I find it fascinating that we go to visit places that turn out to be part of our family history. I had no idea my ancestors came from MA and ended up writing a book on a stool in a donut shop that if I turned around I was facing my ancestral cemetery and the home of my ancestor, John Woodcock. Just bizarre.
Know what you mean about walking. I gave up walking far a long time ago. I travel from bench to bench, like mother did. Only I don’t carry a statistics book with me to read on the bench like she did. She was working on her master’s degree when she died.
I’ve been to Plymouth but can’t remember if I’ve been to Plymouth Plantation. Mostly I remember touring Sturbridge in MA and Williamsburg down south. Also been to a lot of upper NY forts.
I took a bus tour of the British Isles back in 2006, and I wish I knew then what I know now about my family history, because we visited a lot of the places connected to my mother's side of the family. I never knew any of my grandparents, and my mother knew little herself, having come to the U.S. as a little girl from Canada with her older brother and their mother who was divorced. Everything I've learned has been through my family tree research.
It wasn't until my mother died in 1990 that I went to Canada to do some family research, and found out more about that side of the family than I ever expected. At one of the archives I visited, I found a family tree on the Way family, which is the line my mother was descended from. From that I learned that my 5th Great-Grandfather led a NY county militia (Dutchess) during the Revolutionary War. He's listed in the DAR Patriot Index. I had ancestors who were both Patriots and Loyalists on her side.
I too visited Sturbridge several times in my younger days. I usually stopped there and ate at the Publick House Inn there, either on my way to Boston to do research or on my way back. I always stopped at their bake shop on the way home to get one of their apple pies, which were to die for.
My mother was born in 1923. She had a great uncle, Robert, who was born in Buffalo NY around 1854-55.
She remembers Uncle Robert telling a tale of when Lincoln’s funeral cortage passed through Buffalo, and his coffin was taken into city hall. Uncle Robert, being a boy, climbed a telegraph pole to watch the proceedings from across the street. Mom always though it a fanciful story, the kind that old relatives keep repeating....
Many years later (probably in the 1980s) Mom and I visited the Buffalo History Museum, and at the time, it had a large exhibit on Lincoln, part of which was photographs of the funeral cortage as it arrived in Buffalo
And in one photo, it could be clearly seen that on a telegraph pole across from city hall, was the figure of a boy, about 10 years old....