A FEW MORE MINUTES...ICE SKATING TIME!

Nov. 24, 1880

It seems a very short time since the beginning of the session when I kept the record of our first meeting. Since then our days have glided by peacefully & I trust profitably, with few sorrows & many joys; among the greatest of which I must record the baptism of three of our girls, the 2nd Sunday in this month. After reading the record above, Nannie played with good time & taste "Weber's Last Waltz." Loulie read July (?), & Lou played with Sister "The Turkish Reveille." Mattie Kate read the beautiful poem called "God's Plans" or "Lo??? Time." Lucy read some good advice of Spring (?) viz: "Never stop a plough to catch a Mouse." Sallie played with good expression Gottschalk's "Last Hope," & we sang "The Rose Bush" after which we adjourned to enjoy sliding on the ice which has formed rapidly during the past unusually cold days.

M.L.F. (Lou)

There is a small spring fed pond just across the field to the right of the house. It has grown up a lot and the owner of Green Mount would love to clean it out and clear around it so it will look similar to how it was back during the 1880's. I hope we can do that. It's a beautiful little pond and it is where the Fleet's used to get their ice and go ice skating. We even have two pair of the old ice skates here at the house. If I can find them I'll add a photo. But here below you can see the view from the yard in the direction of the ice pond. Then the second photo shows where the ice pond is, just beyond those reed like weeds. You can actually see a glimpse of the water between them if you look closely. It's very swampy now. I would love to clean it up and especially think we should relic hunt the area and the mud that we dredge out of the bottom. No telling what could be in that!

FINALLY...MORE OF THE MINUTES...

Green Mount

November 17th, 1880

We opened our exercises by reading the 39 Psalm and then Lucy played "Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still" which we all enjoyed. Then Nannie read "Lessons on Contentment," Loulie gave us "Gen. Smith's Grand March." Lou read for our enjoyment "Life and Death." Mattie Kate sang much to our delight "Little Emily." I wish she would sing oftener in our Society it would add so much to our enjoyment of all. Sallie read a chapter from Astronomy called "The Morning Star", the first of which ran thus "The Universe is God's name writ large." What a beautiful thought!

Mattie Ella Fleet

I took a few photos of the Fleet Family Cemetery today. I am planning to weedeat and clean it up this weekend. It sits out in the middle of the field out back. You can see the house in the bottom photo. This is where Lou, Florence, Betsy, Benny, Willie, Ma and Pa are buried. Lou was the oldest and lived to be in her 60's. But Florence and Betsy both died at 50ish, around 1903, only a couple years after their mother passed away. Willie married a Nannie Burke from North Bank and they are both buried in here too as are two of their daughters, Betsy and Mary Fleet. These two daughter never married which is true of all the sisters of Willie also, and his two daughters are the two sisters that I knew. They were so sweet. Tomorrow would have been Mary's 101st birthday I noticed when I was reading the tombstones again today.

MORE CIVIL WAR BUTTONS FOUND

I feel like I've neglected a friend by not having been on line lately. I was gone to Nags Head over Easter for 5 days and returned home needing to prepare for company. All is behind me now and went well. I will be typing more minutes later today!

Some exciting news is that when I was getting ready for my company to arrive yesterday around noon, a friend came by and wanted to relic hunt. He and his buddy found two more buttons. His buddy dug another Yankee Staff Officer's button and Scott found a VIRGINIA BUTTON! We think it probably came off Fred's coat. And the other buttons were most likely cut off Benny's uniform. I'll tell you more about that later. And I'll try and get pics. I was so busy yesterday I forgot to take photos of the two they found. Those two new finds were from the same dirt I found my 3 buttons in. Amazing! We think it has something to do with being near the old well and probably a trash barrel that was used for burning in the 1900's.

Thanks for checking...Tere

OK...adding button and small coin like piece found by Scott Alley of King and Queen County. He came over with a friend and found this button in the dirt near the house where the other buttons surfaced and the small coin or token, which we haven't a clue about was found out back between two trees in the field. This location we have been told is where some of the slave quarters were located. Great finds! Poor photos. If Scott gets these photograhed and emailed to me I'll exchange my pics with his.

UNIDENTIFIED SILVER COIN OR TOKEN ABOUT 1/3" IN DIAMETER

VIRGINIA BUTTON, EARLY NEW YORK MAKER MARK ON BACK...GREAT CONDITION!