Monday, September 14, 2026

Amanuensis Monday -- 1841 Deed of Hinsdale Fisher to Lucy Butterfield For Land in Medfield, Norfolk County, Massachusetts

This week's document for transcription is the 1841 Deed of Hinsdale Fisher (administrator of the Alpheus B. Smith estate) of Medfield, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, selling 16 acres of land in Medfield to Lucy Butterfield of Dedham for $358.

*  Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Deeds 1842-1843, Page 109 (penned in upper right corner), Image 440 of 663

The transcription of this deed (with help from FamilySearch Full-Text Search, with a few errors corrected) is:

[Page 109, Starting near the bottom of the left-hand page of the image]

To all People to whom these Presents shall come, 
Whereas I Hinsdale Fisher Administrator upon the estate of 
Alpheus B. Smith late of Medfield in the County of Norfolk 
deceased, by an order of the Judge of Probate of said Coun-
ty made at a Probate Court holden at Dedham on the 
first Tuesday of August 1840, was licensed to make sale 
of the real estate of said deceased so far as should be ne-
cessary to pay the sum of Six hundred twenty three dolls
and seventy one cents being the just debts of said deceased
 over and above what his personal estate will pay. Therefore 
Know ye that I the said Hinsdale Fisher Administrator as 
aforesaid as well by virtue of the power and authority to me 

[Page 109, Continuing at the top of the right-hand page of the image]

given as aforesaid : as in consideration of the sum of three 
hundred and fifty eight dollars paid me by Lucy Butterfield 
of Dedham in said County the receipt whereof is hereby ac-
knowledged have granted bargained and sold and do hereby 
grant bargain and sell, confirm and convey unto her the 
said Lucy, her heirs and assigns forever, the following described 
real estate, situated in the Southerly part of Medfield, and
bounded as follows viz: Northerly on the heirs of Elisha Clark,
 Mrs Keziah Mann and Eliakim Morse. Easterly upon the 
land of David Smith. Southerly upon Asa Hamont, Westerly 
upon road leading to Walpole and containing sixteen acres 
more or less. And also all the reversionary right in that 
part of said deceased, real estate which was set off to and 
assigned his widow as her Dower consisting of about one acre 
of land with a house and barn thereon.
      To Have and to Hold the same with all the privileges 
and appurtenances thereof to her the said Lucy her heirs 
and assigns forever. And I do hereby in the capacity 
aforesaid covenant with the said Lucy her heirs and assigns 
that the said Alpheus B. Smith died seized of the premises, 
That I was duly licensed by said Court to make sale thereof,
and that it was necessary the same should be sold for the
purposes aforesaid, that previous to the intended sale I 
took the oath prescribed by law, and gave public notice 
thereof according to the directions of said Judge and that
the said Lucy offered the most for the said premises and 
the same were thereupon struck off to her for the aforesaid 
at a public vendue held at the house on the premises on 
the twenty first day of April 1841. And I do further in 
the capacity aforesaid covenant to and with the said 
Lucy her heirs and assigns. And I do further in the ca-
pacity aforesaid covenant to and with the said Lucy her 
heirs and assigns that the premises are free of all incum-
brances, and that I will warrant, ^secure^ and defend the same to 
her the said Lucy her heirs and assigns forever against the 
lawful claims and demands of all persons. In witness 
whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this first 
day of May A.D. eighteen hundred and forty one. Hinsdale 
Fisher Administrator {seal) Signed Sealed and delivered in 
presence of Jon'a P. Bishop. Caroline E. Bishop, Norfolk ss. 
August 16. 1841. Then personally appeared the above named 
Hinsdale Fisher, and acknowledged the above to be his free 
act and deed , before me Jon'a P. Bishop Jus. Peace 
Jan'y 2- 1843. Rec'd Entered & Examined 
                                                  By Enos Foord Reg'r

The source citation for this deed is:

"Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States land records," Deed of Hinsdale Fisher to Lucy Butterfield,  executed 1 May 1841, recorded 2 January 1843; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9ZH-VVF7?view=fullText : accessed 9 September 2026), Image Group Number: 007459119, "Norfolk Deeds, 1842–1843, 1842, Land Records 1842, 1842–1843," page 109 (penned), image 440 of 663; original papers at Norfolk County (Massachusetts) Register of Deeds.

