and Louisiana or Quebec because I am a proud of my French heritage.

In baseball, it is Angels first, all the way. When the Angels are not playing, I support the Yankees, Nationals, and Braves. I come from a Yankee family going back to the 1920s with ties to New York City, but due to my growing up outside of a territory, I became an Angels fan in my youth and offer them my rabid support. I support the Nationals because the Montreal Expos were my National League team due to the French connection, and when they moved to both a city below the Mason-Dixon Line (Yes, Washington is technically a Southern city) and became the nearest MLB franchise to my home, my support followed them. The Braves are a no-brainer based both on them being THE Southern baseball team and my grandparents becoming Braves fans upon their migration to Atlanta territory.

Next, I will cheer for Houston, Miami, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Tampa Bay. Houston, Miami, and Tampa Bay are Southern cities, though Miami tends not to fit in culturally. Even so, Miami is in a Southern state and I appreciate them just the same. Pittsburgh has my support due to both of my paternal grandparents and my father being born in Pittsburgh and my love of awful/underdog teams. I have started supporting San Francisco recently for more than just my admiration of Brian Wilson's insanity. My grandfather, living in the Augusta, Georgia area gives me a tie to San Francisco's rookie league team, the Augusta Green Jackets. Also, the Giant's Triple A team is the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Both of those teams cause me to cheer for the Giants from time to time because I hear about their prospects regularly.

Next, I will root for Baltimore, but not too strongly. Baltimore is a Southern city, but being the historical rival of the Yankees and the intra-beltway rival of the Nationals, they don't have my strongest support. I don't hate Kansas City or St. Louis, and my support for them usually depends on whether or not I feel like Missouri is a Southern state that day or not.

The teams I will never root for are Boston, Oakland, Seattle, Texas, the Dodgers, and the Mets. Boston is just the worst city in the world. Oakland, Seattle, and Texas are rivals of the Angels (And starting in 2013, Houston will probably be added to this list as they are moving to the American League West). The Dodgers are the Angels cross-town rivals and the historical rivals of the Giants and Yankees.

In football, it is, of course, Broncos all the way.

After the Broncos, I root for the New York Jets and New Orleans. My father is a Jets fan and New Orleans is the capital of French culture in American (Sorry Quebec border).

Next is Baltimore and Washington. I have always kinda liked the Ravens due to being a Southern team and the nearest AFC team to my home. Support for Washington has really been a recent development due to me being so far removed from them and seeing them reminds me of home, and I'm dating a Redskins fan, so that solves that.

After the Ravens and Redskins, I support Atlanta, Carolina, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa Bay, Tennesee as they are Southern teams. I will never root for Dallas, Kansas City, New England, Oakland, and San Diego.

My thoughts on basketball, hockey, soccer, and college sports shall follow soon.

Badass

I checked something on YouTube a few minutes ago and on the recommended videos was a music video for what I consider to be a pretty badass song. It inspired me to publish here a list of what I consider to be the five most badass songs of all time before going to sleep. Enjoy.

5. "Analog Kid" by Rush

4. "The Falls" by Avail

3. "Rain on the Scarecrow" by John Mellencamp

2. "What It Is" by Mark Knopfler

1. "Gypsy Biker" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Sidenote: YouTube also keeps giving my advertisements for Muslim dating sites.

Today sucked.

I had an awful day today. I had to work excessively hard on a task that didn't need to be done, but I was not made aware of it until after I had finished. Then, I had to run around from building to building with nobody explaining to me what exactly I was supposed to be doing, and ended up getting shots that I didn't need. Then I had to work outside in the cold for several more hours. The day just wouldn't end.

The day started off great, but quickly went downhill. This morning I was doing heel-hooks on the pull-up bars and kicked a guy in the face. It was awesome, but after that, pure aggrivation.

During a forty minute period when I could relax, I thought about how I got to be here and how I wouldn't change a thing. I could have finished grad school. I could have been in my second year of teaching (Where I would have been miserable, but I'll save that for a later entry because I have some long rants about the failures of the education system and why I don't want any part of it). Nope, instead I'm here. Aggrivated by stupid people.

January 2010, I returned to my house in Norfolk after a trip to visit my grandfather in South Carolina. I didn't pick up my cat, Dicken, from the kennell like usual because I wanted to get back to Norfolk to hang out with some people before school started. My mother called me that evening to tell me the vet noticed some disturbing behavior from my cat during his stay there. He didn't eat much and he vomitted several times. Dicken had already become pretty skinny in his old age, and now the vet suspected he might have some sort of cancer. I of course was saddened by this news and actually got a little choked up after the phone call. Very few things ever elicit an emotional response from me, but that was one of them.

I prayed that, whenever it was Dicken's time to go, I would be there with him.

A few months later, I quit grad school. I wasn't happy and wanted to pursue something I wanted to do, not something I was doing because I felt I had to do something. I moved back home to my famiy and my kitty. Being back home clearly made Dicken happy. From March until August, he started eating more, put on weight, and was more active.

In August, he started to decline. We didnt' notice at first, but he stopped eating dry food. Eventually he stopped eating canned food. At some point, I noticed that it had been forever since I heard him purr. He had an overactive salivary gland that caused him to drool whenever he was really happy. He hadn't drooled in a long time either. Something was wrong, and eventually we took him to the vet on September 11, 2010. Dicken didn't come back from the vet.

Like I said, I don't get emotional over anything. I hadn't cried since one of the younger elementary school years (I just realized that coincidentally, we adopted Dicken early in my second grade year). I cried that day though. I cried a lot. There was a good hour in that room at the vet's where I had difficulty formulating words, much less a coherent sentence. The next two days, I'd just lose it out of nowhere too.

