About a year ago, I began to work on a genealogy project I called The Way Back Machine – looking at my ancestors before they came to America. Most of them were in England, so that’s what I focused on.
The first thing I had to do for this project was to identify ancestors about whom I had at least a little information about their origins in England. I made a ginormous spreadsheet and identified 96 ancestors of interest. All of them had come to America in the 17th century – the earliest in 1610, the latest in 1674. They came mostly to New England – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut – but a few came to Virginia or Maryland.
The next step was to see if there was actually anything concrete to connect them to their locations of origin in England. Were there birth, marriage, or death records that located them in specific parishes? Could I access the records?
Then I had to decide what I would actually like to visit. We aren’t planning to be in any big cities unless it’s to visit a specific attraction that caught our interest. It’ll be all small villages. Now the question was, would it be interesting to simply walk down a street in a village and say, “Yup, my 9th great-grandparents lived here,” or did I want something more concrete? Was someone the Vicar or Rector of a church? They stayed on the list. Was there a house or other building associated with their existence in the village? They stayed on the list. Was there a plaque or stained glass window dedicated to them? They stayed on the list. And so forth.
After applying these conditions, I wound up with 25 ancestors that actually provided me with some physical location to visit if I went to their village. This project was taking shape.
I had already begun to think about making a trip to these locations. COVID put travel plans on hold for a while, but I began to make serious plans in the fall of 2021. Initially, I planned to make this trip on my own in the spring of 2022. I love doing solo research trips, because I don’t have to be nice to a traveling companion. But I soon realized that this didn’t make much sense – a 75-year-old woman, driving on the wrong side of the road along narrow English country roads in an unfamiliar country. I formally “invited” Tim to accompany me, and, after a little thought, he was all in.
I then joined several Family History Societies in counties in England. Specifically, I joined the Essex, Bedfordshire, Kent, and Suffolk County History Family History Societies. Because of the pandemic, they were meeting via Zoom, so I attended their meetings when I could. I met people whose surnames were the same as the ones I was researching, and I met people who still attended the churches my ancestors had attended. I told them about my project and they offered to help where they could. Clive volunteered to go look at the cemetery records in Great Baddow, Essex, England – the village where my earliest ancestors on Martha’s Vineyard had emigrated from in 1634. He found some records I hadn’t found before. I think I’ll be able to meet up with some of these folks while we’re there.
So our plans are in place. We have bought our airline tickets; we’re leaving from Dulles on September 1 and returning on September 21. We’ve reserved a car – an automatic, because we realized that driving on the “wrong” side of the road and learning to shift with our left hands would be beyond us. We have also reserved accommodations through Airbnb in four villages for the three weeks we’ll be in England. The minimum requirements for an Airbnb were air conditioning, WIFI, a kitchen, no stairs, and free parking. I’m in charge of deciding which genealogical sites we’ll go to in each location, and Tim is in charge of arranging the “touristy” things – the museums, castles, gardens, galleries, pubs, and restaurants we’ll go to while we’re there. Spreadsheets will be involved.
I can’t wait.
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I love your organisation! It’s inspiring. Enjoy the trip. I’ll subscribe so I can follow along. Fiona in Sydney Australia - another with lots of English and Scottish roots.