A Book a Day, week 6

BOOK THIRTYSIX
"I Married Adventure" by Osa Johnson, 1940 - this publishing, 1942.

Taken from wikipedia: "Martin Johnson took part as a crew member and cook in Jack London's 1907–1909 voyage across the Pacific aboard the Snark. After that, he started a traveling road show that toured the United States displaying photographs and artifacts collected on the voyage. He met Osa Leighty while passing through her hometown of Chanute, Kansas, and they married in May 1910."

The couple became adventurers and documentary filmmakers, living an exotic life far from the mid-west Prairies they came from - capturing the public's imagination in the process.

Osa wrote this book a few years after Martin's death in a plane crash - one that she survived.

The book has a dust jacket in marginal condition, and the first page is covered in names, none of which stand out to me.

This book has quickly rose to the top of my list of ones that I will actually read.

BOOK THIRTYSEVEN
"Richard Carvel" by Winston Churchill, 1899.

Not to be confused with the British Prime Minister, this Churchill was an American Novelist. This was his 2nd novel. It was a romantic historical novel of the American Revolutionary period and became a huge success, making him rich.

Inside the front cover is an inscription to Carl M. Garver, a new name to me, but clearly in the Garver clan. The book was compliments of someone or some organization, but the words are hard to make out.

Another name listed next to Carl's seems to be U. S. Sheridan - completely unfamiliar to me.

BOOK THIRTYEIGHT
"Effectual Prayer" by Frances W. Foulks, 1945.

My great-grandmother's name is on the first page, dated 11-26-45. She penciled in notes and ear-marked a few pages while reading this.

This first edition book is from the Unity School of Christianity in Kansas City, Missouri.

BOOK THIRTYNINE
"The Creative Silence" by Robert A. Russell, c. 1952.

There is no publishing date, but my great-grandmother's name is inked inside the front cover, dated August 1952.

Written on the first page, in pencil: "In this very instant that I am thinking about some thing or condition - that very instant I am that thing or condition".

Along with many other pages, page 83 is ear-marked and underlined in pencil is the sentence: "'I AM' is the super-mind and sum total of God-consciousness" and on page 86 is a segment that looks like a prayer or chant or daily affirmation of some sort that includes:

"I AM is Universal Mind
I AM is Life
I AM is Power
I AM is Health
I AM is Wealth
I AM is Success
I AM is everything I AM or can be, for I AM the I AM!"

BOOK FORTY
"Sonnets from the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ca. 1845–1846, first published in 1850 - this publishing much later, c. 1988.

On the first page: "To Juliette with love - Feathers, April 1988." I don't know anyone named "Feathers" that may have given my grandmother a book that year, but I will take the date as an indication of the relative publishing year for this edition.

This book is a collection of Elizabeth's poems, 44 in all, that she wrote in the years leading up to her marriage to the poet and playwright Robert Browning.

"The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were carried out secretly. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Browning really loved her as much as he professed to..." (taken from wikipedia)

These sonnets expressed her doubt of his love for her and, after those doubts proved to be unfounded when he did marry her, in the end she felt the poems were far too personal to be published, even though Robert urged her to do so.

Finally, she agreed, but by disguising them as translated poems from another language. Portuguese was eventually decided upon.

The second to last sonnet, number 43, is arguably her most famous from the collection, beginning with the line "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

BOOK FORTYONE
"This Thing Called Life" by Ernest Holmes, 1943.

My great-grandmother's name is on the top of the front cover, and there are a few pencil markings here and there on some of the pages.

Ernest Holmes founded the Religious Science, or Science of Mind, movement in 1927. It is a spiritual, philosophical and metaphysical religious movement within the New Thought movement, a metaphysical belief-based spiritual movement developed in the late 19th century in the U.S.

Religious Science, Unity Church, and the Church of Divine Science are the three main denominations of the New Thought movement. I now recall my grandmother being a part of the Unity Church. Clearly, the majority of these books fall within the New Thought movement, as my grandmother was certainly active in this.

While the Unity Church was founded in Kansas City, Missouri, the Church of Divine Science and Religious Science were both founded in California (San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively). Now my family was certainly running around Iowa and Indiana in the mid-1800s, but I believe it was around the same time that these movements were underway when my family moved west.

Even though it was just my grandmother that I know firsthand that was involved in one of these churches, clearly her mother was far more than a little interested in these beliefs as well, her name being on the majority of these books. I wonder just how involved in the movement she was, and if anyone else I know was as well. Jean's husband, James Ray Saylor, has not come up in any way in these books, but from as little as I know of him, he was a Methodist insurance agent from Des Moines.

But I did find mention of their marriage in the Sigma Chi Quarterly fraternity journal from 1916.

Finding this, I was motivated to do more research down the Saylor family line today. Although I was unable to go far back due to a quaint little dead-end story of two brothers, George W. and John Saylor, being orphans and brought to Illinois from Virgina in their youth by an unrelated man named John Congleton, the brothers did seem to do quite well for themselves. George, for example, had a son name George who married into a family line that I was able to trace back several more generations back even further from his generation...which is 4 generations removed from myself.

I stopped once I got to Durs Flickinger, who was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1664.

BOOK FORTYTWO
Lillian De Waters was a student of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science. She published her first books through the Christian Science organization, then self-published and formed her own publishing house as her teachings and books branched off from that religion and back towards orthodox Christianity.

This book - "The Finished Kingdom" - was written in 1924, and this self-publishing is from 1925.

The book has no markings at all, and just one ear-mark on page 121, where De Waters writes about the story of a very ill man whose body healed instantly once he realized his sinless connection to a sinless God.