Edinburgh, Scotland

Our last day in Northern England we stopped at Openshaw Park.  Jeremy's mother's maiden name is Openshaw and this was where her family originated.  It was a cute little English park with a playground.

After stopping at Openshaw Park (which was located only a few miles from where we visited the day before to look for Jeremy's paternal relatives) we drove North towards Scotland.  We stopped at the Preston Temple and took some pictures.  We thought of Jason Goreeba, a boy serving a mission in that area from the Paris ward.

The pastoral scenes followed us all the way to Edinburgh, Scotland.

Edinburgh was a lot like England, but a little grittier.  Jeremy said I looked like the people here and had the same hair color - weird blonde, red, brown color!  I used to refer to it as Sunset Blonde because it changes color in different lights, but I now will refer to it as Scottish Blonde.

The Edinburgh Castle on top of the hill, at the end of the Royal Mile.

My favorite little street, all uphill and curved around.

Adorable Tartan chairs at a restaurant where we waited 50 minutes for our food and then finally just left.

Entrance to the castle.

The view from the castle. 

One side of my Scottish ancestry

Jeremy also has a couple Scottish lines, one is Hunter

We stayed in Edinburgh that evening in a castle...this castle, it was very cool.  There was a pool and we had fun swimming and relaxing after walking around all day in the chilly sea air.

The next morning we got up and had a delicious Scottish breakfast in a big room overlooking the golf course, it was rainy and cold.  We stopped in a place called Dalserf on the way to the airport.  It is where my ancestor Margaret Mathies Clarke was born.  She is on my mother's paternal side, I believe.  Dalserf is pretty much a post office, church and 6 houses, at least from what we could tell.  It was very quaint and fun to make the detour.

The church wasn't unlocked so we mostly just looked around the grounds.  I did find one headstone with the name "Clark" but I don't know if it is a relative, probably though...I need to do more investigating!

Jeremy and I had a wonderful trip and both fell in love with England and Scotland.  We are excited to go back someday and have more people to get to know through our genealogy!

Nantwitch, England and some family history

The second day in Manchester we decided to explore some of Jeremy's ancestors hometowns.  We started off at a little park near our hotel where Jeremy's relative used to vacation in the summer (Rostherne Lake.)  It was an open field of deer and tons of sheep grazing about.  The cars would just drive right through their area.  It was rainy all morning, so some of the shots were a little hazy!

We next drove to a town called Nantwitch to see if we could locate a more specific area for one of Jeremy's relatives.  We started at the historical society and I found this chair.  Jeremy's Grandma Norma has one that looks exactly the same in her living room.  I felt like we were on our own journey of "Who Do You Think You Are."

This was the adorable town, exactly what you would picture a town in England looking like!

We walked over to the town library to begin looking through records to see if we could find a specific area where Jeremy's relative used to live.  It was a bit overwhelming and there was no one to help, but by some coincidence I picked up a book and found his name "Henry Lunt" in it and where he used to farm.  It also said he was a Mormon and moved to America.  We thought it was quite a miracle to find that amongst all of the references and we found the little area that he used to reside - Mickley Hall.  On our way back through the town there was a military band there playing and performing.

We drove around after lunch and found Sound and Mickley Hall, where Henry Lunt used to live.  It was fun and I'm not sure it has changed that much since then.

We also found the probable family church and where they were baptized as infants.  Luckily it was open so we were able to go in and look around - again, I'm not sure much has changed since the time they used to go there!

After exploring some of Jeremy's father's side of the family we looked for some places on his mother's side.  Some of them lived within miles of each other which we didn't realize until we drove around that area.

This was just too cute - I had to take it!