By this record it appears that Hinsdale Fisher, acting as administrator on the estate of Alpheus B. Smith, sold 16 acres of land in Medfield, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, to Lucy Butterfield of Dedham for $358.

Alpheus B. Smith (1802-1840) married Elizabeth Horton Dill (1791-1869) in 1826, and they had two children.  They are my 3rd great-grandparents through their daughter Lucretia Townsend Smith (1828-1884) who married Isaac Seaver (1823-1901) in 1851. 

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Read other transcriptions of records of my relatives and ancestors at Amanuensis Monday Posts.

NOTE: Genea-blogger John Newmark (who writes the excellent TransylvanianDutch blog) started a Monday blog theme years ago called "Amanuensis Monday." John offers this definition for "amanuensis:"

"A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another."

The URL for this post is: 

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share your comments on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated, and may not appear online immediately.

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Sunday, September 13, 2026

Best of the Genea-Blogs -- Week of 6 to 12 September 2026

Scores of genealogy and family history bloggers write hundreds of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.


My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, address current genealogy issues, provide personal family history, are funny or are poignant. I don't list posts destined for most daily blog prompts or meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts.

Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week:













Here are pick posts by other geneabloggers this week:

* The Chiddicks Observer Edition 71 [7 September 2026] by Paul Chiddicks on Stories Behind the Records.

* Friday’s Family History Finds [11 September 2026] by Linda Stufflebean on Empty Branches on the Family Tree.

* This week’s crème de la crème -- September 12, 2026 by Gail Dever on Genealogy a la Carte.

* GenStack [12 September 2026] by Robin Stewart on Genealogy Matters.

Readers are encouraged to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add the blogs to your Favorites, Feedly, another RSS feed, or email if you like what you read. Please make a comment to them also - all bloggers appreciate feedback on what they write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me! I currently am reading posts from over 900 genealogy bloggers using Feedly, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

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Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/09/best-of-genea-blogs-week-of-6-to-12.html

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com. Please note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately.

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Betty and Fred’s Story: Building a Life Together – The First Week Apart, Late August 1944

  Here is the latest chapter in the story of the married life and times of my parents, Fred and Betty (Carringer) Seaver, who married in July 1942. The background information and the list of chapters of their life together are listed at the end of this post.  This is historical fiction with real people and real events, and is how it might have been.

And now we are up to  late-August 1944, two years plus into World War II.  Betty and Randy have gone to live with Betty's parents, and Fred reported for enlistment and training in the U.S. Navy.  Their first week after he enlisted was eventful.


                (AI NotebookLM Infographic - Betty and Fred's Story, The First Week Apart)

Based on the biographies and the earlier stories, I asked Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 to tell another story - what happened next (I offered some suggestions!)?  


Betty and Fred’s Story; Building a Life Together 

– The First Week Apart


Fern Street, Late August 1944

Betty's childhood bedroom had never been meant to hold three people's worth of living, and by the second night it was clear it was going to have to learn how. The double bed took up most of the far wall, and her old dresser stood where it always had, drawers now doing double duty for her things and Randy's both. His crib had been wedged in near the window, close enough that she could reach it without getting out of bed, and what closet space remained after her dresses went in was stacked to the shelf with diapers, tins of formula, and the small mountain of supplies a ten-month-old required. There was no changing table, so she changed him on the bed itself, a folded towel under him and a practiced economy of motion that came from a week of doing it exactly that way — Randy kicking and grabbing for whatever was nearest while she worked.

It was crowded, and it was loud in the particular way a full house is loud, and Betty found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she didn't mind it nearly as much as she'd expected to. There was something steadying about not being alone with the quiet.

Randy, for his part, had decided the whole house was his to conquer. He crawled the length of the hallway with a determination that made Lyle laugh out loud the first time he saw it, and within a few days he'd worked out that the legs of the dining room table and the arms of the good chairs were things a person could pull himself up on, and so he spent long stretches of every afternoon hauling himself upright, wobbling, sitting down hard, and starting the whole business over again. Emily and Georgia took to trailing him from room to room with the patient, unhurried attentiveness of women who had raised children of their own and knew there was no rushing this particular kind of progress.

