Moons of Mars - Lady of Stars

For those descended from Chloe Angeline Stickney and Asaph Hall, you have at your disposal the most engaging family memoir I have have ever found. For the rest of us, we have the most wonderful story of life in the 1800's of America. If you ever wondered how 'opposites attract', if your girls have ever loved the American Girl Series, if you have ever had an interest in the Civil War and want a snapshot of life in DC during those years, if you want to know about the early origins of Cornell University, if you love sky, clouds, flowers and trees, if you want to know about the black lady named Moses and  the 'bloomers' the suffragists wore, if you follow the Mars rovers, ... if ...

Angelo Hall is the third son of Angeline and Aspaph. He wrote this memoir, "An Astronomer's Wife: the Biography of Angeline Hall", copyrighted by Angelo in 1908, but public domain now. It can be found in many places. I like the one from archive.org, it's through Cornell. The other sites for public domain books seem to be glitching up these days. I'm glad they have this put up so nicely. It's definitely worthy.

Angelo deserves credit for his writing. He tells of life in that time in a way that transports you back there, and describes religion in surprisingly modern ways for a Minister. They were a lot broader and narrower than we take them for, these 'ancient' ones. One of my favorite parts is the story in Washington DC during the time of Lincoln, who visits the Naval Observatory, speaks with Asaph, then returns a while later to ask why the Moon is upside down in the telescope. Methods of saving wounded soldiers are (tastefully) described. The mentality of those times come through in his writing. After all, he lived and died then. These are his memories of  life and of his parents. The genealogical book, dated 1869, actually stops in 1868, so kids, like my grandfather, born then, had to be added in via hand or news clippings. The same goes for the descendants of the four children of the two who found the moons of Mars. I can tell you that they descend from the second child of the original William Stickney. I traced it back. Later for those bits of boring. The book was published through Nunn & Co, Baltimore, MD, printed by the Lord Baltimore Press. The Epilogue is a poem by Angelo. It holds only a candle to the newspaper eulogy that a  precedes it, and that, even less than the prologue, written to Angelo's daughter Peggy, which says so much about the early 20th century. And then, the story begins, 1806, prior to her birth, which is listed as 1829 & 1830, depending on the source... A Granddaughter of the Revolution... through the eyes of a son who loves her. The book ends with her death in 1892, but the story doesn't. The seal resurrects the The Halls of Goshen, the Sons of Mars 1775, the Moons of Mars 1877... She is one for the ages, one for all of us, and she would have wanted it that way. It was her way.