Trips to find your roots

I enjoyed your article about the two Brian Cantwells. My mother's maiden name was Aurelia Cantwell. She knows that her ancestors hailed from Kilkenny. Her Dad's name was Dennis. He was born in New York and was a fireman until he was injured and he moved to LA and worked in real estate.
I have never done any geneaology, except for a half hour in a Mormon church-sponsored storefront where I found some New York census material, but your article has inspired me.

I truly enjoyed your article, Brian. Because of snow this week, I've been house bound on an incline between I-90 and Rattlesnake Mt. in North Bend for 4 days! What I did during that time was to go online and start searching the bloodlines. The trails all lead back to the old sod Ireland. Except for one, the Geers, and they go back to England prior to 1635. I have had no living relatives on my dad's side that I know of since the late 1960s, so it's finding a needle in a haystack and great stretching of the gray matter to remember all the stories I was told about family lore. It paid off. Everything zeroed in on Jefferson County, OH, back to most of my great-grandparents. I'm planning to go to Ireland next summer and hopefully will find the places from whence came the names Hunter, Ahl (Aul), Geer, Crawford, Bell ... and maybe, just maybe - with a bit o' Irish luck, a horseshoe above the doorway, and a four leaf clover in my pocket - back to Scotland where most of us supposedly originated. Thank you for your fun article.

I enjoyed your story Brian!

I started genealogy in 1985. I have yet to travel to any far away places to search for ancestors, but back in 1993 I was sent to Pennsylvania by my former employer for training. We spent the afternoons driving around the beautiful countryside outside of Allentown and Bethlehem. Along the way, we noticed several signs with the name; "Conrad Weiser State Park", Conrad Weiser Nat'l Forest". There was also a school district named for him. None of us knew who he was but he sure had a lot of stuff named after him. I remember we made jokes about it. Turns out he was a local pioneer who served as an Indian interpreter and helped coordinate Pennsylvania's Indian policy. He worked with Benjamin Franklin. George Washington commemorated him. It wasn't until 10 years later, I was doing research on my Pennsylvania Miller's and found that my (3rd) Great Grandfather George Miller married Louisa Weiser. You guessed it! Conrad was my (8th) Great Grandfather. I was in his backyard and didn't even know it!

Thea Miller

This spring I spent three weeks in the village of my great-greatgrandfater, Cappoquin in Co. Waterford. He was forced to leave Ireland in 1850 after participating in the Young Ireland revolution against the British. Michael Cavanagh later became Secretary of the Fenian movement in the US. My first name is Bryan. I met Brian, whose family has farmed land around Cappoquin as far back as can be remembered. He took me on a walking tour of the farm land he inherited, and the 200+ year old house he was renovating. I joked that his great-great owned my great-great a 20 spot and with interest and penalties it was now 1.5 million.

I enjoyed your story about your Irish roots. I recently went to Ireland with my mother, my aunt and my two sisters where the highlight of our trip was meeting our irish cousins, Our Irish family graciously showed us the original "home farms", churches, and gravestones of our ancestors. They had a big family dinner where they invited other members of the family to come visit with us. My great grandparents, Peter McKay and Ellen Wallace, had left County Down to homestead in Eastern Washington state in 1889. The families stayed in touch through letters during the early part of the century. I was pleased to be able to bring copies of some of those letters back to Ireland. It was wonderful for the two sides of the family to get back in touch! I found our family through googling family names along with the name of the town where they had lived. I was fortunate that our Irish kin had put their family tree, complete with photos, on a website. I knew I had found our family when I realized that a photo posted on "another family's" website was the same one my mother had hanging on her wall in Seattle, WA. I got chills when I realized I had found our Irish family!