52 Ancestors Week 11: Achievement

Question

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 11

The theme for Week 11 is "Achievement." There are many forms of achievement, whether it's winning an award, winning a race, or accomplishing what it was you set out to do. This week, celebrate an achievement (great or small) that one of your ancestor's made.

Achievement unlocked: 8,000,000 G2G points. (Soon.....)

Comments

Achievement unlocked: 258th blog post: https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2024/03/52-ancestors-week-11-achievement.html

Answer 1

My great grandaunt won the Canadian Governor General's Award for being one of the best students in Canada in 1876. The medals, created in 1873 by Lord Dufferin, are still awarded today and considered the highest honour a student can achieve.  Katherine Renfrew Bartlett's medal was for secondary school graduation. 

 She was called Aunt Kate by her sister Elizabeth's daughters, Florence (my grandmother) and Frances (the woman who raised my father after his parents died).  Kate was a school teacher, never married, died in 1935 at age 75. She influenced Frances to become a teacher and perhaps, not to marry. 

After Frances died in 1969 her house was sold.  The new owners or later owners found the medal in the attic and contacted a woman who was a friend of Frances.  They asked if there were any relatives of Katherine Bartlett left.   She said, yes, Pat's alive. So the medal was sent to me some twenty years ago.  It's two inches wide and really lovely.  I'm so grateful that these kind people found a good home for an achievement that happened so long ago. Sometimes these things end up in garbage dumps.  It all depends on the character of the person who found the item. http://WikiTree.com/wiki/Bartlett-7710.

Comments

Thank you for the star, Alice.  Very kind.

Answer 2

MY many achievemts my ancestors were made by just coming from their homeland to a new homeland. Their long voyages most in during the winter months in third class ships. They came from Italy, France and Switzerland. My material grandmother  Violet (RAY) Rouquier-12638  came over when she was 18 with her brother George  (16) from the port of Bordeaux, France from her home in Villars- Bouguion Switzerland in 1920. Then she went back in 1926 to pick up her sister in law Clara from Switzerland.
My great uncle Francesco Saverio Antonio Ettore (Francis) Fleurdelis formerly Fiordalisi-25, from Oriolo, Cosenza, Calabria, Italy came over to American when he was 16. He was the first of 4 brothers to come over on Feb 1900. He went from the port of Naples, to New York, then he went to live in Spokane Washington. That's another story to be told. There are plenty of other achievements my ancestors made.

Answer 3

My mother graduated with highest honors (summa cum laude) in mathematics from Washington State College {now Washington State University) in the 1930s. She was also the president of the Phi Mu Epsilon international Honor Society dedicated to the promotion of mathematics.  But there was no “Gifted” or “Hidden Figures” fairytale happy ending for her, she attended secretarial college for six months so that she could get a job other than being a school teacher like her mother and aunts had been.

After graduation, she became a secretary and stenographer in Seattle and also tutored in math and physics for additional income.  She was hired by the Tau Phi Delta forestry fraternity at the University of Washington to tutor my father in math and drag him over the line to a bachelor's degree.  As an aside, she was virtually unbeatable at Bridge and a piano virtuoso.

Speaking of achievements, her electrical engineering brother was no slouch either having been named Boeing’s Engineer of the Year back when aircraft doors and windows stayed bolted on in the air and wheels didn't fall off in flight. He also designed a radar altimeter system in his home basement workshop that became a standard item on all commercial airlines and space vehicles.

Comments

Ray, the 1930s were tough times.  I had a great-uncle who was a geologist, which there was no real need for during the depression.  After graduating in 1929, he was unemployed in his field until 1934, when the FIRST offer came to him.  For that, he had to move to Northern Rhodesia, and spent the rest of his life in Africa.

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Thanks for the comment, Brenda.  Facing his only job prospects being in the bakery that he had worked his way through high school in, my father signed on as a sailor on a freighter and sailed around Cape Horn.  He said that the experience convinced him to go to university where as a Finn he naturally studied forestry.  In the mid-1930s he took a 2-year sabbatical to work on a USFS project taking panoramic photos of every fire lookout in the Northwest and then returned to graduate in 1937 when he joined the USFS - in Alaska.  I've always felt that he planned his way through the Great Depression very carefully.

