Eat Your Peas with a Knife! Willie Eaton Sr/Jr

Capt. William Eaton, Lost at Sea

Capt. William M. Eaton was my Great Grand Uncle.  He was born in 1844 in Maine and died January 15 1890 in Tampico Mexico...at sea.

At age 45 GG Uncle William was lost at sea, one of many of my ancestors who were sea captains, and unfortunately one of several lost at sea.  I am uncertain as to how he was lost at sea, but he did lose the Schooner W. W. Hungerford while it was under his command and this is likely the ship he was on at the time of his death.

"He had a son William, Jr that we all called Uncle Willie", my mom said. My mother told me that he "loved to eat his peas off a knife."  What!  How?

Did he learn this from his dad?  Did Willie line them all up and then lean into them, scoop them with the knife's edge, or did he swish them with his potatoes and then eat the potatoes and the pea glob off the knife?  Or perhaps he stabbed them one at a time!

Of course, he could have used honey as the old rhyme says.  

I eat my peas with honey 

I've done it all my life 

It makes my peas taste funny 

but it keeps them on my knife

More family memories at: https://catorfamilies.com/genealogy/eaton.html 

Betsy McCall Paper Dolls - Donna and Caren

Caren and I loved playing with paper dolls – by the hour.  We played "house" with them, we played "vacation" with them; we imagined with them.  We even read to them.  We designed and cut out new clothes for our paperdolls.   They lived in our dollhouse.

In May of 1951, McCall's Magazine introduced Betsy McCall paper dolls.  We collected them thanks to Mom, cut them out and had fun, fun, fun!  

The 1930s - 1950s were the Golden Age for paperdolls because they were so affordable, or even free, and would entertain imaginatively for hours. New paper doll books were special! 

Patrick and the Helmet Guys in WWII

Young Patrick with his Mom Bernice

My husband, Patrick, was a boy during World War II and lived on the eastern coast near the District of Columbia.  He recalls responding to blackout alerts and drills to turn out the lights and close the curtains.  After all, if the enemy planes couldn't see targets below, they would be less likely to drop bombs and initiate gunfire upon America again.  Pearl Harbor had been a foreboding event.

Everyone listened for a series of intermittent siren blasts of pending air raids or drills.  When my husband  was able to see out at night, Patrick would lie in his bed and watch the searchlights and would see the helmet guys"  (Civilian Defense Air Raid Wardens) walking and cruising about the neighborhood, checking for lights that remained on or failed to be sufficiently dimmed during blackout times.  These were scary times for all, old and young.

In an alleyway, the "helmet guys" kept a big box filled with sand, tools, and hoses in case of fires or bombing.  After the war ended, some men broke into the nearby box to split up the tools and other materials.  Baby mice scattered everywhere, startling the men, one of whom killed the mice with a shovel.  Patrick remembers thinking as a boy that these mice were the last casualties of World War II.

1942 public service announcement song from Tony Pastor and His Orchestra:
“Obey Your Air Raid Warden.”

One, be calm.  Two, get under shelter. Three, don’t run. 

Obey your air-raid warden.
Four, stay home. Five, keep off the highway. Six, don’t phone.
Obey your air-raid warden.
There are rules that you should know,
What to do and where to go,
When you hear the sirens blow,
Stop, look, and listen.
Seven, don’t smoke. Eight, help all the kiddies.
Most of all, obey your air-raid warden.
Stop, look, and listen.
Dim the lights,
Wait for information,
Most of all, obey your air-raid warden.
Stop the panic,
Don’t get in a huff,
Our aim today is to call their bluff.
Follow these rules and that is enough.
Obey your air-raid warden.

A Sparkler Bridges Heaven and Earth (Southworth)

My Great Aunt Jane Southworth was 1 year old when her niece sweet, sweet baby Ann Southworth was born. This aunt, her niece, and my Dad Bob Fuller played together as they grew up in Belfast Maine. Different generations so close in age!

Ann, though, lived only five years. When she died my father was 2 and my Aunt was 6. Ann got sick with respiratory diphtheria  a then common bacterial infection, prior to the DPT immunization against it. In 1925 there was no such shot. Diphtheria usually passed from person to person by coughing and sneezing. In olden days it had even been called the "strangling angel of children."

Approximately a year or two after Ann's death, my Great Aunt Jane was playing with a sparkler on the streets of Belfast. It caught her outfit on fire and severely burned her underarm and breast. Jane said then and always that Ann stood beside her and "told me to lay down and roll over", which is exactly what Jane did. The fire ceased, but Jane was ultimately scarred from the sparkler. Jane was forever thankful to sweet Ann, a child who had appeared to Jane as an angel to save her.

Sparklers were not allowed in my childhood.


For Ashley: Ann's parents with Dana and Hazel Southworth. After Ann died, they moved to Boston from Belfast. Hazel became a violinist with the Boston Pops Orchestra.

"...family is the link to our past, bridge to our future."

                                                             Alex Haley

Snippets of Biographies - Why?

My parents, me and my little sister in the 1940s

I am Donna Cator and over the decades I have become the family genealogist...a collector of photos and family history.

My family history works are available in my website https://catorfamilies.com/

One of the problems that I have encountered is research is time consuming and the catorfamily.com, although written in other than typical tree form, still stumbles when it comes to sharing the family memories and researched family snippets that tell the underlying tales of a strongly bridged family.  For my sons and their sons and daughters, and for their future generations, for my husband, and for my sister and her family, and for my many cousins, and for all the cousins of the various branches of our rooted tree, I offer this easier-to-follow blog to be filled with photos and small tales of our kinfolk, far and near, and in heaven or still on earth. And, so, I begin....with love.

 "There is properly no history, only biography." 

                                          Ralph Waldo Emerson