wildflowersoul

You guys, I am totally obsessed with ancestry.com. Drew gave me an international subscription for Christmas, and I'm home on a vacation day, it's going to be hard to pry myself off the couch for the shopping I'm supposed to be doing. This is everything I love about librarianing and history all mashed together. I do wish old timey people had easier to read handwriting, why bother writing these records if they are impossible to read, Quebec I'm lookin' at you!

I've been reading a book about the history of the Irish in Maine from 1830-1850, it's fascinating. Bangor, Maine was a thriving metropolis long ago. The first major wave of Irish immigrants came over into Canada and walked to Bangor down the Airline Road from New Brunswick when a cholera epidemic hit that part of Canada. I can't even fathom how difficult life must have been for those people. The census lists occupations, some of my Bangor ancestors were Teamsters, it was weird to stop and think "oh, that means they drove horse carts" since duh, truck driving didn't exist.

We're back!

Ireland was wonderful, but it was an exhausting trip, since Drew & I have must-see-everything-itis, and I know we all could have used a bit more down time. More on the trip when I'm coherent, suffice to say it involved Roof Cat, driving on the left side of the road, lowering expectations to "mayo" when traveling on Aer Lingus, and lots of castles. I'm fine with not seeing another Irish breakfast for a while, and have gained about 10 pounds from drinking every night and not being able to find much in the way of healthy food. But, yay, fun times. I am awfully glad to be home with my snuggle buns right now, though.

In sad news, my grandfather passed away while we were gone. I'm heading up to Maine for a family visit tomorrow. He was a very good man, but I'm glad that he doesn't have to suffer any more bodily and health woes, the last five years or so were very rough on him.