#52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
#39 Road Trip
A few years ago, I had planned a road trip to the towns along the Murray that my HOUSE family lived in during the 1800’s after they emigrated from Somerset in England. However, I have been thwarted by Covid lockdowns and restrictions. Unfortunately, the almost complete relaxation of restrictions in our country has just increased my risk of catching Covid with more infectious people in the community; so that trip is still on hold.
Some years ago, we were able to visit England and Ireland and meet new members of our families or just go to the places they lived in. We visited my father’s birthplace of Macclesfield near Manchester. Read my father’s story here. How wonderful to meet my cousins again and to walk where my father walked before he came to Australia as a teenager.
We drove onto Rocester on the Derbyshire/Staffordshire border where Dad’s family were from. It was a wonderful experience to go into St Michael’s church whose records show the BAMFORD’s were there from the 1600’s.
We drove south to Somerset where our HOUSE and SALWAY ancestors lived prior to emigrating to Australia. We stayed in converted stables in Langport and drove out to Drayton, Fivehead and Curry Rivel. I wrote about all 3 villages in C is for Curry Rivel, D is for Drayton and F is for Fivehead. Again it was a very special experience to have a look around the places where my ancestors grew up.
We then drove onto Whitchurch Canonicorum on the border of Dorset and Devon where the GAY’s worshipped at St Candida and Holy Cross. We crossed the border into Devon and a few miles inland from Lyme Regis, we arrived in Uplyme where the GAY’s arrived around the late 1600’s. We enjoyed a few days there, didn’t find any extant headstones even though the parish registers record plenty of GAY baptisms, marriages and burials. I wrote about the GAY’s in The GAY’s in Whitchurch Canonicorum and Uplyme.
We flew into Belfast and drove 1 1/2 hours south along the Ards Peninsula to Portaferry the birthplace of our LENNON and MAGEE families. Such a beautiful place, it is on a very narrow peninsula with the large Strangford Lough on one side and the Irish sea on the other. I wrote about it here. We met my cousins and their families for the very first time and it was so, so wonderful. One cousin kindly arranged for us to go thru a nearby farm to see the abandoned family home on the townland of Craigaroddan where the family was from at least the 1790’s.
GenieJen 