not native fruit

many stories

as i continue to read and do research in the area of my family history, i realize more and more just how many and varied the stories are, yet to each of us it seems as if our own story is 'the' story.  Whether it's the stories of former slaves, of the various native american tribes, of the 'mulattos,' and probably even of the oppressors, there are unique experiences in every region.  back east, there must be unique experiences about every twenty square miles.  i am finding it fascinating to read all these different accounts, often finding something i can relate to, or that applies to my family.  of course, i am mostly reading about the east coast where my mother's people are from.

i now realize that my mother's father's people, in particular, come closest to what used to be called 'free people of color,' or sometimes 'the intermediate class.'  dr. pauli murray, a harvard graduate, writes a great deal about free people of color and also about slave-mulattos (the progeny of white slave-owners and their slaves) in her book 'proud shoes.'  one of the most poignant, for me, stories in the book relates to how much the offspring of the family that endowed or founded the university of north carolina longed to partake of its education, but could not, because of their color-status.  even dr. murray was turned down by the institution when she applied, and she had to take her undergraduate degree elsewhere.  she chose a good school, but still the pain of applying to a school created by your own direct ancestor and being rejected despite her excellent qualifications - i'm sorry, but that is just totally dysfunctional to say the least.  later she graduated from harvard law school, no mean feat.  

i'd like to share with you a site dedicated to a people i feel are very familiar to me.  it's called 'the minqua people of the welsh mountains of southeastern pennsylvania' and here is the link.  these are some lovely, gracious people, people i know both of my parents respected to the nines because of their excellent values and manner of living, and my mother felt herself and her family to be a part of.  i hope you'll enjoy the site as it gets rolling.

native american language idioms

i've been studying lenape, the indigenous language of my area of origin, the Delaware River Valley, as it has been preserved in various sources.  i've been studying on the lenape nation of pennsylvania's site www.lenapenation.org where there are lessons designed by Chief Shelley de Paul. 

anyway, two of the 'idioms' i've noticed and found interesting in lenape are that 1) one can say 'this squirrel' (na hanikw), or, in order to be more specific as to the exact squirrel one is referring to, 'this here squirrel' (wa she hanikw).  now doesn't this sound familiar?  isn't that the way the so-called 'mountain people' used to talk?  ("This here road, this here knife' etc -) it was considered substandard English.  i always thought people who talked like that were supposed to be 'white people,' but it turns out, according to my research into their history, that i was mistaken.  maybe that was why it was okay for them to be the object of humor by the dominant culture for so many years.  just something to consider.  

and 2) that the lenape had a way of saying 'you all' and also 'you' (but including me too).  For example, let's say a group had set out on a journey but decided the weather was so bad the group had to turn back and go home.  Someone might wish to say 'you all are going home now (but not me, i'm not going home, i'm going forward)' - this is the 'exclusive' form of 'you.'  On the other hand someone might want to say in a rhetorical way for the sake of argument, 'you are going home now, and in the subtext, i am going home now too, but for the sake of argument let's just say that 'you' are going home now.'   in other words, i'm not arguing with you here, but i want to make a point about this plan to go home.  of course, if you go, i will go with you, but first let me present my ideas about going forward instead of going back.  This is the inclusive 'you' which is more of a 'we.'  I really 'get' the difference here, and when I first discovered this grammatical form, I got really excited about it.  so here is how it looks in lenape: we are going home, nemachihena; you (excl) are going home, kemachihemo; you (incl) are going home, kemachihena.

there is nothing like studying another language to clue you in to completely other ways of thinking about things, about life. A whole other approach to life.  it is really sad that the early explorers, friars and so forth did not have a better grasp on the cultural dimensions of the new languages they were struggling to learn and to teach.  i wonder how that might have influenced the outcome of things.

liquor laws/blue laws

anyone remember the blue laws? 

i've been reading in C.A. Weslager's book on the Delaware Indians that liquor laws were introduced very early in the delaware river valley to try to prevent sales of liquor to native americans who couldn't deal with alcohol.  of course, now science has shown that native americans completely lack the enzyme necessary to metabolize alcohol, which explains a lot.  but i just have to say that i had no idea that pennsylvania's liquor laws, blue laws as we used to call them, were in place mostly because of the native american population. 

