Annie was a whaling child. Her first fifteen years were divided up into the three to four year whaling voyages that her father and mother took her on, and the few half years in between.

Annie raised my mother, Janet, and her two sisters, Anne and Betty, with her daughter, my grandmother. There’s no need to remember that. That’s what these whaling family albums are for. They are Annie’s bedtime stories to “Annie’s girls.”

Annie meant so much to Her Girls that my cousins, my brother, and I lived with her too, despite most of the Depression, World War II, and the Korean War between us and when she died. Annie’s Girls meant so much to Annie that they (and perhaps her own children) were the only people on the face of the earth who knew her stories. For she told them only by their darkened bedsides, and only until they were old enough that she thought they would not remember them. (Victorians were odd like that.) Then, for reasons we can imagine, for she never told them what they were, she stopped.

Without my Aunt Anne, Annie’s namesake, most of these albums would not exist. By some grace – as a Unitarian she didn’t believe in God but did believe in grace – Anne was the oldest, the most inclined to wax poetic (as on the home page), and had the memory of a whale.

At all other times, Annie would not say one word about whaling, She hated every minute of it. She turned her back on the ocean. Really. When they went to Pine Point one week a year, Annie would not watch her grandchildren on the beach (the only time she didn’t watch them), because she was facing the other way. And she would only watch them from the bank when they went on the Swan Boats, because she refused to ever float again.

Many facts are exactly true. Many are as true as drowsiness is dreamy. Many are like all stories that come to great grand-girls and boys, like me and my brother Tom, Janet and Tony, Ben and Andy – “of” us – but mostly in ways we do not know. None have been falsified, although many will prove to be impossible. I came to find that imagining what Annie, as a whaling child, would imagine was the best way to understand. This is not quite a draft, but it will always be a work in progress. Check back every once in a while.

I suggest that you view the first dozen or so albums first. Otherwise, view in any order you like.


Surfing Tips:

If you are not familiar with websites here’s what to do when you are on this page, and see Annie’s hand-colored daguerreotype and and read Anne’s poem Annie .

Click on Annie, Whaling Child (see above), and you will see a vertical white bar. The first item on the top is “Album Grid.” (The names of each album are listed below, but ignore for now.)

Click on this “Album Grid” to see the first pages of each album arrayed in front of you. You might want to peruse the first X, but then, turn anywhere as they are not in any order at all.

Click on any album’s first page and you will see all of its pages at once. Scroll through if you wish.

Click on the first page, and you will see it larger. You can then turn the pages using the “arrow head” sign. When you are done with that album, click on the black arrow next to the website address and you will again see the album grid again.

Now, back to that vertical white bar. This is another way to choose what albums you want to see. (To find it, go to the homepage and, click on Annie, Whaling Child, and it will appear again. Click on any of the albums listed, and you will go straight there.