Sunday, March 7, 2010
Afterwards I drove my car to Hadley Park. I usually park on the northeast corner and walk to the Christchurch public library. It is about 3 miles round trip but a beautiful walk through the park. Today I spent four hours finishing up the Church Registry card file. I have found six children for Elizabeth, two boys for Emily, and four children for Esther. I was able to find one of Hannah Rowntree’s older sisters and where she was buried. At the last minute I just had to walk away because I was tired but I found where Elizabeth was buried but her husband was buried somewhere else. He died at a young age, 48. Could being a constable have something to do with it? I’ll let you know next week.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
An Emotional Day
Today is Wednesday, March 03, 2010. One year ago we lost Mom. When I mentioned this to Jack a few days ago, he said, “I can’t even think about that week. It makes me feel sick.” We really did push Jack that week and as much as I tried to get him to stay at his mother’s house, he wouldn’t. He paid the toll when his body started attacking the good red blood cells. Luckily we got through that.
So as I share with you my wonderful finds today, maybe it was a little understanding that I sobbed in the library and at a grave yard.
Today I went into Christchurch to the central public library. The library is in downtown Christchurch and for the first time I was in a metropolitan city. I think it is only about 10 blocks square. I parked on the north side of Hadley Park. In the center of Christchurch there is a park about the size of the metropolitan part. The park consists of a golf course and botanical gardens. They are busy getting ready for their annual flower show that starts next week. From my car to the library was about one mile.
There are several schools in the area and students were walking every direction. The schools here all have uniforms. Today I followed a group of 14-16 year old young men in white dress shirts and ties. They were wearing dress dark shorts with knee length white dress socks and dress black shoes. As I was listening to them talk, I began to imagine myself in Harry Potter land minus the Griffindore scarves and quiditch brooms.
I got to the library and immediately the assistant had me looking in the religious cemetery records. She got me the name of my Great Great Grandfather and mother and where they were buried. This was the first time a began to cry. I had actually found a place to look for them. She then showed me where the card catalogue was and I spent several hours looking up the names of all family members, getting births/marriages/deaths for most of them.
I finally had to leave and grab something to eat. I drove to St. Paul’s Anglican church, build in 1851…yes it is still there and a working church…I began wondering the grave yard. This was the church where Jane and her sister’s were christened. In fact, Emily may have been married there; still checking on that one. After walking all through the grave yard (the church was locked), I started looking at the list of people that were supposed to be buried by Charles Watson and Hannah Parkes Rowntree. Not all graves have stones on them or grave markers that could be read. I went grave by grave until the second to the last on the row. It was covered in lichen and unreadable. I grabbed a credit card out of my wallet and started scrapping it off and found “Rowntree”. I had found them…this was the second time a sat and bawled. Of course this was the day my camera battery went dead, but the grave marker said:
In Loving Memory of
Hannah Rowntree
Died 28th Nov. 1915 aged 74
Also her husband
Charles Watson Rowntree
Died 28th Aug. 1925 aged 85
At rest”
There was an interesting note in the bottom right hand corner. “Original headstone vandalized – replacement stone financed by descendants in NZ and USA.”
So tomorrow, March 3rd will be a beautiful day for those of you in the US. We get to remember Mom. I hope she would be proud of us and be pleased at how we have taken care of Dad and each other.
So as I share with you my wonderful finds today, maybe it was a little understanding that I sobbed in the library and at a grave yard.
Today I went into Christchurch to the central public library. The library is in downtown Christchurch and for the first time I was in a metropolitan city. I think it is only about 10 blocks square. I parked on the north side of Hadley Park. In the center of Christchurch there is a park about the size of the metropolitan part. The park consists of a golf course and botanical gardens. They are busy getting ready for their annual flower show that starts next week. From my car to the library was about one mile.
There are several schools in the area and students were walking every direction. The schools here all have uniforms. Today I followed a group of 14-16 year old young men in white dress shirts and ties. They were wearing dress dark shorts with knee length white dress socks and dress black shoes. As I was listening to them talk, I began to imagine myself in Harry Potter land minus the Griffindore scarves and quiditch brooms.