Some mornings Emily and Georgia took him out into the garden after Lyle went off to work, propping him in the grass near the flower beds while they worked, and he'd sit there contentedly pulling up fistfuls of grass and inspecting them with enormous seriousness before Georgia gently redirected his attention to something less dirt-covered. Other evenings it was the greenhouse with Lyle, Randy propped on a stool or held against Lyle's hip while his grandfather went about the business of the seedlings, narrating what he was doing in the same even, patient voice he used for everything, as though a ten-month-old were entirely capable of following a discussion of soil and light.

Betty took her sketchbook out to the garden on some mornings and sat in the shade with it open on her knee, drawing while she watched — Randy's fat little hand closing around a fistful of grass, Emily bent low beside him pointing at something in the flower bed, Georgia's profile against the hydrangeas, Lyle's careful hands among the seedlings with Randy propped against his shoulder. They weren't polished drawings. She didn't have the time or the stillness for that this week. But there was something in the act of putting pencil to paper that let her hold onto the morning a little longer than the morning itself would allow, and by the end of the week she had a small stack of pages that amounted, without her quite planning it, to a record of exactly how her son was spending his days without his father.

Lyle, of course, had his own way of keeping a record. The camera came out constantly — the still camera for Randy standing at the coffee table with his knees not quite trusting themselves yet, the 8mm for the longer business of him crawling the length of the hall or sitting in the grass with Georgia — and Lyle handled all of it with the same unhurried care he brought to his garage inventory, cataloguing his grandson's small triumphs the way he catalogued everything else that mattered to him.

In the evenings, once Randy was down, the house settled into a different kind of business — Lyle at his desk, Emily and Georgia with mending or the radio, Betty often just sitting, tired in the particular way that comes from a day spent chasing a child who has only recently discovered his own legs. She thought about Fred more in those quiet hours than she let on to anyone. There was no way yet to know what his days looked like, and the not-knowing had its own particular weight to it.

Naval Training Center San Diego, Late August 1944

Fred's days, had Betty been able to see them, would not have looked like anything from their life together.

Mornings began before the sun was properly up, and from the moment his feet hit the deck — he was already correcting himself, floor to deck, without quite meaning to — the day moved in a sequence that left no room for hesitation: make the bunk to the exacting Navy standard, shave, wash, dress, square away his locker and gear, fall in with the rest of his company, and report for whatever the day held. He learned quickly that the Navy had very little patience for a man who did any of this slowly, and by the third morning he'd shaved his routine down to something close to what was expected of him, moving through it half-asleep and entirely by habit.

The bunk alone had taken some getting used to — blankets pulled tight enough, he was told more than once, that a coin ought to bounce clean off them, corners folded to a precision that had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with discipline. He thought, more than once, of how differently a bed got made at home, and put the thought away each time before it could get too comfortable in his head.

The language of the place came almost as fast as the routine did. Port and starboard replaced left and right; the ceiling was the overhead, the kitchen was the galley, the floor was the deck, and a rumor was a scuttlebutt, and Fred found himself, without quite noticing when it happened, starting to think in the new words rather than simply repeating them for the instructors' benefit. He learned to stand at attention until his back ached, to salute an officer without having to think first about which hand, to march in formation and correct his own stride to match the man beside him. He stood his first watches too, short stretches around the barracks and the company area, and understood well enough that these were rehearsals for something larger — the watches he'd stand someday aboard a ship, when the stakes would be considerably higher than a rumor passed down the line.

None of it, he came to understand, was really about obedience for its own sake. It was about becoming the kind of man who could be trusted to take care of himself, and by extension the men around him, in a place where there wouldn't be room or time for anyone to do it for him.

Partway through the week he sat down with a classification specialist, a man with a clipboard and a list of questions that felt, after the last few days, almost startlingly ordinary. What had Fred done before the Navy? Material control engineer, he said. Rohr Aircraft Corporation. Aircraft manufacturing. The specialist wrote it down without much visible reaction, and Fred understood, even as he answered, that his years of experience might carry him toward a technical assignment or might carry him nowhere near one — that the Navy would decide what it needed from him, and his own preferences would be, at best, one factor among several.

