[Bann Valley] Re: visiting ancestral places

[Lunney Family <family@xxxxxxxxxx>]

John Woods was right; this is one of the most meaningful topics that  
there can be on a genealogy list. In my opinion, part of the  
rationale for doing genealogy is to know where people came from. Even  
for those of us still living in Ireland, there is importance in  
returning to the place where forbears lived, and I can only imagine  
how vital it must be to people who have literally retraced the steps  
of ancestors back across the ocean. Perhaps people don't realize it,  
and get bogged down in marriage records and such, but in my view,  
anyone with an interest in their family's history won't experience it  
at a spiritual or emotional level until they return.

I think that there is something about the quality of light, or the  
line of a familiar horizon, which gets imprinted into people over  
generations of living in one place, and it is still recognizable  
after several lifetimes away.

Speaking as someone who grew up on a farm in NI, we were excited as  
children to meet people who came back from England to where they had  
lived themselves as children 50 or 60 years earlier; not our  
relations, but I can remember feeling even as a child that these  
people and my family were linked in a way. Certainly if you can,  
contact people ahead of a visit, or go with someone local, but don't  
rule out just dropping in, especially if you check locally to make  
sure the people aren't bedridden or whatever. Go to church and ask  
anyone to introduce you if the people from the homestead attend that  
church. Probably most people would be pleased to meet you, if you can  
call in the evening rather than through the working day.

Here is a wonderful quotation from an avid genealogist who returned  
to Ballywattick, near Ballymoney in the late 19th century

It had been my great desire to visit the old home of the early  
Dinsmores, the abode for many generations of their descendants. All  
the other Dinsmores there, in their several generations, were, in  
different degrees of consanguinity, my relatives. Business of another  
nature called me to Ballymoney, and I gladly embraced the opportunity  
of visiting one of the townlands, Ballywattick, two miles away. With  
Mr William Hunter, an occupant of part of a Dinsmoor homestead, I had  
enjoyed a pleasant correspondence for several years. An Irish  
jaunting-car, on the afternoon of the day of my arrival, bore me  
rapidly over the smooth, hard road to the home of Mr Hunter, where  
he, his amiable wife and interesting family, gave me the cheeriest  
welcome.....They live pleasantly and cosily in a well constructed,  
good-sized stone house, built upon a portion of the homestead of  
Robert Dinsmore, the writer of the historic letter of 1794. [The  
letter from Ballywattick to an American kinsman set out the details  
of the Scots ancestry and early history of the family]....Through the  
windows I looked forth upon fields familiar to, and trodden by, my  
ancestors two hundred and more years ago, and which had been sacred  
to their descendants almost to the present year. A lane, lined on  
either side with hedges, led us to the former home of Robert  
Dinsmore, the letter writer. It is a stone house of comfortable size  
and dimensions, with a roof of thatch. In its day it was one of the  
most pretentious in its neighbourhood. It is now unoccupied. Here it  
was that Robert Dinsmore lived, at seventy-four years of age, in 1794  
when he wrote his letter, since famous, and now historic, to his  
relative John Dinsmoor of Windham, N.H., giving the genealogy and  
early history of the family'.

 That venerable man little knew the boon he was conferring upon all  
of his lineage who were to succeed him, by the knowledge which he  
imparted in that epistle. He never dreamed that his letter would  
become historic, and that he was the earliest historian of his  
family, and had made possible the tracing of the annals of his race  
into the dim past. He little thought that a century later distant  
kinsmen 'from beyond seas' would seek out the old home and his abode,  
as the place where lived a benefactor. Yet such was to be the case.

His home stands alone. The fires have gone out upon the its ancient  
hearthstone. .....the beating storms, the buffeting winds and  
tempests, shall assail no more forever the Dinsmores at that old  
homestead.....

Linde Lunney









--
To unsubscribe send a mail to BannValley+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
List rules and FAQs: http://www.torrens.org.uk/Lists/3_rules.html