later, others came to the area who may also have been perceived as needing these laws too, but by and large, most people were christians - even most of the native americans were eventually - so not working on sundays and other aspects of the blue laws were probably just fine and dandy with most folks.  my recollection, however, is that as a child i heard a LOT of complaining about the blue laws.  now of course they've been revoked.

today, it seems to me, intoxicant abuse can only be prevalent among people who are not happy with their lives.  doesn't that make sense?  poverty is usually a direct result of oppression and racism everywhere in the world, and i would say only secondarily a result of material lack - famines, lack of trade goods, and so on.  extreme poverty is more than likely a fairly strong condition for creating unhappiness, i would think. 

and also, of course, another strong predisposer towards alcoholism is genetic as well.  Even rich people, oppressors and the like, can become strung out on alcohol.  how can something so good also be something so bad?

history of bucks county/early spanish presence middle atlantic states

i'm finally reading 'the history of bucks county,' one of the resources i downloaded in the past two and a half years since i've begun researching my mother's family's background.  my great-great-great grandfather, william whittingham, is listed on the 1790 census as residing in bucks county.  his wife, rebecca livezey, is a descendent of the original Quaker Thomas Livezey, through his son Jonathan, who were 'First Proprietors' in Pennsylvania, so the history of bucks county is partially my family's history as well.  i'm interested in their history, and especially in the intersection with the local native american people which occurred, at the very least, when my great-grandfather, Alfred, married Mary Carney, a 'Moor' in 1872.  his parents were both deceased at that time, but alfred's brother refused to visit the home of alfred and mary, according to the civil war pension deposition filed on her behalf.

the so-called moor indians are usually given very little credence even for having existed in the past, so i've found it interesting to look into it a little.  i've found evidence for their existence in brewton berry's 1961 classic 'Almost White,' and also in 'Delaware's Forgotten Folk' by C.A. Weslager.  Weslager also wrote a book called 'The Delaware Indians' and in that book he states that the southernmost clans and bands, who spoke a Lenape (Algonquian) dialect similar to Unami, disappeared early by being absorbed into 'many peoples.'  In 'Delaware's Forgotten Folk,' Weslager makes the educated guess that the Moors were actually a remnant of the Lenape (Delaware) Indians, and I would assume he means the southern people, the Unalachtigo.  So, why was this remnant population known as 'the Moors'?

keeping all this in mind, it's interesting to read in different sources that there was a fairly strong Spanish presence all along the eastern coast of North America, at least as far north as the Hudson River as early as 1513 and throughout the 1500's.  In most of the American historical tradition and literature, a claim is made for the pre-eminent presence of the Dutch and English in these areas, but as we say, history is written by the victors, and I guess that's how the English wanted it to look.  An anti-Spanish, pro-Anglo bias has dominated American culture up until very recently, so I think it's important to keep that bias in mind.  Apparently, the Spanish - and their 'Moors' - were more present in the middle-Atlantic states than has been acknowledged up til now.

Paula Gunn Allen writes that Jamestown was situated 40 miles up-river in order to avoid Spanish ships as late as 1609.  According to the 'History of Bucks County,' the mouth of the Hudson River was first glimpsed by Verrazana in 1513, also a few years later by Stephanus Gomez who called it 'Rio de Gomez.'  "Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch East-India company, discovered [for the English] Delaware bay August 28, 1609, but he made no attempt to ascend the river.  Captain Cornelius Jacobson May ascended the river some distance in 1614, and two years afterwards Captain Hendrickson discovered the Schuylkill.  In 1616 three Dutch traders struck across to the headwaters of the Delaware, down which they traveled to the Schuylkill.  Here they were captured by the Minquas (Susquehannas) but were rescued by Captain Hendrickson at the mouth of that river."  All of this takes place a full hundred years after the Spanish first began exploring the region.  The Spanish also had two aborted colonies in the Chesapeake Bay region in the 1500's.

