The Dream of Standing in the Homelands of My Ancestors

The Dream of Standing in the Homelands of My Ancestors
(And the Reality)

By Todd Neel

I began this chapter before this trip to Europe with just a title and a dream (sort of a “dream of a dream”, because it was a day dream, wanting to be inspired by a visit in the night from some ancestral ghosts that never came). Some of this chapter was also written during the trip to Europe, and now I finish it back home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, about a week after our return. So this is kind of a “Back to the Future”/”Back from the Past” journey.

Flash back: Here, now, I sit about 1:45 am, Saturday 7/10/2010 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the homeland of my ancestors. I push a button on my Timex digital wristwatch, and I can see that it is 5:45 pm, Friday 7/9/2010 in our home town of Coeur d’Alene where we will be by 2 pm this afternoon, crossing 9 time zones to get there, flying about 10 hours in the air.

We are up early this morning to catch our flight home to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after 3 weeks of “holiday” in Europe. This family vacation, that I had previously never before dreamed of as possible for me, is from the gracious generosity of my wife, Mary, and her decision to take our family to Europe on vacation with her inheritance from her parents. It was about a year ago, on July 11, 2009 (one year from tomorrow), that her mother, Phyllis, died. It has been from Mary’s parents’ choices in careers, investments, and lifestyle choices which has allowed us to live for three weeks like royalty in Europe! What a blessing this has been!

I choose the word “royalty” with a small “r” for a reason, as we have enjoyed four nights here at the Princes Street Suites here in Edinburgh. We are literally across the railroad tracks from the Queens’ Palace and the Scottish Parliament at the end of the Royal Mile, which runs from the Edinburgh Castle to the Holyrood Palace. There have been many be-headings of Royalty throughout history that we have heard about on our trip, and I don’t want to be a part of any of that Royalty.

Flash forward: Here, now, I sit about 6:45 am, Saturday 7/17/2010 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Back home again.

Reflections: Part of this trip has been a pilgrimage for me. This pilgrimage has been a search in Scotland, the homeland of my ancestors, for traces, for some record, some sign of my ancestors that came before me. (My questions: Who were they? What were their lives like? What caused them to leave Scotland in the 1700’s? What did they dream about? Were they good people?)

This trip and the record of it is sort of a legacy that I will leave behind for family and friends on this Internet Blog and my self-published book “Family Hunger”. (Will my descendants come looking for traces of me someday? Will they find these words? Will they have an interest, a “family hunger”?) These words you are reading are evidence of my physical body, which has traces of our ancestors. The DNA from my ancestors that I carry through to the present day is in my body, in these fingers that type on this keyboard, in the neurons of my brain that play with these words. We are living legacies. We are miracles!

Will my descendants have questions someday, like: Who was this guy? What was his life like? What caused him to go to Scotland in 2010? What did he dream about? Was he a good guy?

Now, in case you didn’t know this about me, I’m kind of pre-occupied with our family’s genealogy. I was hoping that while in Scotland I would have found the gemstone of information that would be the key to my search to where I came from. But, alas, no gemstone. In Edinburgh, I did visit the Calton Cemetary right next to our hotel, and I did find the gravestone for John William Neill (an architect, d.o.b. 7/22/1781, and d.o.d. 1/28/1827) and other members of his family. But is this my family?

Now, this next paragraph may be “TMI” or “too much information” for those not interested in genealogy, so you can skip to the end if you wish: I did find the location of the national Scotland Registry of families (also known as and available over the Internet as ScotlandsPeople Centre), and I visited it. I found on their computers the same document that I had already found on the Internet through ancestry.com That is a scanned, digital copy of a parish record of John Neil, immigrant from Scotland: d.o.b. Dec. 8, 1716 from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland, and his parents John Neil and Margaret Johnstoun. (The staff at Scotlands People told me they have the original document, but they would not let me see it because of the age and the condition of that document). But is this my family?

