Oh, cool thing that happened while I was reading the bound St. Nicholas mentioned in the previous entry: these are the November 1885-April 1886 magazines, which include the original appearance of Frances Hodgsen Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy. Also in the magazine is a series of articles called Personally Conducted, written by Frank Stockton, who was famous for his fairy tales back in this era. Personally Conducted is a tour of different European cities and areas (if you tour the Mark Twain house in Hartford, Connecticut, a copy of Personally Conducted is one of the books sitting on the table in the library), and the article that interested me in particular was a tour of Naples, Mount Vesuvius, and the surrounding area.

If you have ever seen the web page I did for my mother, I tell that her parents grew up on the island of Ischia, which is just off the coast of Naples, both the children of tenant farmers. My grandfather evidently had the stepmother from Hell and my grandmother, all of nine years old, was the one who would mend his clothes for him and fix him a proper breakfast.

In Stockton's article about Naples, written in 1886, he briefly mentions Ischia and a bad earthquake they had had on the island two years earlier in which many people were killed. This would have been 1884, when my grandparents were both about eight years old. So when I talked to my mother on Monday, I asked her if her parents had ever mentioned the earthquake. Yes, she told me, this was how my grandfather's mother had died. In trying to protect her baby (who died), she was struck on the chest by a falling rock and never recovered, dying a year later.

Just so odd to pick up a 116 year old book and find something that pertains to your own family in it...

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 5:55:00 PM

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