Historical record shows that many people came to the area and it is likely that there were more whose recorded names have been lost to the corrosive effects of time or who were never noted down in records to begin with.  The people we have records of are mostly those who were associated with one of the big trading companies who were all excellent record-keepers.  "About 1624-25 the West India company established a trading house on a small island (in the Delaware River) just below Trenton Falls, and located upon it three or four families of French Walloons.  The post was broken up about 1627, and the Walloons returned to New York.  In March 1685 Peter Lawrensen stated in a deposition that he came into that provice a servant of the West India company in 1628 (and) that in 1631, he, with seven others, was sent into the Delaware, where the company had a traditing house, with ten or twelve servants attached to it; that he saw them settled there.  A considerable body of Waldenses and Huguenots were sent to the Delaware in 1656-1663, but it is not known what became of them."  These are just people we can keep some kind of track of, thanks to the written record of these trading companies, but how likely is it that there were more who did not come under the auspices of an official institution?

For example, between 1623 and 1634 there was a group known as "The Albion Knights" who settled along the Delaware.  "Colonists were actually introduced and made their homes on the Delaware, but neither the number nor exact location can be told." (p.9)  This group is sometimes referred to as 'Plowden's Colony.'  William Rawle, who has studied the colony, "believed that some of those who welcomed Penn to the shores of the Delaware, were the survivors of the Albion Knights." (p.10)

It's no secret that these early Europeans started mixing their stock in with the Indians.  "During the early period, the river of the Sickoneysincks at Lewes, Delaware, received a new and vulgar name - Hoeren Kill (Whore's Creek), "From the liberality of the Indians in generously volunteering their wives or daughters to our Netherlanders at that place." (p. 294, Weslager, Dutch Explorers) "Evidence of miscegenation was soon to be seen in some of the Delaware villages when dusky-skinned females gave birth to lighter-complexioned, blue-eyed infants.  The process of Europeanizing the Indians had a subtle beginning, and unplanned cross-breeding preceded the technological changes." (p.109 Weslager, The Delaware Indians)  This sharing of the bed was part of Indian hospitality.  The Europeans were, by and large, Christian men (with the exception of the early Moors in America) and due to Christianity's emphasis on the sacredness of virginity, and their patriarchal slant on monogamy, there was very little understanding of a society where sexuality could be more liberally shared. Certainly such an offer implied a very close tie, a real acceptance of the Dutch or the Moors into the tribal network, and not just 'casual sex' which was more likely to have been the assumption made by many of the sailors or their captains. The name the Dutch gave to Lewes reflects their distorted view of what was going on.  But the subject of sexual distortions in Christian society could be a lengthy discussion, as we all know by now.

If people-making was happening among the Dutch, why not also with the Moors? 

colloquial english

a friend was characterizing what we used to call 'appalachian speech' (not sure if this still exists today) "colloquial."  The example we were using was 'this here' as in 'this here chair," indicating a particular chair.  Well, I have read in various sources that of the original European immigrants, including the British, some were attracted by the native american lifestyle and emulated it, often crossing over through marriage, eventually forming bands and clans of their own, and (famously) moving south and west into the Appalachians.  (Some pretty much stayed put, even when their tribes were 'removed.') Well, I found this interesting when I learned, through my study of Lenape, that there is a word/phrase that means 'this here.'  It's a way of assigning particularity and a kind of inclusiveness.  Lenape has a way of inferring these qualities grammatically, as distinct from the English tendency to use tone of voice.  I just wonder how many other examples of 'colloquialism' might be Indian uses adapted to English.

I grew up in a neighborhood full of immigrants, and I heard them making all sorts of leaps from their own languages straight into English, and getting laughed at for it too.  (It was not a kind environment; the same thing happened to the native remnant too.)  So now that I'm learning Lenape, I wonder how many Native American expressions I will discover in American English. 

I feel there are so many cultural borrowings from Native American into American culture that go unacknowledged.  First of all, many of these borrowings will be found among the descendents of white/European people (in earlier times, not always equivalent terms) and native americans, and these people, from the git-go, have been undervalued.  First called 'half-breeds,' now called 'wannabes,' they don't get much respect on either side.  As far as I can tell, most white-Indians don't want anyone to know, and I can see why.  I'll say more about that later.  First I want to emphasize that while some people may have felt ashamed of their Indianness, I think in most cases silence was meant to be protective.  It had to be kept a secret or the whole family could be stigmatized, and in small agricultural communities this would be quite a serious consequence.  After all, these people were white, too, and usually Christian and wanted to be a part of their community. 

Lots of other people have come to America and gone through a process of assimilation that has been difficult, but few seem to persist in denying their heritage the way the descendents of the early European-Native Americans do.  I include a link to another web-site that shares a family story on this theme as well. 

