I remember once as a kid my parents took my little sister and I to one of those gold digging attractions for tourists when we went on vacation to the Smokey Mountains. For an attractive tourists price, children and adults alike could sift through some mud using water and a straining tray in hopes of finding a shiny peice.
My sister was so excited. "We could be rich, Mommy!" she said. She was living the California Dream, a dream one of our ancestors--the father of my great-great-great grandmother Delia O'Day--once shared and pursued. Mr. O'Day must have been one the adventurous ancestors in my line from which I get my amorous curiousity. For that adventurer in me would love to hike through a mountain and fall down a cave hitting every rocky surface on the way down, especially if upon finally landing face first on the bottom I saw the glimmer of riches before my eyes. However, this was not to be such an adventure. I was the older one, and I knew this adventure was just a tourist attraction.
Not that it was not fun. In fact, I was looking forward to the outting and was curious to actually hold in my own hands an unmolded piece of gold from the earth for the first time in my life. I found a few tiny nuggets that day, along with my sister. Not enough to retire on, but definitely something that was quite neat!
It wasn't the face of Mr. O'Day that I recently stumbled upon, but rather the face of the man who adopted Charles DeRoy, the face of Arthur Fagan.
My cousin Ellie in Pennsylvania had been holding on to a portriat of his for quite some time. It is in desperate need of restoring, and she had plans to have the portrait professionally handled but could never find the time to do so. She sent it to me instead, making it the first genealogical picture I have received from a relative--and in the mail, too!
It arrived in a rather large box, the length and width of which was close in size to the upper half of my body, yet had a height of not even six inches. It was a black box, old, and falling apart. In anticipation of seeing a face, I gingerly lifted the battered lid, and, beneath the yellowing newspaper and thick plastic wrapping, there was the fading portrait of Arthur Fagan, born in 1870 in Lanark, Scotland. The canvas was in such awful condition, almost crumbling at the touch. I had to be very diligent in handling it. However, the image was outstanding. The colors were still vibrant for it's age, and Arthur Fagan finally came to life in my mind. It was as if I was the maker of an animated picture and had been drawing each image one sheet at the time, placing them in their respective film frames. Recieving the portrait was like loading the film into the projector, and gazing at his face for the first time was like flicking the projector's switch to the on position. My film was complete, and I could sit back and enjoy the story that Arthur Fagan had to tell. What a charming, attractive face he had. It was a face that makes a charming, attracive gold nugget. And though it is not the genealogical equivalent to the gold mine my quad-great grandfather O'Day found in California, it was my very first gold nugget, and it was quite neat!