1.
Until yesterday, I had no idea — zero — about the history of shipping orphaned British children to the colonies to work as indentured servants. I did know about the American orphan trains, thanks to the picture book on the subject.
You can read about the British Home Children at Rose McCormick-Brandon’s site, The Promise of Home.
2.
This week we met the governor’s dog, Simba. I can’t find an image for you, but if you book a (free) tour of the SC Governor’s Mansion, the odds are in your favor. (We also caught sight of the first gentleman, but he saw the tour group through the window and slipped around to a back entrance.)
This is my new favorite historic building tour for kids, because it is a real live occupied home. Which means nothing is roped off, and you are allowed to touch things. Mostly the kids did not touch things, because they have sense and know better than to put their fingers on somebody’s dishes or plop down on the living room couch. The downstairs area that you tour looks exactly like your grandmother’s formal living room that even your mom isn’t allowed to go into without permission. So you put on living room manners.
But the tour guide did have us all pull out dining room chairs to inspect the deer-hoof carving on the feet of the chairs. If you poured out a bottle of SC Concentrate, that building is what you’d get.
3.
After a jumbled first-round of Sacrament of Confession last week, I re-booted and had a much better second half. Helped that we had laid the groundwork the week before; also that I revised the study guide so that the students didn’t have to copy so much off the board.
My trusty teenage assistant was out sick last week. Lucky for him, we didn’t do 10,000 Gun Questions until this week. He agreed, it is a very fun class.
4.
I’m still only halfway through writing report cards for Q2. Quarter break is almost over. Need to crank the rest out and mail off a couple quarters worth of grades and work samples to Kolbe. Not something that Kolbe requires (unless you want a transcript from them), nor that is a legal requirement for us. But I am finding that it helps me teach better, if I have that extra grown-up looking over my shoulder.
5.
My daughter (the Bun – #3 child) loves beanie-snaps. She’s having some for breakfast-dessert. These:
#4 would eat sour cream exclusively if we let her.
6.
Pray for Allie Hathaway. Also for the repose of the soul of Fr. Robert Fix.
7.
Hey, this might be the key to my genealogy research. The only clue we have is a single teenage girl on a boat over the pond who apparently had a baby along the way. I’ll have to read more.
Oh cool. That would be neat if it worked out.
thanks for mentioning my blog, The Promise of Home. Many families have stories about an ancestor who came to Canada or Australia as a child or teenager. They think this person just hopped on a ship and left England to escape poverty. But most of these tales come from British Home Children who were ashamed to say they were orphaned or abandoned by parents too poor to keep them. They were placed in children’s homes and then shipped to the colonies as indentured servants.
Rose, it is such a wonderful work you are doing. Anytime you have news to share, please do!
A little review of my research says that she was 30 when she left home, so maybe not one of these children. Still, very interesting, and I hope to remember the website when I have time and brain cells. I love history, and I wouldn’t have said that ten years ago.