Grandma Savage's Fried Chicken

Every summer my family would make the trip from Vancouver, Washington to Idaho to visit our family.  One of the things I remember was Grandma Savage's great cooking - especially her fried chicken.  I don't know what she did that made it so good, but it was really wonderful.  Maybe it was the oil that it was cooked in?  Since they lived on a farm, and there was only a little shop with a post office "in town" (really, that was pretty much it except for the LDS church and a school), I assume that Grandma used super fresh ingredients.  With beef cows and milk cows, potatoes, and a vegetable garden, she had lots to choose from.  I remember hogs, too, but not chickens.  They must have been around somewhere.  


Another treat from Grandma Savage was the package that arrived at Christmas time full of cookies and candies. I especially remember her divinity and fudge.  Yum!


Grandma Savage (Marion Rowe Beagles) married my grandfather, Nephi Waldo Savage on April 14, 1926.  She was born in Missoula, Montana on April 21, 1901 to Noah David Beagles and Mary Elizabeth "Bessie" Price.  Grandma died on March 16, 1984. 


I need to credit GeneaBloggers for the link to "52 weeks of Personal Genealogy and History," created by Amy Coffin, for this great writing suggestion.

Wordless Wednesday - Great Grandfather Ebenezer Savage

(from the GeneaBlogger's website:  Wordless Wednesday – a great way to share your old family photos! Create a post with the main focus being a photograph or image. Some posters also include attribute information as to the source of the image (date, location, owner, etc.). Wordless Wednesday is one of the longest running “memes” in the blogosphere and is an ongoing series at GeneaBloggers.)

Henry the world traveler

Something else from the book, "Henry Savage and his Family" by Josephine Savage Jones has me up all hours trying to confirm a story...

I wanted to go abroad and see the world.  I wanted to go to the Indies.  I wanted to be shipwrecked on some island among the savages and nobody saved but myself so that I could convert the natives to my religion.  I ran away from home, was miserable and returned home again.  Still not satisfied, I went aboard  the School Ship at Deptsford to learn to be a sailor.  There I got some little learning in the various duties of a sailor's life, but the greatest principle I learned was to obey orders even if it broke the owners.  I have always been willing to obey counsel since.  There was no getting away from it— do as you were told or be flogged by the boatswain.   At the expiration of nine months on the Deptsford I was drafted on board of the Duke of Sussex, a thirty-two gun ship bound for china...

China!  I wondered if this was just a vivid imagination at work.  Did my 19th century silk weaver really get to China?

In checking the source notes in the text, it looks as if a researcher was hired to confirm the information.  The Duke of Sussex was actually in the fleet of the East India Company, not in military service, and according to the researcher there was a Henry Savage aboard.  The ship left London on April 26, 1827, traveled to Malacca, Singapore, Canton, St. Helena and returned to London July 8, 1828.

Now I'm working on hiring a researcher to look at the records in London to get a copy of for myself.   Note to self:  Need to find a money tree....

Going Public

I have jumped off the ledge and opened my blog up to the entire world.  It is time for me to share information with more than my son and husband, who are supportive, but not pathological about things genealogical.  I would appreciate comments and suggestions on how to make the blog better.  Here I go.....

Boiled Pigwood Greens -- Yum??

From the book, "Henry Savage and his Family" by Josephine Savage Jones:

Ebenezer Savage was born 18 May, 1857, at Little Cottonwood, Salt Lake County, Utah.  He was the tenth child born to Henry and Sarah Savage.  It had been three years since the family had emigrated to Salt Lake City from their native London, England.   After a year in the city, they moved to Cottonwood, hoping to better themselves by living on a piece of land large enough to raise their own breadstuff.  The three years they spent in that area proved to be some of the leanest they had known.  There was an invasion of grasshoppers that lasted through the years 1854 to early 1857.  Just before the 1857 harvest, the food shortage was very acute.  For six weeks after Ebenezer's birth the family subsisted on boiled pigweed greens with an occasional biscuit—truly no adequate diet for a nursing mother and her babe.  Yes, those were impoverished years and hard to erase from their minds, but through faith and proven endurance, they survived.  Little Eb grew and was nourished by love of which there was no famine.

