Topic: An update from home.
Family Name Associations: Keffer, McKenna, Walker/Bentley, McKenna & Bandes through Chicago…
Location: Barrie, Ontario
Mood: Productive, I have coffee 🙂
Music: Johnny Reid – Dance with Me (He ROCKS! Absolutely the best.)
So… We’re doing a little work on uncooperative computers this afternoon. Frontpage and Win7 don’t like each other so we’re going to try to make this work a wee bit more smoothly. Once that’s done we should be able to put up our page for Adam Keffer with all our smarmy new photos of his window.
We drove over 1600kms this weekend. We saw St. Peter’s in Ottawa, St. Michel’s in Vaudreuil… We touched some pretty important grass on Mount Royal. We have over 1200 photos. What a huge accomplishment. And my parents… What amazing people. For them to pick up cameras and take photos right along with me, for them to take this huge trip to hunt for more information! I have an amazing family 🙂
The people from St. Peter’s in Ottawa were so welcoming, so helpful… What an outstanding effort on their part! Really… We came out of this feeling so enriched. Oh and the women of the church are making quilts, old style, like what Aunt Elsie used to make… One quilt for every family who lost someone in Afghanistan. How amazing is that? What a stunning gift… Really, an amazing group of people.
We had huge issues with the gps this weekend, nothing worked – Admittedly it SO could have been user error, but I ended up with a general lack of coordinates and Mark’s going to have to spend some time figuring out exactly how I went wrong there.
We’ve talked more about putting up a stone in Notre Dame Cote des Neiges… We know we have to find out first if a platform can even be erected in that grave site. It entails digging four feet into the ground and that thought is a little unnerving… Considering the grave was purchased in 1861 and a lot of the people in there were children and infants… I have concerns about how deep people were buried in the first place.
Even if there was something with the McKenna name on it, I’d feel… better. I think we all would. But now at least we understand why Gran and her siblings never thought to be upset about there being no monument – They thought there were monuments. No one knew the grave is unmarked now.
The cemetery folks, they were just amazing, I have to write that. The girl at the desk, I never did get her name, was phenomenal. She answered every question, drew us maps repeatedly. I know people get paid to do their job, but when they go beyond that, and she really did, it deserves mention.
I think it was a part of our trip that brought up more questions than answers, and we have a lot of leg work to do now to try and find out more about everything…
I said to everyone when I got home…
As much as we know, there is so little we know.
Jake’s working today on the McKenna Bandes connection in Chicago. We have people married and living and no names! Once he’s cracked the case of Sarah McKenna, we’ll know more.
Cousin Marilyn has been sending me information and updates, she’s so awesome 🙂 I keep thinking how happy Grandpa would be that her and I managed to find each other. She’s helping with sorting out all the Walker and Bentley confusion… Look for tree updates on that line as soon as I can manage it.
I think I packed 6 months of research into 3 days at this point. There is so much to DO… And with the kids going back to school tomorrow, I’ll have more time to sort, to organize and maybe, vaguely attempt to get my act together!
Never mind getting the German translations up on the site, that’s going to happen as soon as we can get a group meeting together 🙂
All in all, we’re going like mad with no end in sight. Rock on CSGS!
