ancestry.com

Last Sunday, instead of writing some pithy, fascinating post about what's going on around here, I spent close to twelve hours on ancestry.com. I could not feel my legs, I sat so long.

When I was in Ireland, someone said we Americans were so funny (they meant weird) with all of our wanting to know where we were from. Guess that's what happens when you're a country of immigrants.

I myself want to know why people moved. People moved more back then than one would think. I get coming here from the "old country" in the first place, but what compelled them to pick up and head down to Georgia from Virginia? Was the mother-in-law THAT bad?

Moving must have been easier back then, especially if you were one of my people (we come from a line of indentured servants, not landowners). No realtors, no movers, no 2,500 square foot house to disgorge into a giant van. Load the wagon, hitch the milch cow to the back and head out.
Need a new chair? Carpenter husband will make a new one when you arrive in the promised land of Florida. Your job, (one of about a thousand) as a woman, is to have fifteen children and hope two or three will take.

Two things drive me crazy - naming twenty generations the same two names and changing the spelling of last names all willy-nilly. They were not concerned in the slightest about us here trying to make heads or tails of which George was actually the one who came from Ireland. I have actually employed spreadsheets to help me. (It was my gggg grandfather and mother - I knew you would want to know.)

Anon CP is finding ALL kinds of peeps in her search. Cousins and castles and Dutch folks, oh my!
I'd better get cracking...