I am often amazed and awed by how my ancestors traveled. By boat, wagon, horse or foot, or train, they managed to leave their home countries and travel to America. That trip, I presume was by boat. Or flying saucer, since I can't find most of them on ship manifests.
Once in this country, they didn't stay put. Take my ancestor James Percival. Early records of Plymouth Colony (1670) have him fined for stealing a boat and sailing it from Virginia to Cape Cod. He did move from Sandwich to Falmouth, but his descendants went on to Connecticut, New York, Indiana, and Kentucky in the next hundred or so years. Amazing.
While the trip from Massachusetts to Connecticut was not huge, the move from Freehold, New York to Lawrenceburgh, Indiana circa 1800 was a doozy. Eighty years later, some of those descendents left Kentucky and traveled to Los Angeles, California. It is absolutely mind-boggling. And I found the California group quite by accident, in regards to an inheritance from the Bush family (Catherine Ambler Bush married Jabez Percival.) Otherwise I would still be looking for them in California.
What got me interested in this? Working on the Missouri Death certificates and seeing all the people who lived in the same county for 90+ years. Amazing. My dad was born in Missouri and moved to Michigan as a toddler. My mom? Lived in Wayne county, Michigan her entire life, all 83+ years.
What will my descendants think about finding me in Tennessee after discovering that I lived in Michigan for 55 years? I hope I leave a nice paper trail for them.
Copyright 2010-2015, ACK for Gene Notes
No comments:
Post a Comment