AutoBioFile: Laurie Dickinson Trask Mann, 1957-
Site Map for the Laurie's Home Page
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Abstract of Autobiography: Internet/computer geek, writer (though more of a photographer these days), movie extra, reader, loves to travel, quasi-conformist, feminist, wife, mother, casual, attempts to be proactive to fend off being reactive but doesn't always succeed, Yankee, retired. |
Heritage
Ancestry: Scottish, English, Irish, German, French, Belgian, Canadian
Genealogy: My American ancestry dates back to 1610 and Jamestown, but that ancestor returned to England in about 1614 and later went back to America on the Mayflower in 1620. My recent family names include Shonyo (previously Chagnon from France via Canada), Crawford, MacLaren, Lang (Scotland), Fisher, Domag (German), Foley, Riley, McKinley (Irish), Southwick, Fairbanks, Gerrish, Trask, Winslow, Terry, Greenleaf, and Dickinson (English) and Bastin (Belgian).
Interesting Relations: I love ancestry.com, because I discovered many old lines of my family. One line was one of the first English families to settle in North America. I'm only sorry I learned about this ancestor a few years after my mother died, because it turned out her family settled in North America years before my father's family (who didn't arrive in Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1628).
My mother's mother's mother's family is directly descended Stephen Hopkins, the only person to live in Jamestown, went back to England, and then joined the Mayflower with his second wife and all of his children. We're descended from Constance Hopkins, who married Nicholas Snow. On top of that, we're descended from their son named...wait for it...John Snow.
Stephen Hopkins was a major character. If you're at all interested in learning about a "Stranger" Mayflower traveler, I highly recommend A Stranger Among Saints: Stephen Hopkins the Man Who Survived Jamestown and Saved Plymouth. It was fascinating reading.
Family legend had it that we were "close" to the Emily Dickinson branch of the Dickinson family. The Dickinsons were very procreative Yankees who settled in early New England in 1642 started something like eleven different brances of the family the first generation they where in America. In reality, Mom's family was a very distant relative of Emily. We're part of "Nehemiah" line, the same line of Dickinsons as Henry Clay.
The earliest ancestor of Dad's family in the US was Osmond Trask, an early settler of Salem, MA. He first arrived in 1628. I am happy that our line of ancestors moved out of Salem in the 1670s so they were not involved in the witch hysteria of 1692 (though a cousin was mention in the witch trials).
The relative I want to learn more about was a Colonial settler named Hannah Dustin. I'd heard she'd killed a bunch of Indians after they captured her. The story is even more prosaic, and I read about it accidentally. I was driving back from taking my daughter to camp in New Hampshire a few years back, and stopped to stretch my legs. One of those historic signs was by the side of the road and I walked over to read it. It was a sign telling the story of Hannah Dustin. She and her husband lived in the Merrimack Valley with their ever-increasing family. A few days after giving birth to a child, Indians captured them (the sign was unclear about how many were killed). The survivors were dragged into what's now New Hampshire. Within a few days, Dustin led a breakout, killed some number of Indians and brought the rest to safety. A few years ago, a book called something like "Wild Women" detailed her exploits and those of her sister. It turns out she's related to my mother's Dickinson/Webster line; probably not a direct ancestor.
Other relatives from the distant past include Noah Webster (dictionary compiler), John Greenleaf Whittier (poet), Israel Trask (pewterer) and William the Conquerer (though I understand this is a pretty typical claim for English people!).
Geographic Heritage: Small town New England, mostly northern Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Religious Heritage: Congregational, Unitarian, Catholic.
Career Heritage: Farmers, writers, train conductors, educators.
Birth Family
I was born in Vermont in February 1957.
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This is a picture of my sister, my brother and me back in about 1960. (I'm, naturally, the one to the left of my siblings.) OK, to look at this picture, quick, who grows up to be the computer geek? the lawyer? |
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Our youngest brother wasn't around for this picture, so here's one from when he was about 14: |
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I graduated from West Boylston Jr-Sr. High School in Massachusetts in 1975. We had a 30 year reunion in the fall of 2005.
I attended college in Pennsylvania between 1975 and 1979.
I married in Massachusetts in 1977.
We had a baby in Ohio in 1980. She was in the Army for about a month after high school graduation, but was mustered out. Leslie attended ITT Tech long enough to earn two associates degrees and now has a job doing data entry/database/Web publishing work for a local company.
We all moved back to Massachusetts in 1982.
We all moved back to Pennsylvania in 1993.
We collect books, attend occasional science fiction conventions, and we really enjoy computers.
I returned to college and received my degree on April 29, 2001. Busy working as a volunteer on MilPhil for most of the summer of 2001, I couldn't find a full time job that fall or winter. I stayed with a pleasant part time job at Pitt. That turned into a long-term contract. After a change in management, it became the job from hell, so I fled to PennFuture. Funding for my job ran out, so I wound up doing some contract work during 2005, and completing my novel in 2006.
Our goal was to move out of Pittsburgh in early 2006, after Leslie graduated with a second Associate's Degree from ITT Tech. We hate to leave Pittsburgh as we've paid for our house and have money to travel and save. We can, roughly, afford a garage in Massachusetts given the inflated housing prices up there. But we're both having a lot of allergy problems and suspect we're allergic to Pittsburgh air. Eventually, when we retire, we want to live near a good college so we can take classes.
What we wound up doing was buying a large new house out in the country. Why did we do that, given Jim's hatred of commuting? Because he now works from home. He has a lovely office on the first floor. I have a loft area on the second floor, though I often grab the easy chair in the family room during the day. My allergy problems partially went away after Tigra (our cat) died in the fall of 2005. We still have some allergy problems out here, but not being on a busy street with constant traffic is definitely helping.
So after spending the summer of 2006 getting settled, doing a bunch of volunteer work and writing my novel (some, mostly cleaning a few things up, rewriting one early chapter and adding a few new scenes to the late chapters), I'm currently busy looking for a new job.
And then, by 2018, I realized I'd really retired around 2005. I developed a horrible case of insomnia in the fall of 2002, and over the next few years, I found I could not work full time. I have worked from time to time, and I found a happy if occasional home in the Pittsburgh filmmaking community.
Jim retired in April 2020, just after his 65th birthday and one month into the famous COVID-19 lockdown. We spent most of 2020 working on online conferences, then decided to look for our retirement house as we were tired of living in the country. We immediately put a down payment on the 8th house we toured as housing prices were exploding in 2020 (we wound up spending about 10% more than we'd planned). It turned out to be a good choice as housing prices conintued to rise. We made a nice profit when we sold our country house. So we're happily retired and spend our time working on the massive garden the previous owners had planted and hiking. As we're both now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, we'll be taking our first out of state trip in May and plan to take a European cruise in 2022. Fingers crossed - we'd planned to go to New Zealand in 2020 and we know how that worked out.
My Geek Code: GAT d@ -p+ c++@ l- u+ e+ m*@ s+/++ n+l-- h- f+ g+ w+ t+ r x+Here's my Kind of an Online Autobiography: Signature & Email History.