Family history begins!

My first stop in going where my ancestors lived is Worle England in Somerset County. This is southwest England. I learned that Worle has been swallowed up by Weston-Super-Mare. Yeah that's what I thought, a city named Weston-Super-Mare? Ok...

Look at this beautiful scenery on my way from Stonhenge to Weston.

















Weston-Super-Mare!


Another Yates's!


It was tough finding a guest house but I found this Blakeny B&B.


I immediately headed to Yates's for the second consecutive night to watch the England vs Ukraine match. The crowd was not roudy. Really focused on watching the game and anytime they had a chance to score they would go nuts.











England scores!


Weston-Super-Mare is right on the coast.








My all English breakfast.


I headed to the Worle area to do some grave hunting for Harris'. Harris is my mothers maiden name. My aunt Linda has done a lot of research and family history and is very organized so I thought it would be easier to do research with the Harris side rather than the Yates side since it will require a lot of preliminary research to do Yates family history work.





After a long search I finally found a Harris but it is really too recent to be a relative. Family history is tough!


The old town of Worle where some of my ancestors lived.





I then headed to the library and did research all day. I'm stoked because the pedigree charts my aunt sent me I was able to find those people in the records of that church I was at. Thank goodness the Catholic church kept good records.

I found dozens of ancestors! One of the most rewarding days of my life.





Luckily someone had gone through the microfilm and put them in books.


There were gaps and some where they didn't so I spent a couple hours going through the microfilm trying to find Harris Marriages, Baptisms, Births and Burials. It's tough work! A lot of the pages you cannot read the handwriting and names. But it's amazing what staring at this does, you start to understand and read it better.


Here are all the names I found!!! 18 half pages of paper! Full of Harris'. This is kind of addicting work. I really really enjoyed it. It is kind of like a scavenger hunt. I also felt a good sense of connection to my ancestors.


If you didn't know I'm an interesting sleeper. I woke up and found my hat in the corner with all my pocket stuff and other random stuff in it.


I headed back to the library to finish some loose ends.


As you can see the microfilm comes from SLC. It was great to do the work here where they actually lived though. And I'm not sure those books where they transcribed the microfilm to print is in SLC and that saves me days of work.


Took one last drive to the St Martin's church where all the records come from.





My first family history experience was amazing! I encourage others to get involved and experience the rewarding feeling of tracking down your ancestors. A great change of pace for me.

Now I need to try to put the family trees together and I did that a little bit at this Chinese buffet but will do it when I get home. I'm really excited!