One of Our Favorite Ancestor Explorations

One of our most favorite ancestor explorations as a family is when we traveled, on the suggestion of my brother- and sister-in-law, to visit the still-preserved house of one of our long ago ancestors on my husband's side of the family.  Our ancestor was a captain of a whaling ship at the turn of the century.   While the kids weren't so excited that their ancestor hunted whales, they did love learning a bit about the people in their own history.  One amazing bit of information that was so interesting about our ancestor is that he couldn't bear to be without his family on the whaling ship so he took his wife and his kids with him at times and taught them all--including his wife.  This was an act really unheard of at that time in history--to take your family on the whaling ship with you. (Although I'm wondering if it brought them closer together or further apart being stuck on that ship together--there's certainly no closer quarters than that to bring up a family!  Hmmm...).  The best part about the expedition was having our extended family members (on that side of the family) all meet there together.  What a meaningful family connection for us all--not only to the past, but also to the present.