I'm lucky to live 10 miles from where I was raised. Nine miles from where William and Mariah homesteaded in the early days of Kansas. I don't take this honor lightly. I don't take the family history lightly.
Where I live is within 20 miles of where several family lines homesteaded.
While I don't forget the ones who didn't come here to homestead, it's harder to go to where they were from and explore that area.
Except, this week, I have a day off on Thursday. While Leroy, Kansas isn't much closer to where I'm at right this second, one day home is dangling a carrot in front of me and taking it back. When I go home I want to be able to stay home for a few days. So on Thursday I'll go the other direction to Leroy and Burlington, the county seat of Coffey county. My paternal grandmother came from Leroy. Her parents are buried close to her in Jewell County, but her paternal grandparents and a couple aunts and uncles are buried in Leroy.
Leroy is where she was born. Jewell County is where she died.
I want to see the town where my grandmother was born and raised. I want to see the graves of her grandparents. I want to see Leroy.
Sometimes ancestry road trips are day trips. Sometimes they take longer.
I'm making a list of what I want to find the short time I'm there. The list gets longer and longer.
The other day while I was visiting my uncle, I told him I was going to Leroy on my day off. He said maybe we could finally figure out how George met Addie. That's a very good question. George was from Leroy. Addie was from Burr Oak. It takes 4 hours and 37 minutes to make that trip today. George and Addie somehow met and married before 1901. Their mode of transportation wasn't as fast as ours today, nor were the roads the same as those we travel today.
How did George meet Addie? Good question. But they did meet and they married and they had two daughters. One of those daughters was my grandmother that I never met. I never met George either. I'm sure I saw Addie, but I was so young, I don't remember seeing her. It doesn't matter. They raised my grandmother. Not only that, George and Addie raised my father after his mother died.
It's time I went to see where George, Addie, Aunt Ruth and my grandmother, Thelma, lived part of their lives.
I'm ready for this road trip.
What familial grounds do you want to explore?
My grandmothers family came to Enfield, New Hampshire from Nova Scotia back in the 1600's. I went to Enfield, New Hampshire and not only saw her birth certificate, I have been on the street where she was born.
ReplyDeleteLike you,it takes some digging and some patience but to say that I was there is quite honestly awesome.