It would be interesting to see how very very many influences, traits and contributions to American culture have been made by Native American culture, if only we could take the blinders off and start acknowledging the truth. It will be difficult for this to happen, however, because there are plenty of white people who still want nothing to do with Indians, and plenty of Indians who want nothing to do with white people or other immigrant people.  So the rivalry would appear to continue.  I certainly can't blame native people, as their lands and resources are still at risk.  But I would prefer to take a path of friendship and learning about each other, acknowledging injuries but also acknowledging positive cultural contributions.

mocassins, parkas, passwords

I'm reading the autobiography of Mourning Dove, whose English name was Christal Quintasket.  I don't think I've ever heard a prettier name in my life.  I love her book, but I realize that what she describes as her Indian life is not the same as my recent ancestors who knew themselves as part-Indian.  Our people are more accurately described in 'Strong Medicine Speaks' by  Marion Gould and Amy Hill Hearth.  The 'Indians' I knew were those who managed not to be removed, those who had assimilated to at least some degree, enough to pass as 'white' or 'colored' back in the day.  (Please excuse the use of terms.)  Strong Medicine's people had stuck together as a cohesive group enough to claim ancestral lands in southern New Jersey and achieve tribal status.  Our people were more of a remnant.  They may not have lived in tipis or long-houses, or lived surrounded by the skins of animals, etc, etc, but they kept some of their values, knew they were outsiders by the standards of the mainstream culture, and celebrated their difference to varying degrees.  Strong Medicine does a good job of communicating that in her book.  In the case of my mother's father's people, they called themselves 'Moors' and that's what set them apart, or 'represented' their identity as native americans.  As it turns out Spanish ships were in the waters of the Chesapeake - that's why Jamestown was settled forty miles up the river, so it all makes sense, even without the pirate-theories.  My grandfather took the Moorishness quite seriously, but the people today don't seem to.  Even my mother questioned the connection to Moors, but the DNA test certainly seems to support it.  

I've been thinking about other aspects of growing up in our neighborhood.  For one thing, as a child one of the few things I was given that was brand-new were a pair of beaded mocassins.  These were, I was told, very important - they were *my mocassins.*  They used to slip off my feet, however, which annoyed me, and so I said I didn't like them.  Here's this little alien blonde girl, and my mother says to my grandmother very seriously and with some note of disgust, "She doesn't like her mocassins."  I think my mother just decided I had to be raised as white.  Hence she began correcting her mother, "Remember, Mother, you are not to say Kittatinny.  You have to say Blue Mountains from now on."  And my grandmother slid her eyes in my direction with that resentful look.  I guess I think back on all this stuff because when I look in the mirror, I too have a doubt about my native american ancestry.

I look so European, and my father was direct from Europe.  But he wasn't an immigrant.  He didn't belong to any immigrant community.  He didn't have any relatives in this country, or even country-men, with the exception of one cousin who moved here in 1957 and married an American.  He was a seaman and could have settled anywhere.  His top choices were: Brazil, Hawaii, New Zealand, and the Delaware River Valley.  Anyway, I think I've written all this before.

Saying you were German, Irish, English, or Scotch were like 'passwords' in our neighborhood and behind them you could hide your native american blood.  But many of us wore mocassins at home.  We all wore parkas and duffel coats - even my mother gave in and bought me a parka.  Plenty of the kids played lacrosse, whatever their ancestry.  All the little boys carried knives.  I suppose these were holdovers of the old culture in the new, because after all Philadelphia grew up in the context of a Native American community that was not exactly wiped out by the newcomers.  For many years, the two communities existed side by side, mixing at many points, but with the native community moving out onto the fringes, gradually moving further and further into the mountains, mixing it up with other Native communities, whether through cooperation or warfare. The European kids did not usually wear parkas, mocassins, etc., another clue to ancestral identity among those of us who did.  Also, our boys had a higher rate of being carted off to 'reform school' than any other group.

