Mother Goose And Genealogy

It's been some time since I've written a post, mainly because I was lacking prompts or story lines. Today I was reflecting on one of my favorite books as a child, The Real Mother Goose, when the idea came to me to use a Mother Goose poem as a prompt. I plan on finding an ancestor to fit each of these lines. I will compare their life to the adage and see if this poem warrants any merit.

Illustration by Blanche Fisher Wright

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

First a little history about this poem which I found online from Poem Shape: The poem Monday’s Child, was first recorded in 1838, in A. E. Bray’s Traditions of Devonshire (Volume II, pp.287-288). This doesn’t mean that Monday’s child is a contrivance of 1838. Tradition (from which this proverbial poem springs) can be dated back, at least, to the 1570’s.

Today's post will just be an introduction where I'll lay out who I've chosen to blog about. Look for a post a day next week to correspond to the day mentioned. If I can't pound out one a day then definitely one a week on the corresponding day, of course.

Monday's child - Elizabeth Isabell Athey
Tuesday's child - Winey Lawson Newman
Wednesday's child - Benjamin Rufus Nall (I'm also a Wednesday child)
Thursdays' child - Ora Francis McClung
Friday's child - Clara Inda Evans
Saturday's child - Bondell Bynum
Sunday's child - Permelia "Mealy" Turner

Finding ancestors that were born on specific days proved harder than I imagined. I would've preferred a more even balance of males and females but this was the best I could come up with. It took forever to find a Sunday child.

Just for fun, what day of the week were you born on? How do you think your life has gone compared to this little poem?