A Well-Known Furniture Manufacturer
My mother owned quite a few antiques although she wasn’t really a collector. She only occasionally purchased antiques herself, but she had many objects that she had inherited from family members. When she passed away last year, I went through these items and consigned most of them to an antique store. I ended up keeping one chair, however, after my cats adopted it as their own. As it turns out, those cats have impressively good taste in antique furniture.
A Manifest Incongruity
Because my family has lived in America for a very long time, I am eligible to join many of the lineage societies that limit their membership to the descendants of early settlers or men who served in various wars. I can’t say I’ve ever had the desire to actually join any of these societies, however, with one exception.
When Uncle Sam Was Ready, Things Moved Fast
My great-grandfather, Francis Fielding (Frank) Longley, was a civil engineer who specialized in water treatment systems. Clean and readily available water is one of those things that it’s easy to take for granted, and learning about his work has really opened my eyes to what it takes to provide water to those who need it. He had a long and varied career and wrote a number of interesting accounts of his experiences, but this blog post will focus on only his work with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during World War I.
Friends of Humanity
Some time ago, I wrote about my five-times great-grandfather Thomas Longley, who moved his family from New York City down the Ohio River to Kentucky in 1788. Thomas was a Baptist. I don’t know if he was raised in the denomination or converted at some point, but I know he attended the First Baptist Church of New York City, where he served as a deacon from 1787 until his departure to Kentucky (Parkinson 1846). Thomas continued to practice his Baptist faith in Kentucky, joining the Mays Lick Baptist Church as one of its earliest members (Goins 1980).