But I remembered praying that God would let me be there with Dicken at the end. If I had been teaching, I would have been somewhere else in the country. The school year would have just started, and it would have been uncertain that I could make it home. God answered me in a wierd way, but it was worth it.

Whenever I have bad days out here, and I think of all the stupid shit I have to put up with sometimes, and I think of easier things I could be doing, I remember being there for a friend. Totally worth it.

An old house

I was bored earlier and looking on facebook to kill time until the season finale of South Park came on. "Mansion on the Hill" by Bruce Springsteen, off Nebraska started playing on my iTunes. The first verse goes:

There's a place out on the edge of town sir
Risin' above the factories and the fields
Now ever since I was a child I can remember that mansion on the hill

That line conjured memories from my childhood of a house I used to pass all the time on Route 10. It wasn't a mansion on a hill, but like so many words that bring back old memories, it didn't have to make sense. I remembered a hosue from my childhood.

That house is no longer there, but I remember it vividly. There was a small wall around the front yard. At the entrance to the driveway, the wall broke into a door-less gate. At the edge of each wall there were statues of eagles perched on orbs. The house was either a short two-story house or a one-story house with a tall attic. The walls were stone. Behind the house was the thick forest that most of Chester used to be. You can tell the area was heavily wooded because of the forested subdivision nearby. The tall trees surrounding the house used hide envelope it with their limbs.

When I was a kid, I was riding in the car with my mother. I pointed out the house and how I thought it was cool and wanted to live in a house like that. She told me that when my uncle was a kid, he would say the same thing about it.

Today the house is gone. Much of the forest has been cut down. There is now a large neighborhood for retirees in its place. Driving around my hometown, I often long for how small Chester used to be. Unfortunately, unlike Bruce, I can no longer park on a back road and look up at my mansion on a hill.

The Terrible Tues

My Tuesday night was unusually busy. I often try to go out on Tuesdays because television on those nights are atrociously boring. I use the word "atrociously," not because of the American obsession with adverbs, but because it really is an atrocity. There is nothing that I can think of off the top of my head worth watching that night.

Monday has Chuck, The Cape, Pawn Stars, and How I Met Your Mother. Wednesday has The Middle. Thursday has The Big Bang Theory, Community, and Jersey Shore (Don't judge me.) Friday has Ghost Adventures for the nights when I am too exhausted to go out. Saturday is beer night. Sunday has The Simpsons. My schedule is further complicated by other shows that have already ended their seasons Human Target, Burn Notice, that USA Network show about the CIA with the hot blonde and title I can't remember.

This past Tuesday, however, I went to Richmond, accompanied by the veritable brain trust of Craig, Brandon, Bobby, and Patrick. Our original intent was to meet at the Village Grill before the VCU basketball game, but it was too crowded, as is often the case before a game. Instead, we opted for Strange Matter, but neglected to tell Craig until shortly before his arrival.

Strange Matter is a good, video game-themed bar. I had a solid burger for dinner. It was not an amazing burger, but I enjoyed it. The reason to go is for the beer. Dollar PBR during happy hour (I think that was what happened). Another reason to go is the atmosphere. The walls are covered in murals of classic video game characters. Donkey Kong, the princess, Mario, Luigi, a goomba, and one of the carnivorous plants are drinking on one wall with Ryu and Chun-Li. Another wall has a variant of Da Vinci's The Last Supper. The far end of the bar has a television with a Sega Genesis hooked up to it. The back of the bar has at least ten arcade games, including Paperboy, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Which I should have played), and the classically titled Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja.

One of the items on the menu is called Bobby's Dream Burger. Being present with a Bobby, this caused much laughter. You could add some extra toppings for "the full Bobby experience." We found out later that it was named for the owner of the bar, another man named Bobby. Another man named Bobby who just happened to be sitting on the stool next to our Bobby. That was weird.

The game was fun. Bobby and I were for George Mason because I once attended Old Dominion University and could never root for VCU and Bobby bet on the game. Brandon and Patrick were for VCU because they were/are VCU students. Craig was for VCU because he has bad taste. He likes black and yellow teams. Gross.

One of the highlights of the game was Patrick's amusing taunts of GMU fans. Whenever a female GMU fan would stand up, Patrick would start yelling "Sit down, hag!" He would throw in a good "Shut up, slut" every once and a while. Another highlight was how awful VCU played. GMU won by about 20 points. The only reason to stick around was to see whether VCU could break 50, which they finally did with about ten seconds left in the game. I took a picture of the scoreboard at one point to show how bad the score was. A trick of the light made it look like there was no score on the board for VCU. GMU 61 to VCU nothing, as in, "not good enough for 0," was about how the game went. ODU beat VCU a few days earlier, too, so it was wonderful.

After the game, we finally made it to Village Grill. Patrick was not able to drink immediately because he forgot his ID. Fifteen minutes later, his roommate came by and handed Patrick his passport. The waiter made fun of him for using his passport instead of his license, as did I. I can't make fun of Patrick too much, though. I often forget he's an adult. An adult that could kick my ass. When he finished his high school wrestling career, he was ranked number 2 in the state. When he finished his high school wrestling career, I was celebrating an intramural softball loss by getting hammered.

We had a good waiter. He eventually earned the nickname Captain Magician because of his efficiency. He was also pretty funny, making fun of my choice to drink PBR with a slice of chocolate cake and a bowl of broccoli.

It was a fun Tuesday because I didn't have to watch awful television.