Nancy wrote --

Just presenting a series of facts, dates, etc and learn by rote

doesn't work.

The one that made it deadly sat on a stool at the front of the room, reading the textbook to us.... it couldn't have been more dry, dusty or dull...

I had a couple of those as well. :(
I remember a good English teacher I had, forget his name off hand, it being over 50 years ago.
He actually taught the history of English, how it developed from other languages, also how other languages in Europe grew out of Greek and Latin, etc.
How words sounded in the past. I still remember "knife" was pronounced "Ka-nif". which I still call them from time to time, especially when cooking and needing a certain one. :)

Fortunately for us, she had to leave mid-year to have a baby...
and the substitute that came in was the one that made history live for us... :)

And replaced probably not too soon. :)

JM>> X so you understand Y", not "you need to know this for the next

test".

Or even better, show how interesting it can be... Teaching to the test
is not only deadly, it's mostly useless...

Yep, forgotten as soon as the test is over.

JM>> Then talking with family, friends, etc who lived through those days
JM>> or whose grandparents, etc did.

That too... for things more close in time to us....

One of the regrets in my life is not talking to my parents more about their families.
Oh I knew Grandma and Grandpa did this and that, but not going back further.
My mothers mother (descendant of the FFV side) was a school teacher and my grandfather, who was of German extraction, was a coal miner starting around 10 as a breaker boy and later worked at a factory, after they moved from the coal fields to here in 1918.
One story she told was of Uncle Jack, who survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She never knew what he was doing there. Her mothers great-uncle.
My father's father ran the family saw mill and his boys (my uncles) were teachers (except for my father who went into medicine) and one was the principal of a large high school in another city. His sisters all stayed at home and never married, taking care of their parents. I take after my aunts, having never married. :)

JM>> (FFV) and I would joke they were probably indentured
JM>> servants, which she didn't care to hear.

I'd guess that you both were probably right... there was of course

--snip--

Keep in mind that for those indentured ones, it was
usually short-term, and often just a means to an end, to get to the new country...

Oh, absolutely. Nothing wrong with being indentured. It was merely someone who agreed to work to someone to pay for their transportation from England. I think the average time was like seven years. That time span sticks in my mind.
And indentured servants could be anything from a field hand to a ladies maid to some sort of professional such as tailor, watchmaker, any number of things.

I have Scots on both of my father's lines... his father's Scots came
just before the Rev War into Central PA, and stayed there...

For years mine kept on the move. I always joked they were trying to stay one
step ahead of the local sheriff. :)

grandmother's Scots came to NC just before the Civil War and ended up in Norfolk VA afterwards

When my family had the saw mill it was originally still part of VA and they considered themselves Virginians.
When researching the 1850s-70 era I discovered an unknown Uncle Robert. Never heard of him before and double checking I found yes, he was part of the Mackey family. I did some more checking and found the reason he was never mentioned. He had joined the Union Army during the unpleasantness of the early
1860s. So in my family it really was brother against brother. Robert died in 1893.

Scotland... Granddad's were probably tenant farmers in Perthshire....

Mine came from Sutherland, in the Highlands.
Probably sheep stealers, since in that area there wasn't much more to do.

Grandmother's great-grandfather was a bookseller in Haddington... Her great-uncle, who also came to the States, was a doctor.... her
grandfather was a seed merchant.... :)

I always find it interesting how different family members have different jobs
and slide up and down on the social scale.

Do you have any half-siblings alive that might
have memories to share of your grandparents...?

None on my fathers side.
I have a half brother from out mothers first marriage but he's not interested in the past. To him anything more than five years old is ancient. Our mother's mother died when he was seven and father when he was 15. He could
care less about family history.
His father's side of the family he knows little about. But his grandmother was the only grandmother either of us really knew. (It's a long story, but a clean one). Basically his father and my mother remained friends after divorcing in 1940 and her ex's family was "adopted" by me as well, but no blood
relation at all. His natural grandmother, who died in 1966 at 90) became my "grandmother" and since a child of our mother was accepted by her and I became a "grandson" to her. She was a nice old lady, looked like Beulah Bondi who was
in a lot of old movies.
Joe


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