It's been a while since I posted.  I have since been promoted to Cho Dan (1st degree Black Belt). The feeling is something that I cannnot put into words.  It's the small things I notice - not just in me but in my son and husband as well.  We carry ourselves with a greater amount of confidence.  We have experienced the thrill of achieving a goal that we have worked long and hard for.  Putting on our black belt dobak makes us stand a little taller. 

A point to our black belt uniform - it is actually midnight blue.  Black is final and we are never done learning so our colors symbolize that.  Before our test I thought 1st degree would be as far as I go, but now I want that 2nd degree!  It'll take a couple years to get there but I know we have it in us to keep going and prove that we can do it!

My Journey to Black Belt

Part of our testing for black belt is to write an essay.  I am posting mine here for the world to see.

My Journey to Black Belt  

By Randi Mathieu 

Five years ago I asked my then 5 year old son what he wanted for his birthday.  His good buddy, that is 4 years older than he is, was taking karate and so in order to be more like him, my son replied that he wanted to take karate. I made an appointment and we all went in to the Dojang to see what it was like. While there I saw many different people of varying ages – not just kids training and thought it might be fun to try.  As I discussed it with my husband we decided that all 3 of us would give it a try. In the back of my mind I thought hey we will give it a couple months and see how it goes.   

See here’s the thing about me – I’m a quitter. When I would ask to take dance lessons or music lessons as a child I would only last a few months before I was bored with it.  By middle school I decided to try band – that lasted until sophomore year.  Goals I dreamt about – becoming the first female NFL player, becoming the first female fighter pilot, even becoming a Japanese interpreter – never came to fruition because I didn’t really try.  My life has been easy and has been handed to me.  Even after Jim and I were married the quitting continued – swing dance lessons, aikido, and many jobs lie in my wake.  So naturally that February five years ago I thought we had no chance of making to even green belt. 

Something in me changed along the way in this 5 year journey.  There were times that I thought – maybe this is as far as we go.  But some how I pushed through.  Each test I said “ok Randi one more level” Our karate compatriots became a second family to us and help encourage me even though they never knew they did.  It was the thought of disappointing my new found karate-sisters that kept me coming back for more.  It was the regret at never letting myself get any good at anything before I quit and not wanting my son to have the same regrets.  It was also the challenge to myself that I could make something happen for me! 

Now here I am a red-4 and just paid the registration fee for test.  I can’t believe I am here and doing this.  I may not be the first female blackbelt but I am the first Randi Mathieu to become a blackbelt.  I’ve worked hard and know that I have pushed myself harder than I ever have.  I want this – not just to get a blackbelt but to be a blackbelt. I need to know that “I Can and I Will” is not just a personal mantra but a way of life.  I am excited for the mental change I know will happen when I tie that midnight blue on and the confidence that I can set goals and I will achieve them. 

#52Ancestors Week 5

So I'm a little behind but I'll catch up.  This weeks post is "In the Census" and my favorite census story is finding Pierre and Ezilda Mathieu in the 1880 census.  Pierre and Ezlida had immigrated from Quebec and were native French speakers.  Due to the fact that I knew their children were born in Sprague CT I knew where they should be in the 1880 census.  Alas anytime I did a search on Ancestry or Familysearch nothing came up.  Finally I decided to go old school and page through the 1880 census for New London County Connecticut.  Using other facts I knew about the family (Pierre had a brother Joseph and their father was Michel).  I came across a page which was promising.  Sure enough everything matched up with what I knew about the family except the spelling of the names.  

The french speakers vs and english census taker!  This is the family, they owned the Union Shoe Store for many years. The Soundex function didn't work with such a far off spelling.  It just shows that sometimes you have to go old school and do the work yourself.

#52Ancestors – Week 4                                             Randi Mathieu

I have a fun app on my phone that tells me I might be related to Julia Child – so alas I will use her for my prompt of someone I’d like to have dinner with.

