Having renewed my interest, I started up my research again and found that many, many more records were available online than had been the case when I started all those years ago.  I very quickly managed to fill out the family tree and found lots of new branches that I hadn’t known about previously.  It was all so interesting

I wanted to re-visit Kintyre to look at graves of my ancestors and to visit the places where they lived and worked.  We managed to pick the most glorious of weekends to visit.  The weather was absolutely perfect and we made our base Tarbert, where one of my ancestors and his family lived and worked.  He apparently had a grocer’s shop in Tarbert, but unfortunately we were unable to pinpoint the exact position of it.  We did, however, get to see his gravestone.

We drove a few miles south of Tarbert to the beautiful little hamlet called Whitehouse, Kintyre.  It was here that my ancestor was born and where her sibling, the grocer above, is buried.  The little cemetery was so peaceful and it was just lovely to be there to pay our respects.  It is nice to think that ancestors of mine lived and worked in such a beautiful part of the country.

I always feel that the west coast of Scotland draws me to it – it just feels right to be there, and the Kintyre peninsula is, in my opinion, one of the nicest places on earth.  I feel proud that my ancestors came from such a wonderful part of the world.

It is incredible how quickly the family tree grows when you research in a horizontal fashion, ie the brothers and sisters and their families.  It makes it all so interesting and diverse.

To be continued ……….