On the last day of our stay in Edinburgh, I found The Scottish Genealogy Society Family History Center and Library, but it was closed! (I have been communicating with them by e-mail since we returned home).

I have submitted my own DNA sample and through ancestry.com and I found 1 genetic relative in Ireland, 3 genetic relatives in Scotland, and 11 genetic relatives in England. Some of these people have responded over the Internet, but I have not been able to meet any of them face-to-face yet.

So, I think you have read about my dream here (I did stand in the home land of my ancestors), and I have come to appreciate some of the hardships they may have gone through and the blessings of the beauty of their homeland as I walked the streets of Edinburgh, toured the Highlands by bus, and soaked up some of the history of Scotland and the United Kingdom. But the reality is that I did not get any real "hits", in genealogy terms. Not yet anyway. (I do believe in miracles!)

Edinburgh, Scotland – not enough time to experience all the history, but still great!

Tuesday 7/6/2010 - Saturday 7/10/2010.

In Edinburgh, we stayed at the Princes Street Suite, and this was by far our best accommodations with 2 separate bedrooms, a large living room/dining room combination, full kitchen with dishes, and laundry in the apartment! (None of our previous housing situations had laundry, and we had been washing our clothes in the sink and hanging them to dry in the humid European climate, as when we asked where Laundromats were, we were referred to dry cleaners who would do a shirt for 4 pounds – one pound was about $1.50). Each bedroom had a small flat screen television, and there was a large, flat screen TV in the living room (and the TV shows were in English!, including many American TV shows and movies). They also provided an iPod docking station, which the boys really liked.

We started out the visit in Edinburgh with a guided, double-decker tour bus of Old Town and New Town, to get oriented to the city and get a narration from a guide about things to see. (Sometimes we got very entertaining guides, and sometimes they were very dry and flat). We could hop on and off the bus, so we got off at the Edinburgh Castle to tour that, walking through the marching area where the famous Military Tattoo is held the full month of August every year (this is a bag pipes and drums competition - I suggest you hit YouTube and look up videos of these talented musicians). There was endless shopping to be done, and we supported their economy with our small donations (but I did not buy a kilt – too expensive).

The famous Edinburgh Castle, built on the rock of an extinct volcanic plug for visibility and protection, was at one end of the “Royal Mile”, and at the other end of the Royal Mile was the British Royal Palace and the Scottish Parliament. (The original Parliament of Scotland for the Kingdom of Scotland during the 13th century was ended for 300 years by the “Acts of Union” of 1707, and England ruled Scotland from the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London until just recently, when in 1999 the Scottish Parliament began again). The Queen of England still visits here regularly, and she was overdue for her spring visit.

Edinburgh seemed older than London, and/or what it could be was the presentation and maintenance of the buildings, or maybe the origin of the stones (granite vs. sandstone). The old stones of Edinburgh seem to have been allowed to age more naturally, as they were very dark and rough, while the stonework of London was lighter in color, and they were very clean and smooth.

On Thur. 7/8/2010, we rode for 12 hours on a tour bus to the mountainous Highlands north of Edinburgh to Inverness and back. We saw beautiful countryside, and if there are such things as genetic or “DNA memories”, I can see why my father and mother choose to live in western Montana as their final home after retirement. The land of the Scottish Highlands is a lot like the mountains of western Montana and in Idaho (where I currently live).

We stopped and visited the ruined Urquhart Castle on the shores of the famous Loch Ness (“Loch” means “lake). We took a boat ride from this castle to the end of the lake, where the tour bus picked us up again, drove through Inverness, and then back to Edinburgh. (Of course, we saw Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, but my camera wasn’t working for some reason).

Edinburgh is in the "lowlands" (rolling hills), and up north is the "highlands". Mountain peaks up there are not that high (the highest being Ben Nevis at 4409 ft. above sea level, and we would have seen this highest peak in the United Kingdom except for cloud cover on the day of this trip). We drove past ski areas, which closed about 3 weeks ago (but I did not see large enough snow fields to ski on right now). We saw where the Campbells attacked and killed hundreds the MacDonalds in their sleep (How does that saying go? “Never trust a Campbell”?). We saw where portions of the Harry Potter movies were made. It was beautiful country, again, looking like what you might find in western Montana and places in Idaho.

