A Week to Remember

We're back from an absolutely fantastic week in England. What a trip! A few months back, some dear friends from Georgia emailed us to say they'd be living in Oxford for three months, and "would you like to visit?". Why, of course! One of the perks to living in Sicily is that we can easily fly from our home in Catania to many European destinations rather painlessly. Three hours in the air, and we landed in London at Gatwick...spent the night in a very, very odd B&B literally built in the 1500s (!), and drove the next morning to Oxford by way of Windsor.

Genealogically speaking, I wish we had had more time to explore some of the hometowns of ancestors on both sides of our family. I'm very convicted at this point that I have so much work to do to identify those hometowns. Out of the several relatives (from 4th great-grandparents onward to 12 or so generations back), I can only identify the hometowns of a small handful. Definitely more work to be done all around.

Throughout our trip, as I meandered through the beautifully-designed abbeys at Bath, Oxford, Windsor, and Stratford-upon-Avon, I couldn't help but wonder. How many of the names (etched into grave markers in the walls, floors, and cemetery grounds) represent ancestors of fellow genealogists searching for clues to their identities? If I could have only photographed each and every one! Quite and overwhelming feeling. How many represent families who remained in the homeland...and how many emigrated to other countries?

Here are just a few snapshots of our visit! In case you didn't know...I have a family blog entitled "Just Marvelous" in which I'll share a little more about our trip. Mostly non-genealogical tidbits! Living overseas, it's wonderful that I'm able to share our adventures with extended family and friends through this medium.

While away (and in the rare, quiet moment I was able to enjoy in our little cottage while the boys were napping), I was able to catch up on a few online tutorials on Ancestry.com's YouTube channel. Feeling very inspired! Also had two mysterious and promising emails from contacts pertaining to current research brick walls that I'm hoping pan out. Stay tuned...

-Sarah

Intriguing Oxford

My oldest turned 4!

Our cottage for the week...Hill Farm in Oxford

The Bard

Comments

Pay It Forward

A bit of joy for my Friday! Our mail delivery within our little military community here in Sicily is so.very.sloooooow. What makes it maddening is that it can be a combination of super-fast and super-slow...so no one seems to balk at the trend of inconsistency. Maybe I complain enough for everyone :). I'm in the middle of a few genealogical mysteries - one of them being the family origins of a Mr. Joseph W. Daly, a paternal great-grandfather of my husband. Like most of the challenging parts of our tree, I hit a wall with Joseph a few months back and promptly put him aside when something a little more lucrative came along. For sake of ease. Now, we meet again. For this one, I even consulted a few curious friends. I felt like maybe I wasn't searching deep enough or with the right "keywords" online or in my genealogy search engines. Some researchers have favored methodologies for searching, and I felt I needed to branch out. One ...

On the road again

England, here we come! "Remember Me - a Genealogy Journal" is heading to Oxford, England for a week of fun in the...well...rain and cold! Much more fun than that, we'll visit with friends from several military moves ago. At this point, we each have two children (!) and have aged nearly 10 years (!!). Here's to hoping we still look the same! With better planning, I really could have made this a fantastic genealogy trip. The fact is...the places we'd like to visit are over 2 1/2 hours driving distance from our rental cottage in Oxford. Sans kids, this would have been doable. BUT - with two under the age of 5, and one of them still consistently napping, we'll take a more conservative approach. Before we move away from Europe, I'd love to return to visit Dorset (TREVETT family) and Thirsk, Yorkshire (SMITH family). I know that many, many more of my ancestors are from the UK. Identifying their actual birth places is on the ho...

Lingering Questions...

There is a huge, genealogical elephant in my living room. Every so often, he nudges me with his trunk, he asks for fresh water, and bats his long eyelashes at me in hopes that I will scratch behind his giant elephant ears. My theory about family history research is that nothing is as cut and dry as it seems at first. Dig a little deeper – search a few newspaper archives – and you’ll either make your particular research question a) more complicated, or b) exceptionally clear in a way you never expected. By the time I actually his “POST” on this article, I will most likely have re-written it several times. This elephant is giant. HUGE. Effecting the way an entire branch of my family will view its identity – even its surnames. I’m putting on kid gloves. But most importantly – I want to outline for my extended family and my future family exactly how I arrived at my present hypothesis. I feel deeply convicted that ...

Memory Tree Genealogy Journal

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