We are related by the following ancestral map according to the app. My grandfather was Edward Rountree, son of Marybelle Archibald, daughter of Celestial Dalton Woodard, daughter of Eliza Jane Butler daughter of Jesse Butler, son of Lawrence Butler, son of Jesse Butler, son of Robert Asa Butler, son of William Butler, son of Sarah Cross.  I will mention I have only documented back to Jesse Butler the father of Eliza Jane Butler.  Anyone further back is strictly conjecture of the app.

Julia Child supposedly descends from the same Sarah Cross through her daughter Sarah Butler, her daughter Sarah Giddings, her daughter Lydia Bennet, her daughter Lois Marsh, her daughter Lucinda Brewster, her son Clark Ward Mitchell, his daughter Julia Clark Mitchell, her daughter Julia Carolyn Weston and finally her daughter Julia Child.  Again I caution anyone using this as a genealogy completely unproven by myself.  By putting this in print and on the “inter-webs” I am hoping to challenge myself to see if any rings true.

I couldn’t let this prompt be truly answered though unless I say with all sincerity the ancestor I would most like to dine with is my grandmother Bernice Lee Simmons.  I knew her as a child and she passed away before I could get to know her as an adult.  From my research into her life, she was such an amazing woman who was so well loved by everyone who met her.  She was raised by her Aunt because her parents died when she was young.  She battled off tuberculosis when she was a young adult, her first fiancé was killed in a mid-air collision as a Navy aviation machinist.  She married my grandfather who was in the Army and lived all over the place including Alaska and France.  She made a loving home for my mother no matter where they were. The family eventually wound up in Pensacola – their original home and grandpa died a year after I was born.  She worked as a switchboard operator and at Elebash’s Jewlery.  She lived a long wonderful life and was able to see me get married.  Unfortunately she was not able to stay with us long enough to meet my son.  She is probably the strongest women I will ever know and she lived with such grace and poise.  She was a true southern lady – first to wake in the morning and always last to bed.  I miss her tons and really wish that I could go back to the time I did have with her and soak it all in again.

#52Ancestors – Week 3                                             Randi Mathieu

Longevity:  noun:  a long individual life; great duration of individual life

I’d like to introduce you all to Manuel Levy.  Manuel was my husband’s Great Great Great Grandfather. Manuel was a sailor from Portugal who immigrated to Connecticut about 1837.   According to newspaper records Manuel lived to be 104 years old! 

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The information gleaned from the US census does not agree with this date and a search is underway for the original birth record. 

Our lineage comes through the Nicholas King line. 

I was lucky to find an interview with a Portuguese fisherman from Cape Cod and believe this is what Manuel would have said, if he had the chance.

“Anybody’ll tell you they ain’t no men can fish better than the Portuguese.  We can always get jobs on the boats.  I wouldn’t want to work on land all the time.  Lots of men do when they get older, but not me.  I wouldn’t never be happy unless I had a boat under me.”²  

This was a quote from Manuel Captiva a Portuguese immigrant in 1939.  While he is a much more recent immigrant than our Manuel, I believe the sentiment is there.  Mary Levy his daughter married Nicholas Bettencourt King also a fisherman.  Nicholas and Mary’s son Robert lived until the nice old age of 94.  There must be something to be said for fresh sea air!

Here’s a picture of lv-12 which was posted to Eel Grass Shoal and would have likely been the ship Manuel served on.

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11     "Manuel Levy Dead at 104." New York Times 05/29/1897  Published: Page 1.  Newsapapers.com. Web.  01/24/2018

22     Banks, Ann. First-person America. Open Road Distribution, 2015. Amazon.com. Web. 01/24/2018

33     National Archives

#52 Ancestors prompt for week 2 is your favorite photo.  There are just so many to choose from that I chose a combination.  My Great Grandmother Susie Allen and her sister Trusie.  I chose this combination because it always reminds me of the wonderfully helpful community of genealogists out there. 

When I first began researching I didn’t have much information on this family and not much potential to get more.  My mom is an only child, her dad had passed away and he had two sisters who left no living descendants and they were both gone as well.  I knew Susie’s maiden name was Allen but in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1890-1900’s “Susie Allen” was not a creative name – There were many that come up in searches. 