He thought about that a good deal in the days after, turning it over the way a man turns over anything he can't control. He'd built a career on being useful in one particular way. He had no idea yet whether the Navy would want that from him, or something else entirely.

Saturday Night

By Saturday night, one week in, Fred had a little time — not much, but enough — and a sheet of paper and a pencil, and he sat on the edge of his bunk after lights-were-nearly-out and wrote to his wife.

Dear Betty,

It's been one week today, which hardly seems possible — it feels both longer and shorter than that all at once. I won't pretend the first few days weren't rough. They cut my hair down to nothing and I hardly recognized myself in the mirror after, and my arm's still a little sore from all the shots they gave me. The bunk is too short. But I'm getting the hang of things faster than I expected to. I can make a bunk now that would probably pass inspection at Fern Street, if you can believe that.

They ask you a lot of questions here about what you did before — I told them about Rohr, the engineering work, all of it, though I gather it's mostly up to them what they do with that information. I don't know yet where I'll end up or what they'll have me doing, and I've decided there's not much use worrying over it until they tell me.

I think about you and Randy more than I probably should admit, especially at night when the barracks finally quiets down. I keep picturing him pulling himself up on furniture — is he still at it? Give him a kiss for me, and tell your mother and dad and Georgia thank you for everything they're doing. I don't know what we'd have done without the room at Fern Street, or without all of them.

Write and tell me everything — I mean it, everything, even the small things. It's the small things I find myself missing most.

All my love, Fred

Betty wrote hers that same night, after Randy was finally down and the house had gone quiet around her, sitting up in the crowded little bedroom with the lamp turned low so as not to wake him.

Dear Fred,

One week! It hardly seems real that you've only been gone seven days — it feels like so much longer, and also like no time at all, which I know doesn't make sense, but I think you'll understand it anyway.

Randy is doing wonderfully, though "doing wonderfully" mostly means pulling himself up on every piece of furniture in this house and looking enormously pleased with himself every time he manages it without falling. My father thinks he's going to be walking within the month, and I think he's probably right, and I don't know quite how I feel about that. He spends his mornings out in the garden with Mother and Georgia, or in the afternoon in the greenhouse with my father, who talks to him about the seedlings as though Randy has any idea what a seedling is. I've been sketching them together when I get the chance — I'll have quite a lot to show you when you're home.

We're settled in here, though "settled" is a generous word for how crowded this room is with the two of us and everything the three of us left behind — I mean everything of his, and mine, all of it. I don't mind it, though. It's good not to be alone in the quiet, especially at night.

Everyone here is being so good to us — I don't know what we'd have done otherwise. But it's you I want to hear about. Tell me everything about what your days are like, the things you're learning, the men you're meeting — don't leave anything out just because you think it's dull. I want to be able to picture exactly where you are and what you're doing.

Randy and I both miss you terribly. Come home to us as soon as they'll let you.

All my love, Betty

Both letters went into the Monday mail, hers carried down to the box on Fern Street and his handed over at the base post office along with a hundred others just like it, and by Tuesday afternoon each had found its way to the other — Fred's letter arriving at the Carringer house while Betty was out in the garden with Randy, Betty's reaching Fred during a rare quiet stretch between drills. Neither of them had any way of knowing, reading the other's words for the first time, that this — waiting for a letter, writing one back, waiting again — was going to be the shape of their marriage for a good while yet. But it was a start, and it was theirs, and for the moment it would have to be enough.

To be continued...

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Here is the Google Notebook Video Overview about this time in Betty, Fred and Randy's life in late August 1944 (also on my YouTube channel):  

This story is historical fiction based on real people -- my parents and me -- and a real event in a real place. I don't know the full story of these events -- but this is how it might have been. I hope that it was at least this good! Claude is such a good storywriter! I added some details and corrected some errors in Claude's initial version.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in this family story.

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The AI-assisted ABC Biography of my mother, Betty Virginia (Carringer) Seaver, is in ABC Biography of #3 Betty Virginia (Carringer) Seaver (1919-2002) of San Diego, California. I also  wrote Betty's Story: The First-Year Art Teacher about the start of her teaching career.