I got to the library and immediately the assistant had me looking in the religious cemetery records. She got me the name of my Great Great Grandfather and mother and where they were buried. This was the first time a began to cry. I had actually found a place to look for them. She then showed me where the card catalogue was and I spent several hours looking up the names of all family members, getting births/marriages/deaths for most of them.
I finally had to leave and grab something to eat. I drove to St. Paul’s Anglican church, build in 1851…yes it is still there and a working church…I began wondering the grave yard. This was the church where Jane and her sister’s were christened. In fact, Emily may have been married there; still checking on that one. After walking all through the grave yard (the church was locked), I started looking at the list of people that were supposed to be buried by Charles Watson and Hannah Parkes Rowntree. Not all graves have stones on them or grave markers that could be read. I went grave by grave until the second to the last on the row. It was covered in lichen and unreadable. I grabbed a credit card out of my wallet and started scrapping it off and found “Rowntree”. I had found them…this was the second time a sat and bawled. Of course this was the day my camera battery went dead, but the grave marker said:
In Loving Memory of
Hannah Rowntree
Died 28th Nov. 1915 aged 74
Also her husband
Charles Watson Rowntree
Died 28th Aug. 1925 aged 85
At rest”
There was an interesting note in the bottom right hand corner. “Original headstone vandalized – replacement stone financed by descendants in NZ and USA.”
So tomorrow, March 3rd will be a beautiful day for those of you in the US. We get to remember Mom. I hope she would be proud of us and be pleased at how we have taken care of Dad and each other.
Teaching Approach at Lincoln University
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Jack has been keeping some notes on what he is seeing here at Lincoln University. He put together this short message to his colleagues at CSU. Thought you would find it interesting.
We’ve been here 2 weeks, classes began on Monday. I continue to meet faculty and students. Lincoln is an interesting university; they have developed themselves as a place for students from all over the world to come for an international experience. Some spend their whole college career here; others come for a semester or two as part of an exchange with their home university. The entire student body is around 3,500 students, about 40% of which are international students. Additionally, Lincoln is a foundation agriculture college, started as Canterbury Agricultural College in the early 1900’s and has stayed close to its roots while evolving to address new issues and technologies. Research by the faculty seems to be a big thing too, at least the younger faculty. Research funding, though competitive, seems to be available from many sources.
Teaching is taken seriously here too. The system is very British – Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Professors: analogous to Assistant, Associate and Full Professors in the U.S. There is a first year diploma program for students who just want some basic courses. They refer to these as DipAg students. If a DipAg (diploma in agriculture) student chooses to go on, and if their grades are good enough after the first year, they can continue on to a bachelor’s degree which they can obtain in 3 years, this includes the DipAg year (I think – still a bit unclear on this). There seems to be a pretty good cadre of graduate students with lots of research projects going on. Many of the graduate students seem to be international students too. For instance, I met a young lady who is a PhD student from Brazil. She is in a program she called a “sandwich PhD” program from her university in Brazil. She has taken most (maybe all) of her classwork in Brazil, done most of her research there and has now come to New Zealand to do another small project at Lincoln, then will return to Brazil and finish her PhD there. Seems like a very good system to train students in more than just their home setting.
Another teaching approach that I experienced yesterday involved a sophomore level farming systems class (ANSC203). The class has about 100 students (includes two of our CSU students) and covers most facets of New Zealand livestock production. Yesterday the class rode busses to one of the LU sheep farms ( called the Ashley Dene Farm) where there were two flocks (mobs) of ewes of about 100 ewes each that had been designated for a class project. One mob is grazing Lucerne, the other a ryegrass clover pasture. Daylength is now shortening which is the cue for ewes to begin cycling ahead of the joining (breeding) season which begins in late March. A few of the ewes are starting to cycle now. There are sterile rams with marking harnesses with the ewes now. The ewes are Copworth breed a stabilized breed developed here at Lincoln in the 1950’s as a cross between Border Leicester and Romney. It has been a closed breed for many years. Lincoln produces rams for sale. They refer to the ewes as a “stud mob” because they produce seedstock.