I googled the term boiled pigwood and discovered that Native Americans had been using this plant in a variety of ways.  I saw some websites that compared the taste to spinach.  The seeds were also used in the making of bread.

"Little Eb" was my great grandfather.  I'm fortunate to have a copy of this book on CD as it puts "flesh on the bones" for my Savages. 

Wedding bells for William

On September 29, 1732, William Savage married Elizabeth Green.  I saw the date on many LDS ancestral file entries, but I needed to verify it.  Luckily, I found a record on Ancestry.com with an image - whoopee.  But when I "googled" the church, All Hallows on the Wall, it looked as if the church wasn't built until 1765.  Yikes, how could my Savage have married in a church that did not exist.  After a bit more digging, I found this history on the church website:

The church of All Hallows London Wall is dedicated to All Hallows (or 'All Saints') and the suffix 'London Wall' describes its location. This was needed to distinguish it from the churches of All Hallows Bread Street, All Hallows Honey Lane, All Hallows the Great, All Hallows the Less, All Hallows Lombard Street, All Hallows Staining (all now gone) and the surviving All Hallows Barking by the Tower - all of them small parishes in medieval London.

That city, now contained geographically within the modern City of London, was surrounded by a wall which had been built by the Romans around 200AD, and the church of All Hallows, in part, stands literally upon that wall.

The present church was designed by the architect George Dance the Younger (son of another architect) and built in 1765-7; it replaced one built around 1300, and there was at least one other before that - the first mention of a church on this site dates from 1120, which it was connected with Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate. Such a succession of buildings is the usual pattern for churches in the City of London, but All Hallows is unusual in that it was not destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

In the Second World War the City churches were badly bombed, and many did not survive. All Hallows however, like many others, was restored and is now a Guild Church. This means that it no longer has parish responsibilites, but instead a more specialised function, initially as the headquarters of the Council for the Care of Churches, and now the home of The Amos Trust, Greenbelt, ACE, Stamp Out Poverty and Wallspace.

Allhallowsonthewall.org

Here's my William and Elizabeth's marriage record

They All Start Here (for now at least!)

I believe this to be the baptism record for my earliest known Savage ancestor, William, born July 19, 1704.  His is the first entry on the page. The record is a bit difficult to read (guess I will cut them some slack - the record is over 300 years old), but it looks like his father was William and his mother was Elizabeth.  I wish the ancestors had been a bit more original with first names....sadly not a "Sunshine" or "Moonbeam" amongst the lot.  I used to think that Savage was uncommon, but they seem to be all over the place!

Summer Vacations!

Yes, like a lot of genealogy buffs, we spend much of our summer vacation time trolling through hot, dry, cemeteries.  But it does pay off.  This is the gravestone of my 2nd great grandfather, Henry F. Savage.  He was born April 4, 1810 in Norton Folgate, Middlesex, England and died September 15, 1884 in Payson, Utah.  Henry was married to Sarah Power October 23, 1840 in Hackney, Middlesex.  One tip - to keep children interested and occupied, try paying them for each gravestone with your surname on it.  My sister made the mistake of paying $5 per grave in one cemetery and the kids found 11!  While it was a bank breaker, it seemed fair after making them drive (sometimes hours at a time) to visit cemeteries on their holiday.

This is a photo of the Savage Family ranch near Henrieville, Utah.  My grandfather, Nephi Waldo Savage, was born in Henrieville in 1895.  His father, Ebenezer Savage, died in Henrieville in 1898.  It is fantastic to have a photo of the place where they actually lived.  When we visited Henrieville in the summer of 2009, some of the residents actually knew of the Savage family.   We stopped at a senior center, and one of the visitors hopped into our van to show us where the Savages had lived.  The people were so friendly and nice - it made the trip really special.