Stonington Connecticut

While visiting relatives in Rhode Island this weekend I spent Saturday afternoon walking around Old Stonington.  It was a fairly mild day however it was also a foggy day which made for some interesting photographs.

Stonington is located along the south eastern shore of Connecticut and only a few miles from my home town of Westerly, Rhode Island.  Stonington was established during the mid 1600's and today has over 18,000 residents.  The first lighthouse established by the US Federal Government in 1823 and was located in Stonington.  The area supported a small fishing, whaling and sealing fleet.  It was also a way station for travelers between Boston and New York. Trains brought travelers from Boston to Stonington who then took a steamship to New York.

My British friends might find it interesting to note that Stonington was successfully defended against  HMS Naval bombardments in1775 and again in 1814.  During the bombardment of 1814 Stonington casualties included a mauled cow, a killed a goose, one hen, 3 hogs and an elderly lady who was on her dying bed. 

Site Maintenance at the Boat Museum

This past winter I worked with the Site Maintenance group at the Ellesmere Port Boat Museum. This article was written for the Museum Times and talks a little about some of the work we completed this winter.

The Site Maintenance team under the direction of Ronnie McEwin have been hard at work performing many of the routine maintenance tasks such as repairing walkways, clearing the locks of debris, clearing walkways of moss, cutting lawns, and moving equipment. The team has also been hard at work doing exterior restoration work on the historic museum buildings repairing doors and windows.

An example of some of the work done by the team is the restoration of the window sills on the engine room.  Frank Perra and  Jim Donaldson took on the challenge to restore the sills this past winter. The images below illustrate the restoration work performed on two of the engine room windows. Once warmer weather sets in the glazing on the window grills will also be replaced by the team which will complete the restoration of the windows.

Engine Room windows to be repaired showing decayed sills		A before and after view of the window sill. The top shows the condition of the sills after they were repaired and the bottom shows the decayed sill before restoration.
The decayed area of the sill was removed before the new sill cap was applied to restore the sill to it’s original appearance.		This is an end view of the cap that was applied to finish the sill.  The intent was to retain as much of the original sill as possible and restore it in a way that it looked like the original as well as retain as much of the original window sill as possible.

Isoletta, Arce Italy

View of the Isoletta Area from an near by hill

Joan and I traveled to Isoletta Italy where my grandfather (my mother's dad) was born.  It is a rural area that is very scenic and is located about 45 miles south of Rome.  While there we met families that have relatives in Providence, RI and one of them was kind enough to give us a tour of the area.

Main Street in the old part of Isoletta

 

 One of the things that I often wanted to know was who was my grandfather's real mother as his dad (my great grandfather) re-married when he immigrated to the states and my grandfather's real mother has never been mentioned.  The families we met have promised to do some research to find out who my Great Grandfather's first wife was.  They believe the information would be recorded in the administrative offices for Isoletta which they are planning to research for us.

I also learned that my grandfather's surname was a very common name in the area of Isoletta which is not surprising  to be honest.

 There appears to be strong family ties between Isoletta and Providence, RI where my grandfather lived as many families are connected and travel back and forth.

We had lunch at the restaurant shown above where we met Gino who is the owner.  Gino has other brothers who live in Providence, RI and he gave me contact information for one of his brothers who I hope to contact when I get back to the states.  His wife had a sister who lived in Chelmsford but has since passed away.

What was surprising to me was how connected to Isoletta Providence has been as many families from Isoletta have immigrated to Providence and some have actually moved back to isoletta. 

 I went to Isoletta with the plan to only see what the area was like but never expected to meet such warm and friendly people and never really expected to learn anything about the Boffi family background.  I am now optimistic that I may finally learn something about my real grandmother.

Some of my Co-Workers at the Boat Museum

Here I am with two of my coworkers.  Jim standing to the left is a retired Civil Engineer and worked for what we would call the Highway Department. Jim and I have been working jointly on some of the building restoration work at the museum.  In the middle is Ronnie who is retired from the Vauxhall factory in Ellsemere port and is in charge of site maintenance at the museum.

The three of us typically work at the museum three days a week. Jim and I were paired up on a number of tasks and projects.  The two of us worked together to repair sills on the engine room and doors on the Steam Accumulator building. Jim has been helpful with familiarizing me with the procedures at the museum which has helped to keep me from getting myself into trouble on a number of occasions.

Centaur returning from a trip

Peter in a black coat and hat is the Captain of the Centaur which is the tour boat that takes visitors for trips on the canal.  Peter was a captain on the world famous Mersey Ferry before he retired and has some interesting stories about his work on the Mersey as a Captain.

Steven being trained by Mike on the Radiant

Steven is another co-worker who I have grown to know and is the youngest on the Maintenance team.  Steven has an enormous amount of energy and pulls more than his share of the work load.  It's encouraging to know that there are actually some young people who are not afraid to work.  Steve among other things is into BMX bikes and from what I have been able to gather pushes his sport to the limits.  He recently destroyed one bike doing his bike stunts. He now uses his sister's bike and I have a feeling her bike is next on the destruction list.

MartYn moving a narrow boat into dry dock

MartYn with the bright yellow coat and black hat is moving one of the narrow boats.  The boat is being moved into position where the lock will be used as a dry dock to allow the boat to be inspected.  The lock the boat is being moved into is frequently used as a dry dock when it is necessary to work on the hull of a boat.  

MartYn and his partner Sue were the first persons I met at the museum.  Martyn and Sue spent an entire morning with me introducing me to the museum by explaining the volunteer program then gave me a tour of the facilities.  Both Sue and MartYn are dedicated to the museum and spend a great deal of their personal time working at the museum.  I cannot recall being at the museum when I did not see one of them working there.  

The Boat Museum hosted a Model Boat Meet this past weekend.  It was amazing to see the detail put into the model boats. Most of the boats were radio controlled so they not only looked realistic they also operated much like the actual full size boats.  There were tug boats that moved tankers into model docks set up on the canal.  Lifeboats raced around and at one point several tugboats simulated moving one of the larger canal boats into dock. It was estimated they had in the order of 1,200 visitors during the two day event.

On Saturday I visited the museum with two of our grandchildren and our son Bernard.  I showed them some of the restoration work I was doing on the buildings at the museum and gave them a short tour.  I arranged a trip on a canal boat for them which traveled on the canal towards Chester.  It was not a very long trip but the they had a chance to see what it was like to travel by boat on the canal and learn a bit of the canal history.


I worked at the museum Sunday morning helping to park cars.  We had well over 500 visitors and by noon had filled three parking lots. 

Boat Museum Project - Accumulator Doors

The main project I worked on this week at the boat museum was to build two doors for the Accumulator Room.  The accumulator is a large vessel that would store the steam from the steam engine that supplied power to the equipment that was operated  when the museum was a working facility.  


Shown below are the original doors that were badly rotten and below that a photograph of the new doors that were built.

This will likely be the last project I see to completion before returning to the states.  Our next project is scheduled to be the repair of windows on the tour boat.  This project will likely extend beyond my return to the states as there are 8 or 10 windows that will need repairing.

Spring In Liverpool

It appears that spring has arrived here in Liverpool as we are seeing many flowers and fruit trees blooming. I noticed the first fruit trees blooming last week on my way to the Boat Museum. I love this time of year and what is especially great is that I get two springs. I get a spring here in Liverpool and when I get back to the States I experience a 2nd spring since the weather in New England is normally about a month behind. I'm not sure about this year as the winter in New England has been milder than normal however England has had milder weather also so it may balance out so I still get a 2nd spring.