Loch Ness is connected by a chain of lakes and man-made canals and locks, which connects the Firth of Lorn and the Sea of Herbides and the Atlantic Ocean near Northern Ireland on the west coast of Scotland to the North Sea on the east coast of Scotland.

Scotland was beautiful, and it really tugged at my heartstrings. (See my next chapter “The Dream of Standing in the Homelands of My Ancestors”).

Todd

London – busy blur …

Saturday 7/3/2010 - Tuesday, 7/6/2010.

On Saturday, 7/3, we saw the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, had lunch at the Hard Rock Café & saw The Vault (rock & roll museum next door for the Hard Rock Cafe), walked through Green Park & St. James Park, visited the Churchill Museum & War Room, rode on the London Eye (a giant ferris wheel built for the Millennium on the Thames river), and had dinner at the Shakespeare Pub.

On Sunday, 7/4, we went to the Tower of London, and visited the British Museum.

On Monday, 7/5, we went to Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, had dinner at Garfunkel’s (I had a traditional British Breakfast for dinner, otherwise known as “heart attack on a plate” – it wasn’t very good). This was an ambitious day, as we ended the day with a live musical play @ Dominion Theatre called “We Will Rock You” with the music of Queen with a great, live rock band.

A little more on the Westminster Abbey, which was right next to Big Ben and the British Parliament on the River Thames. There is a lot of history in the Westminster Abbey, as Kings and Queens have been coronated and buried there, and there are many other famous people buried there, inside, or there are memorials are there for them. Famous people buried there are Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Keats, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Laurence Olivier, and George Fredrick Handel, among many others. (My mom sang Handel's Messiah with the Pensacola (Florida) Choir and we have a LP record of this). After the Westminster Abbey, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral that survived the aerial bombings of Britain by Germany during World War II.

We leave London by train on Tuesday, 7/6 for Edinburgh, Scotland, so we should be able to see the countryside during the 4 ½ hour train ride. We will have 4 days there in Scotland (4 nights, 3 full days for being tourists), which I'm really looking forward to. There's a lot of history there.

During the train ride from London to Edinburgh, we passed countryside that looks like the mid-west U.S., around Missouri that we are familiar with, with rolling hills, agricultural land, and older farm houses and villages. We also passed clusters of modern wind turbines and also what looked like many nuclear power plants (about a half-dozen sites with clusters of 4 to 7 cooling towers, the shapes of what look like our nuclear plants).

Todd

London

7/2/2010 Friday

We got into London last night, 7/3 Thursday. Our motel (The Elizabeth) is in an old, and expensive, neighborhood. Our room is very small, in the basement, and we do have a daylight window, but the air conditioner requires the window to be opened about 6 inches (by about 5 ft. wide), so it is only marginally effective. Mary didn't sleep well last night because of the heat.

I didn’t write that at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, there was a statue of Joan of Arc who was executed at age 19 for being a witch and a heretic, and then later a decision was made at Notre Dame to save her reputation and she was then made a Saint. (I started to look Joan of Arc up on Wikepedia – check it out, or read a book!).

Learning lot on this trip.

On this date, we took an open air, double-decker bus tour of London(“Original Tour”). We went to Picadilly Circus, had lunch, walked around. Back in our neighborhood, we had a bad Japanese dinner “walk-away” (take-out).

