Roseledge Bed & Breakfast
This is the house that my wife's great-great-....grandfather built c. 1720. He was probably the third generation in the colonies from England, and settled here in Preston, Stonington Township, Connecticut. We traveled back there in May 2006 and stayed a night in the house (it's now a bed & breakfast).
We've been digging around in her family's geneology in recent years, and in 2003 we visited Iowa where her family had been since 1854. While in the county records office discussing strategy for tracking down Abel Meech, another woman in the records vault overheard the name and came over to confirm who we were looking for. She then told us she had conducted a search for Abel Meech a few weeks earlier for a woman from Ohio. She directed us to a multitude of records that would've taken several days to find on our own.
The next day, I went back to the records office to ask if she could contact the Ohio woman and let her know about us and pass along our phone number. She did one better - she simply gave us the woman's name and phone number. within a few hours, my wife was talking to her fifth cousin.
It turns out that Mr. Abel has some 'splaining to do. He had a family in Ohio in the 1840's and '50's with five kids. Then he simply dissapeared from the records there. Somehow, the woman got the scent for Iowa, and found his "tracks" there where he had another family (13 more kids) beginning about 1854. Neither family knew of the other's existence until this cagey gal in Ohio figured it out.
In addition, she's been doing geneology work on the Meech family for over 25 years, and was able to hand over all of her information to us. So we instantly landed back in Connecticut in the late 1690's.
On our trip, we found some additional information (folklore, really) about the Meeches. The name shows up on some documents related to the founding of Charlestown (pre-cursor to Boston) in 1629 - that's only 9 years after the Mayflower first landed there.
The first Meech to arrive on this continent had played a part in a coup attempt against King Charles. When things went badly, he ended up hiding in a haystack for 3 days until he would jump a ship to New England. He then took his mother's maiden name (Meech) so he wouldn't be recognized by his real name (Walbridge).
Cool, eh?
Roseledge Bed & Breakfast
This is the house that my wife's great-great-....grandfather built c. 1720. He was probably the third generation in the colonies from England, and settled here in Preston, Stonington Township, Connecticut. We traveled back there in May 2006 and stayed a night in the house (it's now a bed & breakfast).
We've been digging around in her family's geneology in recent years, and in 2003 we visited Iowa where her family had been since 1854. While in the county records office discussing strategy for tracking down Abel Meech, another woman in the records vault overheard the name and came over to confirm who we were looking for. She then told us she had conducted a search for Abel Meech a few weeks earlier for a woman from Ohio. She directed us to a multitude of records that would've taken several days to find on our own.
The next day, I went back to the records office to ask if she could contact the Ohio woman and let her know about us and pass along our phone number. She did one better - she simply gave us the woman's name and phone number. within a few hours, my wife was talking to her fifth cousin.
It turns out that Mr. Abel has some 'splaining to do. He had a family in Ohio in the 1840's and '50's with five kids. Then he simply dissapeared from the records there. Somehow, the woman got the scent for Iowa, and found his "tracks" there where he had another family (13 more kids) beginning about 1854. Neither family knew of the other's existence until this cagey gal in Ohio figured it out.
In addition, she's been doing geneology work on the Meech family for over 25 years, and was able to hand over all of her information to us. So we instantly landed back in Connecticut in the late 1690's.
On our trip, we found some additional information (folklore, really) about the Meeches. The name shows up on some documents related to the founding of Charlestown (pre-cursor to Boston) in 1629 - that's only 9 years after the Mayflower first landed there.
The first Meech to arrive on this continent had played a part in a coup attempt against King Charles. When things went badly, he ended up hiding in a haystack for 3 days until he would jump a ship to New England. He then took his mother's maiden name (Meech) so he wouldn't be recognized by his real name (Walbridge).
Cool, eh?