An Eclipse, A Good Book, & Searching for Galveston’s Lost

I’m not nearly as excited about the eclipse as I thought I’d be.

My part of Oklahoma is supposed to hit about 97% totality, which is huge for a solar eclipse. I think we “only” reached in the upper 80s of totality for the 2017 eclipse (which was pretty cool). We didn’t get around to getting viewing glasses; I’m just going to make a pinhole viewer like we used last time.

Of course, they’re calling for partly cloudy weather during totality. Weather Underground forecasts about 40% cloud cover in my area.

None of the kids will be here. They’ll all be at work or school. Same with Diana and Grandson. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m not getting as worked up.

This will be my third solar eclipse that I know of. There was one in 1994 that hit about 85% in Ohio, then the 2017 at the Davis Field house, then this one.

I caught an article the other day mentioning a 105-year-old Texas man who will be seeing (and photographing!) his 13^th solar eclipse. He said he saw his first at a very young age and just fell in love with the idea, so he’s made it a point to travel to as many as possible.

Galveston, Oh Galveston

This week’s genealogy project was fleshing out William T. Bleike and his wife Julia. They’re the ones who eloped while lying about their ages to get the marriage license.

I know they married in 1880. I know William appears in the 1900 Census, and Julia appears as “Widowed” in the 1910 Census, putting William’s death between 1900 and 1910. You might have heard about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane; it was in all the papers. 8,000 people lost their lives in the storm, and much of Galveston was leveled. Could William have been a hurricane victim?

After a bit of research, I found the Galveston and Texas History Center. Among other things, they maintain a page talking about storm victims and how they’ve verified losses. They have both the 1899-1900 and the 1901-1902 Galveston City Directories. William appears in the former but not the latter.

I contacted GTHC Friday night, not expecting to hear back until sometime Monday at the earliest. Their Special Collections Project Coordinator replied Saturday morning. She’d checked their database and he wasn’t listed. She’d also checked Galveston Health Office records and the book, Early Texas Deaths and Legal Records From Joseph Franklin’s Diary, and John Griffin Sexton Records. Yes, that’s one book title.

He wasn’t listed anywhere, nor was any Bleike listed. That was good and bad news. The only other resource I can think to check right now is probate records for both Galveston and Harris Counties. Galveston because he lived there before the storm, and Harris because Julia moved to Houston in 1900, as did many storm survivors. Estimates by Morrison and Fourmy, the directory company, were that some 2,000 people left the city permanently after the storm.

So it’s possible William was lost in the hurricane. But if he was, I’m curious why Julia didn’t complete any paperwork for him. He doesn’t appear in any death index I’ve searched and Find-A-Grave doesn’t have a listing anywhere in Texas for him. Neither does Louisiana.

Reading

Hey, I read something this week!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’m trying to make better use of my time in the school pickup line waiting for Grandson. So this week I dragged out my Galaxy Tab S, fired up the Kindle app, and checked out one of the many free books that I’d found. I chose Paul Austin Ardoin’s 2018 release, The Reluctant Coroner.

I liked it.

Fenway was a believable character with all of her self-doubt, anger, worries, and so forth. Dez Roubideaux came across as a good training-officer-type cop to Fenway’s semi-eagerness. I liked that Fenway had to be reined in more than a couple of times and taught about the differences between being a nurse practitioner in Washington and a coroner in California.

One of the few things that threw me was that it took ten pages for me to learn she was black. I don’t know if that was a personal thing where I assumed whiteness, or just a lack of contextual clues until Fenway thought “Obviously the man hadn’t been prepared for Ferris’s daughter to be black.”

I also wasn’t sure a city mayor would be allowed to be on a county board of supervisors. That seems like a conflict of interest. Then again, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not any kind of expert on California civics.

I did like that Ardoin seemed to understand the difference between a medical examiner and a coroner and maintained that difference throughout the story.

I learned something about one of my favorite musicals too. It took this book for me to find out about the new song written for the 2007 revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

I liked the foundations Ardoin laid in this story. There’s a little bit of romantic tension, some corporate industrial intrigue, some family tension, and just enough comic relief to keep things interesting. I’ve already grabbed the next book in the series, The Incumbent Coroner, and I’m about a quarter of the way through it.

4.5/5 stars.

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