Anyone else experienced this?

[scottcharles]

That must have been really satisfying seeing it all cleared up though.
Unfortunately, one whole generation of a branch of my family has been cremated without proper memorial plaques - it seems it became fashionable at one point.

It's not very far up that tree, but it is disheartening not having somewhere to visit them

Still working on how I'm going to figure out where everyone is buried and then visit them. I'm in London and my family (those discovered so far) come from all over the shop: Devon, Wiltshire, Somerset, Hampshire, Kent, Yorkshire, Scotland... you name it, it's in there!

[Beth86]

Today I am able to say I know exactly how you feel.

I went to my great-grandparents grave.

They are buried about 30 minutes walk away from my house and I haven't been to see them for years and years.  I think I may have been a baby whe my parents took me!

We bought some flowers and headed off to find the grave.  I assumed their grave was going to be like half of them, unkempt and overgrown, and the inscription barely legible, or maybe no headstone.
But we looked and looked and then they appeared.

In loving memory of
Edward Evans
died 8th January 1940 aged 46
and
Maud
died 12th December 1985 aged 92
and also of their daughter
GRACE
died in infancy
Together and resting in peace.

I burst into tears, two of the people I've been talking about for months, one who's proving very elusive and the other I feel like I've known forever. and grown up with her family, their names were in front of me.  It was incredible.  My mum took my son away for me to have a few 'quiet moments'.

The funniest thing though, was my 2 year old trying to put flowers on the graves next to them!

[KPM]

I know exactly how you felt Beth - its a really emotional experience and that final connection after all the papers and pictures etc.

Anne-Marie

[mike175]

Hi Anne-Marie ,

I don't think you've lost the plot. I haven't even started on the graveyards yet, but I had a similar experience earlier this year.

I was reading an ancestor's will which mentioned "my chest of tools" (he was a carpenter), when I suddenly remembered some old tools that my father used to have . . . obviously the very same tools 

So I went to visit my mum and found them, only to find the name engraved on one of them was not right . . . but it was the name of my gt.grandfather who was a shipwright . . . and I was holding the plane he had used 150 years ago . . . . talk about goosebumps . . . 

Mike.

[KPM]

Hi Mike

That must have been quite a feeling - I can understand the goosebumps.  You can almost feel them when you imagine your hands are touching the same thing that theirs did all those years ago.

Thats how I felt at the grave side - imaging I was standing in the same spot their mourners must have stood all those years ago.

Anne-Marie

[stoney]

I agree with all that's been said about finally "meeting" up with your ancestors.

But how's this for kooky - imagine when a stranger rings you up and starts telling you things about your own mother! 

I was put in touch with a gentleman who turned out to be my mother's first cousin - I sent a tentative letter to his address expaining who I was and asking if he had any information about the family. I didn't really expect to hear anything but a couple of days later he rang me, most excited to have found someone in the family equally interested in genealogy as himself!

Well, we were on the phone for ages, him telling me anecdotes about my mother as a young girl and confirming what I had thought to be just family rumours. People I had just heard of as names in family discussions took on a whole new lease of life as he explained how they fitted into the grand scheme of things. It was most bizarre, hearing my family's names being bandied about by a "stranger"! But he had the family "dry wit" which seems to have infected all the generations!

We met up in Carlisle and he showed me and my daughter all around the family haunts, who had lived where etc. Finally he presented me with a hand-drawn copy of the family tree he had compiled together with his father (my paternal grandfather's elder brother).

A couple of years ago I "bumped" into someone else on a genealogy message board and discovered we were very closely related (her husband's grandfather and mine were brothers) and we were able to fill in gaps in our respective family trees. When we met in the flesh, it was as if we had always known each other - and yes, the family "wit" was alive and kicking, as we cracked jokes with each other.

I think there must  be a tie stronger even than blood, which enables us to connect with those long since departed and those we have yet to meet!

[scottcharles]

That sounds really great, I hope to be able to do something similar one day!

[Lydart]

I know what you mean about the 'weird' feeling ... I had it when I finally found the thatched tied cottage my gr. grandparents had lived in, in rural Dorset ... and how's this for weird ?  My daughters best friend from school in Hereford had lived in the very same house with her husband when he worked for a while for the same estate my gr. grandparents had worked for in the 1840's !

[KPM]

We moved into the village where we now live, about 8 years ago, just before I started tracing my family history.  About a year into the tree one branch all pop up living in the very village we live in.  Although the houses are new, the land they were built on was probably the same land my ancestor's house was built on.   I had never even heard of this place until we saw the house in the estate agents window!!!!

AM