WINDOW TO THE PAST A Publication of the Trenton Historical Society September 2014 Trenton Historical Society 1 In this Newsletter…….. Somewhere In Time 2 October 2014 Program 3 THS Facebook Page 3 Saving History 3 Calendar Information 3 How Do You Pronounce “Ye”? 4 How to Help Sponsor the Calendar 5 Trenton Historical Society Board of Directors Carol Hendricks Pauline Arthurs Randi Lynn Owen Olson Linda Mierzejewski John Holmes Sharleen Stack Tim Buhse Maureen Barr Andrea Blow Nancy Worlen More Inside! Fall
Transcript
WINDOW TO THE PAST
A Publication of the Trenton Historical Society September 2014
Trenton Historical Society 1
In this Newsletter……..
Somewhere In Time 2
October 2014 Program 3
THS Facebook Page 3
Saving History 3
Calendar Information 3
How Do You Pronounce “Ye”? 4
How to Help Sponsor the
Calendar 5
Trenton Historical Society Board of Directors
Carol Hendricks Pauline Arthurs Randi Lynn Owen Olson
Linda Mierzejewski John Holmes Sharleen Stack
Tim Buhse Maureen Barr
Andrea Blow Nancy Worlen
More Inside!
Fall
WINDOW TO THE PAST
A Publication of the Trenton Historical Society September 2014
Trenton Historical Society 2
Sunday
September 21, 2014
11 am to 5 pm
Scenes of
Elizabeth Park
Capture the essence of the early 1900s at Somewhere In Time.
Old time entertainment, old fashioned games, craft, bake sales,
a children’s area and a river cruise on the Detroit River aboard
the “Diamond Belle” Riverboat. Walk through an auto time pe-
riod featuring antique and classic cars. Also, don’t miss the
culinary festival, Taste of Trenton & Beyond.
Be sure to stop at our tent near the concession stand and visit.
We will have our own vintage car to have your photo taken in.
We will also have copies or our Arcadia book Images of Tren-
ton and Snug Harbor. Also wooden Church electric car collecti-
bles and bricks from the old Church house.
WINDOW TO THE PAST
A Publication of the Trenton Historical Society September 2014
Trenton Historical Society 3
OCTOBER 5TH PROGRAM 2-4 PM
Westfield Center Fireplace room
Trenton resident Jean Scheffler will be joining us to discuss her first book. “The Sugar
House” is Jean Scheffler's liter-ary debut. Raised South of De-troit, she would sit on her Grandfathers lap at his sum-mer cottage and intently listen to stories of his childhood ad-ventures in early industrial De-troit. As he rocked her in front of the roaring fire, her love for Detroit's history and its exciting past took root.
She is a mother of three beautiful children and enjoys reading, volunteering in her community and spending time with friends and family. Loosely based on events from her Grandfather's life she hopes to inspire young and mature read-ers alike to develop a love of the for the city their ancestors helped to build.
TRENTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
FACEBOOK PAGE
Join our Facebook page, created and moderated by Nancy Worlen. We were happy to add this so members can exchange messages. Our Facebook page now has over 341 followers. We have some great photos and some interest-ing conversations about Trenton.
2014 CALENDARS
Calendars for 2015 will be available around Thanksgiving. This year the price will be $10 ($12 by mail). Any questions can be directed to Carol Hendricks at 734-676-4375 or by emailing [email protected].
PHOTO BY DAVE CHAPMAN
Community Bible Church Pastor Ken Brown (seated, left) passed along a time capsule found in the building — the former site of Tay-lor school — to Trenton Historical Society rep-resentatives Carol Hendricks (seated) and Linda Mierzejewski. Also on hand was Mike Hawkins. We will be opening the time capsule at a future program.
REPRINTED COURTESY OF THE TRENTIN TRIB
Since our next Newsletter will not be out until January 2015—the Trenton Historical Society would like to wish every one a collective Happy Halloween, Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and New Year.
SAVING HISTORY
WINDOW TO THE PAST
A Publication of the Trenton Historical Society September 2014
Trenton Historical Society 4
How Do You Pronounce “Ye”?
By: Dick Eastman · May 31, 2014 · Many of us have encountered “ye” in old documents. Of course, we have all seen tourist shops labeled as “ye olde” something-or-other. How many of us know how to pro-nounce that? For years, I assumed it was pro-nounced as it was written. I would pro-nounce it as “Yee Old.” Perhaps a more cor-rect way to write it is with a long e. I was a bit surprised later to learn that I had been wrong. What looks like a “y” is a written char-acter deriving from the old English letter, “thorn,” representing the “th” sound. No, it is not the letter “y,” it is the letter thorn. The thorn was commonly used in written English in the Middle Ages and for some time after. The thorn has now almost disappeared. The thorn originally appeared to be written a bit different than the letter y as it had a descender. In fact, it looked more like a lower case “p” on top of a lower case “e” than a “y.” This was before the days of printed books when all documents were written by hand. The exact shape varied from one scribe to the next. Depending upon the scribe, the second letter was often written above the thorn. By the mid-15th century al-most all scribes stopped using the de-scender, and the thorn has since been writ-ten in an identical manner as the modern let-ter “y.”
While the Middle English thorn is now written exactly the same as a modern letter y, it always was pronounced with a voiced “th” as in “this.” In other words, several hun-dred years ago the word that was written as “ye” always was pronounced as “the,” ex-actly the same as it is today. An educated person of 1611 would always pronounce as “the” although today we might spell it as “thee” when referring to a person, as in “thee of little faith.”) So what killed the thorn? According to at least one source, it was the printing press. There was no thorn sign in the printing fonts, as they were usually cast outside of Eng-land. So, since the sign for thorn slightly re-sembled the lower-case ‘y’, that’s what was substituted. The thorn was used in several lan-guages besides English but has since been replaced by other letters in all languages ex-cept Icelandic, where it is still used. So, how do you pronounce the following?
In Memoriam - $10.00 _________________________________________
Organization - $15.00 _______________________________________ Business - $25.00 or more _______________________________________ Contributor - $25.00 __________________________________________ Page Sponsor - $50.00 or more ______________________________________