In brief, the students are to monitor the cyclicity of the ewes on both pastures over the next month as the ewes begin to show estrus, keep the marking harnesses functioning, collect and analyze the data, then develop a paper that addresses factors affecting sheep reproductive rates and a management scenario where they act as a consultant to a group of farmers. The teaching approach seems to be very hand’s on with direct application. One aspect that I think has a bearing here in general is that the attitude of New Zealanders is very pro-agriculture. It is not uncommon while watching television to have advertisements for fertilizer, seed dealers, etc. The base population of students seem to come from an agricultural background, likely this is more prevalent here at Lincoln with its Ag history, but I sense that the pro-agriculture attitude is widespread.
Jack has been keeping some notes on what he is seeing here at Lincoln University. He put together this short message to his colleagues at CSU. Thought you would find it interesting.
We’ve been here 2 weeks, classes began on Monday. I continue to meet faculty and students. Lincoln is an interesting university; they have developed themselves as a place for students from all over the world to come for an international experience. Some spend their whole college career here; others come for a semester or two as part of an exchange with their home university. The entire student body is around 3,500 students, about 40% of which are international students. Additionally, Lincoln is a foundation agriculture college, started as Canterbury Agricultural College in the early 1900’s and has stayed close to its roots while evolving to address new issues and technologies. Research by the faculty seems to be a big thing too, at least the younger faculty. Research funding, though competitive, seems to be available from many sources.
Teaching is taken seriously here too. The system is very British – Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Professors: analogous to Assistant, Associate and Full Professors in the U.S. There is a first year diploma program for students who just want some basic courses. They refer to these as DipAg students. If a DipAg (diploma in agriculture) student chooses to go on, and if their grades are good enough after the first year, they can continue on to a bachelor’s degree which they can obtain in 3 years, this includes the DipAg year (I think – still a bit unclear on this). There seems to be a pretty good cadre of graduate students with lots of research projects going on. Many of the graduate students seem to be international students too. For instance, I met a young lady who is a PhD student from Brazil. She is in a program she called a “sandwich PhD” program from her university in Brazil. She has taken most (maybe all) of her classwork in Brazil, done most of her research there and has now come to New Zealand to do another small project at Lincoln, then will return to Brazil and finish her PhD there. Seems like a very good system to train students in more than just their home setting.
Another teaching approach that I experienced yesterday involved a sophomore level farming systems class (ANSC203). The class has about 100 students (includes two of our CSU students) and covers most facets of New Zealand livestock production. Yesterday the class rode busses to one of the LU sheep farms ( called the Ashley Dene Farm) where there were two flocks (mobs) of ewes of about 100 ewes each that had been designated for a class project. One mob is grazing Lucerne, the other a ryegrass clover pasture. Daylength is now shortening which is the cue for ewes to begin cycling ahead of the joining (breeding) season which begins in late March. A few of the ewes are starting to cycle now. There are sterile rams with marking harnesses with the ewes now. The ewes are Copworth breed a stabilized breed developed here at Lincoln in the 1950’s as a cross between Border Leicester and Romney. It has been a closed breed for many years. Lincoln produces rams for sale. They refer to the ewes as a “stud mob” because they produce seedstock.
In brief, the students are to monitor the cyclicity of the ewes on both pastures over the next month as the ewes begin to show estrus, keep the marking harnesses functioning, collect and analyze the data, then develop a paper that addresses factors affecting sheep reproductive rates and a management scenario where they act as a consultant to a group of farmers. The teaching approach seems to be very hand’s on with direct application. One aspect that I think has a bearing here in general is that the attitude of New Zealanders is very pro-agriculture. It is not uncommon while watching television to have advertisements for fertilizer, seed dealers, etc. The base population of students seem to come from an agricultural background, likely this is more prevalent here at Lincoln with its Ag history, but I sense that the pro-agriculture attitude is widespread.
Monday, March 1, 2010
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