Since I've been engaging in this process of research, I've become much much more aware of the huge loss involved in the Americanizing of the Americas.  It can feel really quite overwhelming at times, but I am heartened by the attitudes of many Native American leaders today who are definitely taking the high road of forgiveness, embracing a sort of mutual-assimilation process (which has been the case all along much more than we generally acknowledge), and have a beautiful vision of a new creation - or a re-creation - of the Native American peoples.

martin luther king jr, golden earth dragon

Our Celebrity of the Month is Martin Luther King, Jr, born January 15, 1929, a Golden Earth Dragon.  In some ways, this is the most powerful Animal in the Chinese Zodiac, yet despite his charisma, compassion, unusual level of receptivity - for a Dragon - and his supportive, helpful nature, the Earth Dragon often experiences set-backs in energy, luck and plans. His awareness of this vibrato in his tone makes him very careful and also very humble.  He is supremely attractive and needs to be careful of relationship entanglements, excesses of indulgence, and addictions.  So say the books, anyway.  For myself, in looking at MLK, Jr - at least as far as we, the public, are able to do so - I would have to say that I see the attractiveness and charisma, and also the peace-loving, peace-making side of the Earth Dragon, generously willing to suffer for the sake of others.  Dragon is an Earth Animal, and Earth Dragon is Earth doubled, with all its receptivity, willingness to receive whatever is offered to it, and ability to digest whatever comes and transform it into pure Gold.

While still in college, MLK began to reflect on the nature of self-sacrifice in bringing about societal change.  According to his biographer, Lerone Bennett, "Another lecture, this one by Mordecai Johnson, then president of Howard University, thrust further thought upon (King). Johnson, a graduate of Morehouse and a powerful Baptist preacher, had returned from a 1950 visit to India with a deep conviction that Gandhi's tactics were applicable to the race struggle in America.  After his return, he delivered several evangelical sermons on nonviolence and the redemptive power of love and unmerited suffering. Satyagraha, Gandhi wrote, 'is the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one's self.'"  (What Manner of Man, p.37) This approach would have great appeal to the Golden Earth Dragon.

"Suffering and self-sacrifice were at the heart of Gandhi's philosophy.  'The government of the day,' he said, 'has passed a law which is applicable to me.  I do not like it.  If by using violence I force the government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be called body-force.  If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for the breach, I use soul-force.  It involves sacrifice of self...'   Reading these words and others of similar tone and texture in 1950, King, then twenty-one and at a crucial turning point in his own development, was impressed despite himself."  (p.38)

Other features of MLK's Four Animals include the warm, loving, and 'good' upbringing typical of the Wood Ox - an Animal he shares with Michelle Obama - which predisposes people to take on responsibility with a genuine willingness to help others.  His Metal Monkey Day Stem and Branch give him lofty aspirations and high-mindedness - a markedly spiritual cast to the mind - while his Water Horse makes him very emotional, somewhat rebellious and extremely hard-working.

Martin Luther King lived only a short time on this earth, dying at age 39 - on April 4, 1968 - at the gunpoint of an assasin, but he was able to bring about a sea-change in his nation, as only a transformative Golden Earth Dragon could do.

paula gunn allen

I”ve just discovered – or re-discovered – the feminist author, Paula Gunn Allen, who is widely credited with inventing the field of Native American Literary Studies, but who viewed herself as a multi-diverse person, with recent ancestry of  Laguna Pueblo, Lakota Sioux, Scots and Lebanese.  Sounds like my family.  And yes, I do relate to a great deal of what she has to say.

I think it’s interesting that she approaches the Native American literary tradition (oral in its origins) from a mixed-ethnic perspective.  In so many ways, I think this makes it easier to be a bridge-builder, a peace-maker, and we still need people who can do that, even in this age of Diversity with a capital D.  Thank goodness for the blends (who acknowledge they are blends - in realtiy, we are all blends, of course).

I started with her book on Pochahontas, which may be her most recent one.  She starts off by saying that we can’t just look at the facts if we want to know Pochahontas, because for one thing, there simply aren’t that many.  Rather, “a biography of Pocahontas must tell her life in terms of the myths, the spirits, the supernaturals, and the worldview that informed her actions and character.”  (p.2)  We don’t look at her as somehow standing above others, whether in terms of achievement or in terms of victimhood, because that would separate her from the “entire life system: that community of living things, geography, climate, spirit people, and supernaturals – (because) what is (to be) emphasized is the interactive nature of that person’s life.”  (p.2) 

For me, all of this makes perfect sense, because that is most certainly how I understand my own life.  Of course, as I get older, I want to understand my life even more than before, and I do understand it more than ever.  I’m interested in Pocahontas because she is a First Contact Native American, and member of a tribe that was closely related to my own native ancestors through my mother’s paternal grandmother, and possibly maternal grandmother as well.  I’m interested in that period of contact, and especially in that part of the east-coast’s First Contact story, which differed so much from either New England’s or the territories south of Virginia.