The AI-assisted ABC Biography of my father, Frederick Walton Seaver, is in ABC Biography of #2 Frederick Walton Seaver Jr. (1911-1983) of Massachusetts and San Diego, California.  I also wrote Fred's Story: The Three-Day Cross-Country Escape  and Fred's Story: "I Need A Girl" about him coming to San Diego, and wanting a girlfriend.

Here are the previous chapters in this story:

                           ==============================================

Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver


Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Please note that all comments are moderated, and may not appear immediately.

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Saturday, September 12, 2026

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Serendipity!

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!



Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  Serendipity! What happened when you went looking for an ancestor or a genealogical record and were pleasantly surprised to find someone else or something else you didn't expect while you were doing that search?

2)  Please share an instance when you had a serendipitous experience.

3)  Share your serenditous experience in a your own blog post, or in a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system.  Please leave a comment with a link on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Marian B. Wood for suggesting this topic.

Here's mine:

I've had so many serendipity experiences over the years and now I can't remember the details of most of them.  So I will recount my latest experience from this past week.

While I was writing my blog post about the life of my 3rd great-grandmother Elizabeth (Dill) Smith (1791-1869) in 1845 in Medfield, Massachusetts, I reviewed my research for her and her husband Alpheus B. Smith (1802-1840).  I checked all my notes for them, which are in my RootsMagic profiles and genealogical sketches, and realized that I had searched, many years ago, for probate records for Alpheus Smith.  I had found the affidavit noting that Lucy Butterfield had bought Elizabeth's dower thirds (one-third of the personal estate, about one acre of land including the house and barn) from her in the FamilySearch Catalog, and I knew that the other 15 acres were sold to pay the debts of the Alpheus Smith estate.  

However, I found that I had not searched the land records at all for Elizabeth.  I searched for "Elizabeth H. Smith" on FamilySearch Full-Text Search and up popped not only the deed for Lucy Butterfield buying Elizabeth's dower rights, but also a deed (on the same image) for Lucy Butterfield buying the other 15 acres from the estate administered by Hinsdale Fisher. 

 I will transcribe the deeds in coming Amanuensis Monday posts so that I have a proper transcription and also a proper source citation.  I also need to update the genealogical sketch and ABC Biography for Elizabeth (Dill) Smith.  

I'm not sure this is all Serendipity but if it hadn't been on the same page in the Deed Book I'm not sure I would have found it.  When I searched for "Alpheus Smith" in Full-Text Search, this second deed did not appear in the results for some reason (Smith records are very common, perhaps I failed to search more than 100 deed matches?). 

                          =============================================

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2026/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-serendipity.html

Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com. Note that all comments are moderated, and may not appear immediately.

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The Birth of Devier David Carringer in National City, California on 31 August 1889

 After writing The Letter From Della (Smith) Carringer Arrives in Nebraska in August 1889, asking her mother to come help with her first baby, I asked Anthropic Claude to write the story of Abbey Smith's train trip from McCook, Nebraska to San Diego, California in 1889, based on Abbey's biography. That story is in Abbey Smith’s Journey West To San Diego In 1889.

Della's baby was born on 31 August 1889 in her National City home and Abbey was there to help.  I asked Anthropic Claude to tell this baby birth story from three perspectives -- Della Carringer's, Abbey Smith's and Austin Carringer's.


(AI Google Notebook Infographic -- Devier David Carringer's Birth Day, 31 August 1889)

Here is the story:

A Carringer Son is Born

National City, California — August 31, 1889


Della

The pains had started in the night, low and dull at first, easy enough to mistake for the ordinary discomfort she'd carried the last month of this endless summer. By the time the sky had gone gray at the window she knew better, and lay very still for a while, counting, before she woke Austin at all.

"How long," he said, already half out of the bed, "how long have you been lying there not telling me?"

"Not long. Go for your mother — no, go for Mrs. Halloway first, then wake Mother, she'll only fuss less if she hears it from you and not from me hollering."

He went, and Della lay alone a few minutes in the graying light, one hand spread over the great tight mound of her belly, feeling it draw up hard and then ease, and thought, with something between terror and a strange calm she hadn't expected to feel: today, then. Today I meet you.

