Forebears and Bears

 My small backyard garden is just about done for the year.  It produced again too many tomatoes, and not enough of anything else.  This year my husband, in an effort to use up some of these tomatoes, actually cooked and canned enough sauce to last us the winter.  Our cucumbers didn't do well; they were yellow and soft.  My sister's garden on the Cape, however, produced an abundant crop of cucumbers.  During a recent conversation we discovered that we had both recently looked into our grandmother's recipe files and pulled out handwritten recipes for Betty Gates' Pickles.   My grandmother made a lot of wonderful homemade goods which I recall with great love and affection.  Homemade pickles wasn't one of those items I particularly cared for.  I recall always being a little disappointed at homemade pickles not being as tasty and sharp as those found in a grocery store jar. But I was a kid, and now am much more interested in the "real" and "natural" t

It is understood in the Bear family, that cousin Rees was named after Rees Awalt, our grandmother’s brother.   And i n fact, my grandmother Wilma Awalt did have a younger brother named Oral Rees Awalt who died at age nine.     Siblings Sally, Wilma, and Oral Rees Awalt were the children of William Oral Awalt and Anice Ada Gray.   Anice Gray was the daughter of John Spencer Gray and Gertrude Rees. Sally, Anice (Gray), and Wilma Awalt William and Anice (Gray) Awalt Anice (Gray) and William Awalt                                                                                                      Rees Genealogy                                        William Rees         =      Mary                                                  Edward Rees       =      Martha Mott                                                  Thomas Rees       =      Helen Holmes                                    Gertrude Augusta Rees      =    William Gray                                                   Anic

Please note that the information contained in these Project Episodes may be edited and updated  as I discover more documents and information.   I will note them as edited if so. If any reader knows of, or has information that may add to or change anything I note, I would love to hear from you. Cato and Lucy Judah An oft repeated factoid in many written histories of Yarmouth is that concerning Lucy and Cato Judah, who in 1797 were noted as being the last residents at Bass River living in a "wigwam." (1) Lucy was of purported indigenous ancestry and her husband Cato was a former slave.  At about this time, land in this South Yarmouth area was proposed to be used for salt works; a portion of said land being the site of native burials.  Lucy and Cato were so "grieved" at this idea that either they, or another party, had bodies disinterred and buried in a location along Long Pond.  It is not clear to me from the descriptions of this event who it was that disinterred and