Here is something Paula Gunn Allen wrote that I particularly like: “A life comprises all the currents that flow through it and that it flows through.  Nor is it ever finished.  A person, like life itself, has neither beginning nor end.  It just is, here and there, self and other, present and absent.  In that way, Pocahontas’s life continues on, as the books, poetry, songs, dramas, and films centering on her prove.”  (p.2)

I really feel this way about my great-grandmother who seems to have been quite a powerful person – in my eyes, her life is continuing on, and she has some kind of unusual power to let others know about herself and who she is (was).  I seem to be the chief vessel for that transmission, but some people get a direct transmission from her photo.  She was a ‘Moor Indian’ from Delaware, who lived most of her adult life in the Pennsylvania mountains and the end of her life in Philadelphia.  I’m trying to get something published about her, but if that doesn’t work, I will have a whole page available about her on-line soon.

Anyway, I’m sorry to have to report that Paula Gunn Allen, a voice for many, has passed on from this plane of existence – last year, in May of 2008 – but she certainly is a living being in my consciousness.  I hope to continue to pass on to you what are, for me, thought-provoking passages from her work, as I discover them.

philadelphia rowhouses, the irish and the savings and loan

i'm reading a great little book called 'The Irish in Philadelphia,' by Dennis Clark, loaned to me by a friend who is a fellow-Philadelphian ex-pat living in Berkeley, California.  Of course, there were loads of Irish-Americans in my life growing up in Philadelphia. My mother's mother was supposed to be part-irish, but I wonder now how much of it was Irish by marriage.  Her grandmother's sister definitely married an Irishman, so perhaps that was the connection.  Or maybe, just because they'd lived up in the mountains for so long, they'd lost some of their connection to the Irish, and didn't feel quite in the same league with the more recent Irish immigrants we lived around in Philadelphia.  I don't know, but our own Irish heritage seemed to be under-emphasized, even though so many of the people around us - including one of my mother's best friends - were Irish.

Perhaps the neatest thing about this book for me is that I am learning more about the working-class people of Philadelphia.  For example, there is a whole section on the row-house.  Philadelphia was and is a veritable warren of row-houses.  The kids who lived in them used to make fun of them, but the truth is they did provide affordable housing for working-class people.  Instead of being always in the power of the landlord, something the Irish in particular despised, the Irish working poor - and other working class people too - in Philadelphia could experience pride-of-ownership.  I feel certain it did endow all of us with a certain self-esteem we might not otherwise have had.  True, these little, somewhat windowless dwellings crowded up against one another may have all looked alike on the outside, but inside each one was unique.  I think it was a wonderful alternative to tenement buildings and apartment-living, especially for families.  It makes me feel proud of Philadelphia to realize how unique our housing situation was for working-class people.

"Laborers in Newburyport, Massachusetts, were paying between $60 and $100 a year in rent in 1850.  This surpasses the average Philadelphia rent of $53-$68.  Rentals in the Fort Hill area in Boston (were) $1.50 per room per week, and (there were) equally exorbitant rents for attics and cellars.  While unskilled immigrants to Philadelphia no doubt faced similar gouging, the fact that the city was able to expand its housing supply and make more working-class houses available was some relief.  Rental housing simply was not as large a portion of the Philadelphia housing market as it was in Boston and New York.  As early is 1851 Patrick McKeown was writing home to his sisters in Ireland that 'almost every family has a house to themselves let it be large or small and a great many working people own the houses they live in."  The opportunity for a workingman to obtain a home of his own was really there.  Whereas a two-story house in Ireland was a mark of notable affluence, in Philadelphia such a structure could be had by a thrifty workingman.  An examination of bequests of Philadelphia Irishmen of the 1850's indeicates that it was not uncommon for members of the city's Irish community to own houses and real property.  True, some of the property was in slum areas, but some was in other areas as well." p. 54

The book makes many unfavorable comparisons between Boston's Irish poor and Philadelphia's.  Even New York City's economics do not compare favorably with Philadelphia's when it came to the Irish working-class. 

