Geneabloggers has some new writing prompts for 2013 for bloggers to use as suggestions of topics to write about. I sent in a few of my suggestions and Thomas MacEntee, the brains behind Geneabloggers, choose one of my suggestions-Wishful Wednesday. Since the idea originated with me, I think it's only fitting that I write a post on this topic.
Wishful Wednesday is a prompt to write about an ancestor that you would have liked to met. I would have to choose John M. Carder as one of the ancestors that I would most like to have met.
John was my great, great grandfather. I have done so much research on him that I do actually feel like I knew him. John was born in Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley. He came to Ohio with his parents and siblings in the mid-1830s by wagon train. He was about 14 or 15 at the time. Although the trip may have been a difficult journey, I'm sure that it was exciting to a young boy like John. He had probably never been far from his Virginia home and now he and his family were traveling all the way to Ohio. The trip was most likely a big adventure to John and his siblings, although that may not have been the way his parents saw it.
I would have liked to been on that journey and seen it through the eyes of the younger members of the Carder family. To travel through the beautiful mountains of Virginia and see their splendor, then to reach the wide Ohio River, and board their wagon and possessions onto a barge to cross the river.
They would now be in a new state, territory unknown to them, and terrain much different than the home they left behind in Virginia. John never looked back. He spent the rest of his life in Ohio. I would have liked to ask him about that journey. What it was like, what did they see along the way? Did they encounter any danger from wild animals or rock slides? Did they get to stop along the way and visit any of their relatives who had moved farther west along the road from Virginia to the Ohio River? Did they stop and live in any other counties before making their way to Greene County? So many questions that only John, his parents, or siblings could answer. Perhaps, in time, through continued research, some of those questions will be answered.
Wishful Wednesday is a prompt to write about an ancestor that you would have liked to met. I would have to choose John M. Carder as one of the ancestors that I would most like to have met.
John was my great, great grandfather. I have done so much research on him that I do actually feel like I knew him. John was born in Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley. He came to Ohio with his parents and siblings in the mid-1830s by wagon train. He was about 14 or 15 at the time. Although the trip may have been a difficult journey, I'm sure that it was exciting to a young boy like John. He had probably never been far from his Virginia home and now he and his family were traveling all the way to Ohio. The trip was most likely a big adventure to John and his siblings, although that may not have been the way his parents saw it.
I would have liked to been on that journey and seen it through the eyes of the younger members of the Carder family. To travel through the beautiful mountains of Virginia and see their splendor, then to reach the wide Ohio River, and board their wagon and possessions onto a barge to cross the river.
They would now be in a new state, territory unknown to them, and terrain much different than the home they left behind in Virginia. John never looked back. He spent the rest of his life in Ohio. I would have liked to ask him about that journey. What it was like, what did they see along the way? Did they encounter any danger from wild animals or rock slides? Did they get to stop along the way and visit any of their relatives who had moved farther west along the road from Virginia to the Ohio River? Did they stop and live in any other counties before making their way to Greene County? So many questions that only John, his parents, or siblings could answer. Perhaps, in time, through continued research, some of those questions will be answered.
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