The Itinerant Painter, Cottonseeds and Reincarnation

Itinerant Painter and Consumptive Ancestor, Deborah Goldsmith, Holding a Bird 2022. Acrylic on paper, 12 x 16"

After Deborah Goldsmith became Mrs. George Throop she stopped painting and writing poems, gave birth to two children and died of consumption at age 28 in 1836. I have a book of the couple’s courting letters. Beautiful writing marked with meloncholic ink, yet replete with so much hope and faith in the future. Written in 1832! No matter how pious, steadfast, and true to the love of their god, death still stood tall at every village and farmhouse door.
I’ve written a little bit about this before on Steemit. Something about Spring’s arrival each year awakens my interest in geneology. I believe many of the answers to our future can be found in the past. I’ll expound on that philosophy another day.
Meanwhile, take a look at this treasure I uncovered last weekend in my pile of family records passed down through the years. I’m the last Throop in the paternal line, so everything ends up in my lap.

These are cotton seeds my great, great grandfather, J. Mott, a Union surgeon, brought back from Civil War, and gave to his son Henry (my great grandfather). Deborah died two years before J. Mott was born. She was his Aunt.
Last night I soaked six of these seeds in diluted hyrdrogen peroxide, scraped a thin layer off the hulls, followed by an hour long float in blackstrap molasses water. Then I planted them in a good quality seed starter soil. If they sprout I will have restarted the southern Louisiana 1866 cotton crop. Slave hands harvested these seeds. Incredible.

Somehow I feel this is a connection to reincarnation, which I have no worthwhile opinion on beyond that of wishful thinking.