Todd

Writing From The Elizabeth Hotel in London about Paris

7/2/2010 Friday
We flew from Paris to London yesterday – some reflections here that I found in e-mails to family that I don’t want to miss … (hope I’m not boring you with duplicate entries) …
We arrived in London last night. Paris had been very hot, and transportation around that huge city was complicated, so that slowed us down. We got to see a lot, but you could spend a life time there (and some people do!).
Josh read something that if you spent 5 minutes at every exhibit at the Louve it would take 7 years. We did visit The Louve museum, but it was so huge we only saw a small portion. We tried to get an English speaking tour group, but they were all full. We can say we were there, but we didn't really appreciate what we were seeing, not knowing what they were. We recognized some classic pieces, but I think I would want to start reading history books about the artists and the times they lived in. We saw the Mona Lisa, and it was packed and difficult to get close to, so it was kind of disappointing. The public was kept about 30 ft. away from the Mona Lisa, and we read that at one time an employee had stolen it and kept it rolled up under his bed for 3 years (I wonder what they did with that guy when they caught him).
We rode up the elevator of the Eiffel Tower on Nathan's birthday at his request. We heard that when Hitler was in Paris that the elevator malfunctioned so he had to climb up the tower to the top. And after he left an employee figured out what was wrong and fixed it with a simple screwdriver. Poor Hitler.
There was a lot of blood shed in Paris. Nathan thinks our American soldiers fought in Paris, but someone said the German's left here before we arrived. We'll have to get out the history books (or look it up on Wikipedia).
I’ll keep this brief, and post more later.
Todd

Last day in Paris - Bus #69 to Notre Dame, and then some:

Report on last day in Paris, Thursday 7/1/2010 -
I got up early yesterday morning (4 am), and I took a city bus ride by myself (on route 69) from our neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower to the Notre Dame Cathedral and other places. (This bus route was made famous, to us, by Rick Steves’ travel books as one of the more local, “back door” ways of seeing this part of Europe). I got across town fairly quickly on the bus, and I started to recognize places we had seen on previous days on the tour bus, so I thought I could get off and back on the bus fairly quickly without getting lost, and see locations that were now more quiet and cooler (it being about 7 am, and many other tourists were still in bed or getting ready to amass on the cobblestones again soon). I got off near Notre Dame, walked to it, and walked quietly and peacefully among the local Parisians, workers, homeless people, pigeons, etc. I snapped a bunch of pictures, and remembered that being behind the camera is another way of being removed from really being there. I was admiring the beautiful stone work, towers, gargoyles, and other beauty that made this creation famous. I was reading information signs in front of the opening, and noticed people starting to gather around me, and a worker from inside the Cathedral come out, talk to some of the individuals as if they knew one another, and she opened the gate. Being that the gathering group of people was going inside, and I was one of them just by my physical presence, I went with the flow. Besides being able to see the beauty from the inside again, there was a Catholic mass scheduled, which I joined with my own mixed emotions. It seemed that all of the other people were local French people, or French travelers as some of them were wearing heavy backpacks. The language spoken was all in French so I didn’t understand the content, but it was emotional for me because it was so beautiful and it brought me to tears at times. When the priest started doing the ritual of the sacrament (the wine and wafers to symbolize the blood and body of Christ), I got uncomfortable and I left at that time, but I felt something and I couldn't quite put words to my feelings. (Some of the feelings I could recognize was my internal conflict because of my own belief systems and my High Power, and my judgments about the Catholic church, their history, etc. - remember I am a social worker with child protection services, and I read about John Knox ...). I left trying to sort out what my head and heart were telling me.
I worked my way back across the River Seine to the bus, and got back on again, soaking it in. Pedestrian, car, motorcycle and bike traffic was picking up, and the bus starting going into parts of Paris that I didn’t recognize. It stopped and parked suddenly, all of the people got off, and the bus driver indicated (not in English!) that I also needed to get off. I stood on the sidewalk trying to sort out the bus schedule, and then noticed that another, and then another, and then another bus, all with #69 on their fronts, pulled up, stopped, drivers got out, and four of them were left empty! (Rick Steves didn’t tell me about this!).
Thinking about being in this strange foreign city, with Mary and the boys back at the motel, and not having cell phones and not having experience using local phones, I started to worry a little, balanced out with trusting the process. Eventually another driver came and got on one of but buses, other passengers got on, and we started moving through the route again, trusting it would circle back to the Eiffel Tower and the neighborhood we were staying at.
I don't know if you have any experience traveling on the streets of large cities in Paris or not, it is scary! Some places they drive on the wrong side of the road (U.K.), and the streets are very narrow, and they hardly ever go straight. Bus Route #69 ended for me this morning with the driver stopping, getting out, and looking at his huge bus just inches away from a parked Volvo, waving traffic to back up, and trying to back up himself. I sauntered away, as I recognized the streets and knew I could walk back to the motel from here.
Later that morning we checked out of the Paris motel, juggling luggage, boys, currency (this is the last place for us to use our Euros), and the shuttle to the Paris airport (with the driver who spoke very little English). The shuttle picked up 2 other passengers from Scotland, which was very interesting ...
We caught the plane from the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to the London Heathrow Airport (quite an experience itself). We took a train from the airport to a London station (the Paddington Station), then hired a classic English taxi for ride to hotel in the Victoria neighborhood, checked into our motel (The Elizabeth), and walked to dinner at the Ebury Pub for fish and chips!
Enough for now!
Todd