Speaking of geology, your great-uncle's experience reminded me of a more recent similar situation.  Having been around mines (and petroleum projects) all his life (I'm an international engineer), my son chose to take geology in university only to find that just one male in his graduating class got a job offer in geology (his best friend was hired on a deepsea exploration rig that spent 6-8 months straight at sea). What had happened was that 3rd or 4th wave feminism had "encouraged" mining companies to hire only female geologists (and mining engineers) to improve their employment stats.

Answer 4

Another tough one for me. I have a page on my website of interesting facts I have gathered on different family members. Here is one on my 5th Great-grandfather, William Shelton "of Dan River".

THE HISTORY of PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY VIRGINIA
CHAPTER XIII THE REVOLUTION--THE SOUTHERN CAMPAIGN
page 173

The mail post was an important branch of the service at Peytonsburg. Because of the winter's mud of the more eastern roads the main mail route from the north to the south led by Peytonsburg. Dispatch riders would arrive with important mail and it was the duty of the post commandant to forward the same without delay, and in order to do this it was necessary to keep at the post a number of express riders. James M. Williams served one year as a dispatch rider at Peytonsburg; other express riders as shown by the Claim Records were Sherwood Thompson, William Norton, Drury Smith, Matthew Stone, Samuel Harris, William Shelton, Edward Ware.

Answer 5

I don't know if this is an achievement or not, but my great-grandfather was a Member of Parliament in Canada.  He was elected in a byelection in 1924, and re-elected 5 more times.  He served his country as a politician from 1924 to 1947.

Comments

That definitely would have been an achievement back then, especially as he served in Parliament throughout World War II.

Answer 6

Lots of achievers, including my grandfather who was professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, even though he never went to University himself ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battiscombe_Gunn ).

But I will write about my mother, Freda (Pilcher) Gunn ( Pilcher-358 ).  Her mother worked in the kitchens of various "stately homes" until she marreid, and her father drove a double decker London bus.  When schoolchildren were 11, they took an exam which determined if they would / could go to grammar school (= academic) or trade school.  She did well enough to get a scholarship to grammar school. But her parents said "What use is Latin of Mathematics if there is another depression? If you have a trade you will always be able to get a job". So she went to trade school to learn to be a dressmaker.  At 14 she was working in a ladies' dressmaking shop. Then WWII started, and women's clothing was rationed. The ladies'  dressmakers closed, and she went to work in a children's dressmaing shop.  Then they were rationed too, and those shops closed. So much for "Always find a job if you have a trade"! She spent the rest of the war doing "war work" which (with hindsight) was assembling radar units (very secret at the time).

After the waar was over there was a shortage of teachers because so many of  the (mostly male) teachers had been killed. And new laws (passed before the war, but put into effect after the war) required children to remain in  school for several more years. The Government instituted an Emergency Teacher Training program.  Admission to the program was just based on passing an exam. You didn't have to have completed grammar school.  It also trained teacher much more quickly, in two years.

Freda applied, passed the exam, and trained to become a teacher. She taught in "Infant schools" (students aged 4 to 7) in England until I was born.  After we emigrated to the US, and both my sister and I were in school, she started substitute teaching (New York State did not recognize her British credentials), and then taught full time in private schools, until she died at the early age of 51.

Given her family background, becoming a teacher was a major achievement.

Answer 7

Reported in the 'Freeman's Journal' 22nd Jan 1849. 20 year-old Valentine Corri was an art student with Royal Dublin Society. He was awarded 'Bronze Medal' For Studies from Nature and other original Drawings for Still Life. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Corri-34

Answer 8

I went into the category "Olympic Gold Medalists" and looked for unconnected people. There I found Charles Henry Jewtraw, the speed skater that won the very first Gold medal that was given out at the first Olympic Winter Games in !924. I found a connection via the father of an aunt by marriage.

Answer 9

My 1st cousin twice removed won:

* West Virginia's Vandalia Award, in 1981.

*1991 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts,  Click below for video

Melvin Wine - Hey Aunt Katie There's a Bug on Me (youtube.com)

Answer 10

My husband's grandfather:  

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Thomsen-1338

He immigrated to America from Denmark. He learned to read, write, and speak English. He served in the North Dakota National Guard starting in 1900. The National Guard was called upon to serve on the Mexican Border including the attempt to capture Pancho Villa. He also served in WW I  as part of the American Expeditionary Forces in  France. Upon his return to the states and to North Dakota, he remained with the National Guard and retired with the rank of Lt. Colonel. He started the Wahpeton North Dakota, American Legion Post, named the TJ Thomsen American Legion until 2013-2014,