By the time her mother came in — hair still loose from sleep, wrapper thrown on over her nightdress, moving with a speed Della hadn't seen from her since she arrived — the pains had drawn closer together, and Della found she was glad, more glad than she could have said, simply to see her mother's face bent over her.

"There now," Abbey said, taking her hand, "there now, I've done this six times myself, you'll manage it. How close are they coming?"

"I don't — I can't rightly say. Close."

"Close enough. Good." Her mother's hand was cool and steady on her forehead. "Breathe through it, don't fight it, it does its work faster if you let it."

The morning went on that way, in a haze of pain that came and went and came again, closer each time, her mother's voice a low steady thread through all of it — breathe, there, it's easing now, rest while you can — until the words themselves stopped meaning much and became only sound, only her mother's voice, the one constant thing in a room that had otherwise narrowed down to nothing but her own body and its terrible, necessary work.

When Mrs. Halloway arrived — a broad, capable woman with graying hair and forearms like a washerwoman's, who'd midwifed half of National City by her own account — she took one look and one touch and said, with the flat certainty of long experience, "Well before noon, I'd say. This one's in a hurry."

Della, between pains, thought she might have laughed if she'd had the breath for it, and it seemed fitting enough that her own child should be in such a hurry to arrive.

By midmorning the room had narrowed to almost nothing — her mother on one side, Mrs. Halloway at the foot of the bed, low murmured instruction passing between them that Della only half heard, riding each wave as it came and finding, somewhere past the point where she'd have said she couldn't bear another one, that she bore it anyway, because there was nothing else to be done and because her mother's hand never once let go of hers.

"There's the head," Mrs. Halloway said at last, in a voice gone suddenly bright with purpose. "One more good push now, Mrs. Carringer, just the one—"

And then, all at once, the terrible tightness broke and there was a sound in the room that hadn't been there before — thin and outraged and entirely new — and Della lay back against the pillow with tears running sideways into her hair, laughing and crying at once, while her mother's face above her broke into an expression Della had not seen on it before, not once in her whole life, something unguarded and shining.

"A boy," Mrs. Halloway said, working quick and sure. "A fine big boy, and loud with it, which is only good news."

"Let me see him," Della said, or tried to say, her voice not quite her own. "Mother — let me see—"

And then he was there, red and furious and impossibly small, laid against her chest, and Della forgot the whole of the last twelve hours in the single fact of him.

Abbey

Abbey had sat at enough bedsides in her life — her own six times over, and her sisters', and neighbor women's in every county they'd ever lived — that she thought she had grown past being frightened by it. She discovered, sitting beside Della through that long morning with her daughter's hand gripped tight in her own, that this was not entirely true. There was a particular fear reserved for watching your own child labor that nothing in her own confinements had prepared her for.

"Breathe through it," she said, over and over, because it was true and because it gave her something to say besides the fear. "Don't fight it, Della, let it do its work. There now. There now."

She remembered — could not help remembering, sitting there — her own first labor, Della's own birth, twenty-seven years gone now, in Devier's father's home -- an inn -- in Rolling Prairie with her own mother sitting beside her, and a neighbor woman she'd known scarcely a year helping. She had sworn to herself then, young and frightened and far from home, that if she ever had a daughter of her own who labored, she would be there for it, whatever the distance. She had crossed near two thousand miles this past week to keep that promise, though she had not put it to herself in quite those words until this morning.

Mrs. Halloway was competent — Abbey approved of her within the first quarter hour, the particular quick, unhurried competence of a woman who had done this a great many times and did not waste effort on anything but what the moment required — and this eased something in Abbey's chest, to have a steady hand in the room besides her own.

"You're doing well," she told Della, again and again, smoothing the damp hair back from her daughter's forehead. "You are doing just exactly as you ought."

When the child finally came — quick, as these things went, Mrs. Halloway said, though it had not felt quick sitting through it — and that thin outraged cry filled the room, Abbey felt something break open in her own chest that she had not expected, a rush of feeling too large and too many-sided to properly name. Relief, first and foremost, that Della had come through it well. Joy, plain and uncomplicated, at the sound of a new voice in the world. And underneath both of those, something else — the sudden, vivid memory of holding this same daughter as a newborn herself, in a different house, a different life ago, and the strange doubled feeling of watching that circle close.

