In the summer of 2002 I went to the 35th Annual Cropredy Festival and paid a visit to my fourth cousin and his Clan in Blairgowrie, Scotland. My cousin, Brian Whittle was cleaning his ill mother's house (in what must have been around 1998) and was going through boxes of what would otherwise be considered junk. He came across five letters and a very, very old child's school notebook in the bottom of a box. He thought they were his grandmother's. It turned out they were his great, great, great, great, great grandmother's, the letters written to her by my great, great, great, great, great grandmother Sarah (Dickonson) Parks who launched from the Downs in 1774 to the American colonies. The letters had been sent to his ancestor Elizabeth (Dickonson) Jennings. On a lark, Brian thought he would write to Bowdoinham, Maine where Sarah and John Parks settled, with his own letter addressed with no zip code to the "Bowdoinham Town Office."After being sent all the way back to Scotland for "insufficient address" Brian wrote on the envelope "Historical Records" and sent it right back to Bowdoinham, still with no zip code. A thoughtful postal employee, seeing this errant letter for the second time HANDED it to the town sextant, who also chairs the Bowdoinham Historical Committee. In 2001, I had been in touch with this man, Frank Connor, wanting to scatter my father's ashes where my mother's ashes had been scattered, in Bowdoinham, by the graves of his grandmother's people. I told Frank that I had all my family historical records and was interested in being connected with anyone who knew of any descendants of John & Sarah Parks. Three months later he was cleaning off his desk and there was the letter sent to him in '99. Within five minutes Brian and I were connected via email! The irony of this is that Sarah, when they sailed right into the American War of Independence in 1774, was not able to reach her sister for 24 years! Not until Christmas day, 1798, after two British Embargoes, a War, no Postal Service until 1793, and thirteen children later was Sarah able to finally write a letter that would reach Elizabeth. It is from the second letter written when they launched from the Downs, and this third letter from 1798 that I have written the song Dear Sister which I hope you enjoy very much. I didn't just write the song without thinking of the time in which Sarah lived. I sent away for several recordings from the Smithsonian Institution of songs from the American Revolution. I listened to them several dozen times and found two songs of particular poignance written from a woman's point of view which I studied seriously. I stopped in Rockport, Massachusetts on my way to scatter my father's ashes in Maine with these melodies going through my head. There I booked a room at a Bed & Breakfast that looks out over the Atlantic. I shut myself in this lovely Victorian room for two days and wrote this song. I feel as though I channeled Sarah when I wrote it. It is through her sacrifice that I was able to write this song at all. She is in my view one of many thousands of women who lived extraordinary lives in Colonial America, and whose stories are seldom told. Dear Sister a bit of "Herstory" to set the record straight.

That trip to Scotland was memorable for me also in that I found myself in the situation where I had the great fortune to play Dear Sister for (Sir) Richard Thompson. More than just Fairport Convention and the Cropredy Festival attracted me to the UK in the summer of 2002 however. It was these letters that brought me to Scotland to meet the man who possessed the wisdom not to throw out old letters, who had that familial characteristic of curiousity that needed satisfaction. I felt as though I had completed a great circle in time that took over 200 years to bring to closure. Later in that journey Brian confided that his curiousity was satisfied beyond his wildest hopes, and in his gratitude he sent me back home to America with Sarah Parks' schoolbook. In it was written math problems, poems, and various lessons from the precious two years of schooling she received and had made the most of. Indeed, it was an education which enabled her to write these letters in the first place. That's another song on another album. Sadly, my cousin Brian Whittle passed away on June 8, 2009. He was 86 years of age. Now he too is one of the ancestors. God Bless him. Good journey my dear cousin. We are after all, just tiny spokes in the great wheel of time. We are all better for your innate wisdom, your kindness and your unbridled sense of wonder and curiosity.

Victoria Parks