Check In from Paris - Happy 18th Birthday Nathan!

Wednesday 6/30/2010

Today is Nathan's 18th birthday, and he got served breakfast in bed, and got the remote control for the TV at the same time. (French television is not much fun for me,as I don't understand it).
The family went to Notre Dame Cathedral yesterday, and the Arch de Triumph. It was hot and we were really on “survival mode”, trying to maintain liquid intake, heat, nutrition, energy, patience, communication, respect, karma … Travel like this as a family can magnify our strengths and weaknesses in challenging environments.
Notre Dame Cathedral was very crowded as we toured the inside of this historical, beautiful chapel. We considered climbing 400 steps up to the towers of the cathedral, and while eating ice cream and figuring the time standing and waiting in line in the sun, we didn’t figure it was worth it. (More on Notre Dame later when I make the trip back to it by myself).
We made our way back from Notre Dame in the open-air, double-decker tour bus, plugged in our English translating headphones again, and made our way towards the Arch de Triumph, which was only 284 steps to the top. The French started to build the 165 foot tall Arc de Triumph in 1809 to celebrate Napoleon as the emperor of a “New Rome”. It was not finished before his death, but “it was finished in time for his 1840 funeral procession to pass underneath, carrying his remains (19 years dead) from exile in St. Helena to Paris” (from Rick Steves’ book “Paris 2010”). It was a beautiful view of the Champs-d’Elysees and all of Paris, and I took a series of panoramic photos all around.
It's hard to get around Paris, and the heat and lack of air conditioning in public places make it difficult.
We saw the Pere La Chaise Cemetery today where many famous people are buried and we found many headstones, among them Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Jim Morrison (from the Doors). We did not find Fredrick Chopin’s marker. At Oscar Wilde’s marker, there was a brief resume for him on the back, and there was lipstick mark all over it as he was a “writer and martyr to homosexuality who is mourned by outcast men and by wearers of heavy lipstick …” There was a class tour of high school age kids there at the time we were there, and girls were posing for their photo by friends while kissing the marker, leaving their lipstick.
After the cemetery, we could only get reservations at 3 pm to go up the elevator in the Eiffel Tower, at Nathan's request. (We wanted to go up after dark to see the lights, but there were no openings at that time). It was very cool! The elevator stopped at two lower floors before going all the way to the top. Interesting that it was more windy on the ground, while the air was very calm on the top, just under the 1,063 ft. peak. This was built in 1889 for the World’s Fair there by Gustav Eiffel. He had an apartment at the top where he entertained guests, and this had a model displayed at the top posing Gustav with his daughter and Thomas Edison, who had visited there.
This is our last full day in Paris, as we get on a plane tomorrow afternoon for London.
Todd