Randy Seaver has issued an interesting challenge for this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:
1) Determine which event in your ancestral history that you would love to be a witness to via a Time Machine. Assume that you could observe the event, but not participate in it.
It only took me but a few seconds to make my time travel choice. I would visit Parr Town, New Brunswick, Canada – which today is St. John – in the summer of 1785.
I would want to attend the wedding of Loyalist Robert Carlisle and his bride Catherine, whose maiden name has forever eluded me and others. Based on a couple of land deeds where Robert had no wife to release dower rights in the first one, but Catherine did in the second one, it seems quite certain that Robert and Catherine married that summer, probably in July.
As I watched the wedding, I would learn Catherine’s maiden name, but also would hope to learn something about both her and Robert’s family. Aside from Robert’s military service being in Nova Scotia (and not the American colonies), I know little about him and nothing about his parents or any siblings.
A side benefit of being in Parr Town so early on is that many of my other Loyalist ancestors also passed through there – the Adams, Parker, Burt and Stewart families – and I might be able to get a glimpse of them as they go about their daily lives, too.
Randy, I liked this challenge. If only we could time travel. . . . .
That is the catch! it’s a lovely challenge, but we don’t have the time machine . . . .
wow – cool challenge, I might use it for this week’s post!
I love your choice – being a fly on the wall for a wedding would be wonderful in and of itself, but to make genealogical discoveries would make it even better!
Weddings are the best place to visit with a time machine. So many people there to ask questions of!