A few months after I began researching I inherited a suitcase full of old family photos.  JACKPOT – not quite – most of them are unlabeled and are unidentifiable.  Then I saw this picture of Susie.  I recognize her from other later pictures.

  

Shortly after seeing that picture I found this one:

These two girls are obviously related!  Same dress same background!  This must be a sister.  I can read the lastname written on the back of this photo and the Mrs. at the beginning.  Mrs. ? Stanfield.  At this point I went onto a chat forum centered around the locality where they lived.  I threw my question out to the wonderful genealogy community “Looking for information about a Allen female that married a Stanfield.”  And the response I was hoping for came: There was a Trusie Allen that married a George Stanfield.  Trusie Allen is a much easier name to search than Susie Allen.  Given this relationship I was able to find the ancestors of Susie Allen Simmons all the way back to the Bass Family that came to Virginia in 1620! 

When posed with writing about my favorite photo or one of my favorite community stories this is always tops in my mind.  While I never got to meet Susie or Trusie they are forever in my heart and a part of me and a special part of my journey.

#52Ancestors

Over the past couple of years, there has been a genealogy blog movement 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks. I always wanted to join in, but I am no good at creativity and writing, so I never did.  This year, however, Amy Johnson Crow is providing writing prompts!  So, it’s now or never (in my mind). This first week the prompt is simply, “Start.”  She tells us that this can mean anything we want it to mean, so I take it as what got me started in genealogy in the first place. Here’s my “Start Story” if you haven’t heard it.

It was the year 2004, and my husband had just accepted a job transfer from the metropolis of Cincinnati to a small town called Port Huron, Michigan.  He was actually working across the river in Sarnia, Canada, but we decided to maintain a residence in the US.  He would commute across the border every day, and, still, it was his shortest commute ever! As I struggled to find employment in a small town we took temporary residence at a friend’s rental house out in the country.  We didn’t have access to high-speed internet there, so internet usage was at a minimal.  I found it best to be online between 2:00 and 5:00am when traffic was lowest and I could get faster speeds.  So one day after watching commercial after commercial on tv and remembering those “shaky leaf” ads I decided to pop the name of my great great grandpa Percy Archibald, into Ancestry.com. 

What I knew about my family up to this point is that we are southerners – Mom’s side was all from Pensacola and surrounding areas, Dad’s side was from Jacksonville and southern Georgia.  My grandpa Edward Archibald Rountree was still alive, and he had told me that his grandfather’s name was Percy and his mom and dad were Walter Scott Archibald and his wife Olivia. I typed this information into the Ancestry search engine, and one of the first queries to appear showed a census (1870) with Walter and Olivia married with their children Frank, Alfred, Alice, Percy, Elizabeth, and James living in Port Huron, Michigan.  Here was my great great grandfather living in the same small town I had just moved to 134 years later!  Using the information provided in this census report, I have since been able to trace the Archibalds back quite a ways.  It turns out Walter was a lumbering man and had moved his family from Nova Scotia to Port Huron in the 1860s.  They stayed here for a few years, then went to Alpena Michigan, followed by Essex, Ontario, and then down south where Percy stayed in Waycross, Georgia. The family continued on to Center Hill, Florida. Using local sources at our public library, I was able to locate his home address in Port Huron, and when my grandpa came to visit, I took him on a tour of the town and included a really odd stop – the back entrance to the community college bookstore.  He humored me and got out of the car to walk around.  After a few minutes, I told him that this was where his grandpa lived as a kid.  

Needless to say, this misplaced southern girl found she had some northern roots after all, and I was hooked.  I needed to know more about Percy and his family; and then, of course, I had to delve into the other families, too. It's been 14 years now, and I'm still loving it!  Learning about my past and my family's past, how they lived, why they did, what they did and the choices that they made all leading up to my great little guy Jeremy.  He wouldn't have been here if just one little thing didn't happen exactly as it did. 

The picture below is my grandpa, Edward Archibald Rountree; father, Michael Edward Rountree; me and my son, Jeremy Fain Mathieu.