"A grandson," she said, and found her voice was not quite steady. "Della, look what you've done."

Austin

Austin had been banished from the room entirely — Mrs. Halloway's doing, firm and immovable on the point, and Abbey had backed her without hesitation — and so he spent the morning doing the only thing left to a man in his situation, which was to wear a groove in the boards of his own front porch and listen, with his stomach in a knot the whole while, to the sounds coming from the bedroom.

He had known, in an abstract way, that childbirth was hard on a woman. He had not understood, until he stood outside that closed door hearing Della's voice go from ordinary to strained to something he'd never heard from her before, what that abstraction actually meant, and he found himself, more than once that morning, gripping the porch rail hard enough that his knuckles went white, praying in a rough, wordless way to a God he did not often trouble in the ordinary run of things.

His neighbor Tom Hargrove came by midmorning, saw the state of him, and had the good sense to simply sit down on the porch step beside him without much conversation, which Austin was grateful for in a way he didn't have words to express at the time.

"First one's always the longest wait," Tom said eventually. "Mine took the better part of two days, my Sarah. You've nothing to complain of yet."

"I'm not complaining," Austin said, though his voice came out tighter than he meant it. "I just don't know what a man's meant to do with himself, sitting out here."

"Nothing to be done. That's the whole of it. Nothing to be done but wait and let the women get on with it, same as they always have."

The waiting stretched on, each hour longer than the last, until somewhere near noon the sounds from within changed again — a rising urgency he could hear even through the closed door and the thin walls — and Austin came up off the porch step without quite deciding to, standing at the door with his heart going hard in his chest, not knowing whether to knock or simply wait.

And then he heard it: a new sound, thin and sharp and utterly unlike anything that had come before, and every hair on his arms stood up at once.

He did not remember crossing the porch or opening the door, only that he was suddenly in the doorway of the bedroom, and Mrs. Halloway was saying something about giving them just a moment more, and Abbey was turning toward him with tears standing plain in her eyes and something in her face he had never seen there before, and past her, in the bed, Della was looking up at him with an expression of such pure, exhausted joy that it undid him entirely.

"Austin." Her voice was hoarse but steady. "Come see your son."

He crossed the room on legs that did not feel entirely his own, and looked down at the small red furious face against Della's chest, and felt something in his own chest simply give way.

"Devier David," Della said, watching his face. "For your father, and for mine. Is that — will that suit?"

Austin could not, for a moment, manage any words at all. He knelt by the bed instead and put his hand, very carefully, against the impossibly small curl of his son's fist, and felt the tiny fingers close around one of his own with a grip that seemed, absurdly, already strong.

"That suits," he finally managed, his voice not entirely steady either. "That suits just fine."

Behind him, in the doorway, Abbey stood watching the three of them — her daughter, her son-in-law, and the newest small stranger who carried both grandfathers' names into a family that had crossed half a continent to be gathered, for this one morning, all in a single room — and thought that whatever else this long westward journey had cost the family over the years, it had brought them, at last, to this.

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Author’s Note: This is a work of historical fiction imagining the birth, grounded in the documented fact of Devier David Carringer's birth on August 31, 1889, and the family's presence in National City at that time. The specifics of the labor, the midwife, and the conversations are invented, as no firsthand account survives.

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The AI Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this story is in (and on my YouTube channel):  

This is historical fiction based on known events in the lives of my ancestors -- it might have been this way. Abigail (Vaux) Smith is my 2nd great-grandmother through her daughter Della (Smith) Carringer (1862-1944), and I have significant information about this family from the available records, but I know nothing about their day-to-day lives.

As always, I am amazed at what life was like in any place over 130 years ago. This description of the birth of Devier David Carringer in National City in 1889 is interesting and so different from our current daily activities.

After I read these types of social history summaries, I wish that I could be a time traveler for one day to visit this Carringer family in 1889 San Diego and witness their daily lives.  I'm glad that the general lifestyles and occupations are known from historical records and witness accounts.

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Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page.  Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.

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