How is it that Candlelight Stroll, this panorama of New England antiquity, so unexpectedly drops me into my grandparentsвЂ™ living room in Ohio, 872 miles west-southwest, a half-century before? This self-guided museum tour is supposed to be a re-creation of history in a neighborhood of Colonial and Victorian houses and stores in seacoast New Hampshire. Not simply because of the contrast between the dimly lit, austere Puritan chamber weвЂ™ve just left, where Christmas would have had no place, and the gaudy materialism of post-World War II America weвЂ™re entering. Genealogy History OhioДЄs we step across the hallway from an 18 th century parlor into a mid-20 th century living room decked out for Christmas, I freeze in mid-stride. If you have photos, letters, memories, or other materials about any of the families discussed on this blog, IвЂ™d love to share them, if youвЂ™re willing.ДЄs always, your comments are important. Let me also repeat my invitation to my wider kin. Just who are grandparents, anyway? And what is their role? What is discovered may be far from what is expected, as this personal exploration reveals.ДЄnd from there, we start going back вЂ¦ and back much further. What emerges is a profile of a generation that left not just farming but other traditions that had been practiced in this country for the previous two centuries, as they moved instead to the city and its new ways. So I turned to the last living member of my dadвЂ™s nuclear family to see what I could glean from her memories, leading to invaluable insights in what I present as the latest postings on this blog.Д®specially her quip at the airport вЂ“ вЂњYou know your grandfatherвЂ™s slogan, used on all of his advertising, was вЂDaytonвЂ™s Leading Republican PlumberвЂ™?вЂќ вЂ“ this clue, told by the last of the family who would have remembered, instead becomes the key to my finally knowing both grandparents, years after their deaths. In my desire to unearth the unknown, I had leapt over my grandparents in the project, people who had been right in front of me in my earlier years, They were also people who were no longer living, to be pressed for answers.

I thought I was finished, but a realization flashed through my head around the time of my fatherвЂ™s funeral. I hope you find the results posted on this blog informative and interesting, all the way back to mid-1500s Cumbria, England.

The Orphan George Chronicles detail my long quest to discover where my Hodson line came from, beginning somewhere in the dimness of late 1800s southwest Ohio.

Orphan synonym