Another key to the success of the working Irish in Philadelphia was the building and loan associations, sometimes called Savings & Loan - our family banked at the local Savings and Loan until I moved my parents out to join us in Berkeley - which were "a sort of people's bank.  Sincle it was difficult for ordinary working people without collateral to obtain credit, groups of them began to develop their own credit systems.  Each person deposited a small sum, usually weekly, until enough equity was established to warrant an extension of credit.  If a man could pay the nominal ground rent on a lot, he could after a time borrow perhaps $1,400 from his local building and loan association, have a house built, and repay the loan over a period of years.  This original mortgage system in the city grew spontaneously and extensively.  The first such associations were begun in the late 1840's, and by 1875 there were 600 disbursing a half-million dollars a month.  The depositors were the only stockholders.  The overhead was low, since usually only the secretary of the association drew a salary.  These building associations became one of the vehicles for improvement for Irish families intent upon achieving better housing and a modest respectability.  With some of that dogged thrift that could often be found among the extraordinarily penurious Irish cottiers in the old country, the Philadelphia Irish took to the building and loan associations." pp 56-57

I remember my mother had no time for banks and only wanted to deal with the savings and loan associations in Philadelphia.  I got the impression that banks were kinda 'the enemy' and the savings and loan was your friend.  Knowing what I now know about my family, it makes sense that, for my family, banks existed for 'another class' of people.  Maybe those people were 'better' but we were quite all right too.

delaware more ties

I've been reading Weslager's "Delaware's Forgotten Folk, The Story of the Moors and Nanticokes," the book that everyone said would help to put it all together for me.  Well, I have to say it has.  One of the things that helped was understanding the mess created by the school problem in early twentieth century mixed-blood communities in Delaware, problems that affected attitudes and divisions among people during my mother's and her peers' lifetimes.  Also, of special interest to me was the notion that the so-called 'Moors,' the people my grandfather identified with, were one of the remnants of the Lenape (Delaware) native peoples, probably the ones living furthest south in that time of major movement of refugee people.  My husband's people were also probably part-Lenape, and so that confirms something he and I have felt for a long time.

I've decided I don't feel comfortable calling myself part-native-american or part-african-american, more comfortable calling myself part-white or simply 'white' (with reservations, no pun intended).  However, I do feel comfortable acknowledging that my family had a 'moor' lineage.  My chinese daoist teacher, Jeffrey Yuen, talks a lot about our inherited constitutional factors, which relate both to our genes and to our past lives, and he refers to getting in touch with our lineage.  That message has been very timely for me, since that seems to be exactly what is happening in my life. 

Outside knowledge or information is somewhat helpful, but the main stream of the lineage comes from within myself, from my own memories of my family, my early environment in Philadelphia and south Jersey, my own experiences.  Also, there is quite a bit of dream material that relates to our lineage, which of course I did not recognize until recently. 

I've also really come to understand that my father, a sailor, was not exactly an 'immigrant' to this country.  As a seaman, he traveled all around the world, and of all the possible places he chose the Delaware River area because he really just loved the indigenous people there.  He chose my mother because he loved her and because she was one of those people he already loved.  I think it came as a bit of a shock to him, a Dane by birth, that - possibly because of me - my mother was trying to distance herself from her people.  Oh, the ironies of life!  But - well, I don't know if you can understand this, but - it's been something of a healing for me to realize all of this. 

There was something missing inside me, or some rift within me, that this knowledge has healed.  It almost feels strange to share this in such a public forum, but I do so in the knowledge that sharing this may help someone else. 

Somehow all of this has been buidling to some kind of completion - or so it has felt to me - just recently, so imagine my surprise when I went to the mitsawokett site (the official delaware moor site) yesterday and found that they have posted my family's pictures.  I felt I might not have consclusive enough proof that my great-grandmother was the same Mary Carney born in Delaware somewhere between 1832 and 1835.  But I knew that she and her son, my grandfather, saw themselves as 'moors,' and that her mother's name was Louisa.  Likely that her father's name was John, as well, since that is what she named her first son who was born out of wedlock. 

It does help to be able to put a name to my experience and to understand the kinds of conflicts that drove my mother in a color-conscious society such as Philadelphia's was in her day. But even more than that, it establishes a warm feeling inside me about myself and my mother's family, and my father's love for her.  Out of that love I came.