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Family
history touring- 2
More and
more we hear about families who include touring significant family/ancestor
places as part of their reunion. This is a particularly special
activity when many members are attending from out-of-town and
rarely have the opportunity to visit. These would include homes/homesteads,
farms, neighborhoods, schools, churches and cemeteries. Some families
even do re-enactments in conjunction with the tours. We are very
interested in learning about your history tour, e-mail us!
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Iowa exploration
To get back to our roots, the Werdel Family Reunion planned a bus trip of Oelwein, Iowa. There was a drive through a small Amish community, cemetery visit to ancestor’s graves, including those of Bernard and Elizabeth Werdel, the Historical Society Museum, Railroad Museum and a windshield tour and stops at houses, schools and churches where many of our ancestors lived, worshipped or were educated. The tour included lunch at a local restaurant.
I contracted with a reliable bus company and was fortunate that no advance deposit was required. I could cancel without penalty a week before the reunion, so I asked for more buses than I thought I’d need; always better to have too many than not enough. I also checked seating capacity and whether buses had restrooms, microphones and air conditioning. I also asked whether the bus driver was familiar with the area and would be adaptable to changes.
The itinerary was planned with approximate times, allowing flexibility for extra or less time at each stop. I also did a “dry run” the day before the reunion so we could keep the bus driver on-track. I developed a great appreciation for tour guides after my brief stint as one.
I wrote or called someone at each tour stop several months in advance and again about two weeks before the reunion to be sure they were prepared. It is important to contact churches to be sure doors are open and that no wedding or other functions are planned. Provide your phone number so someone from the church can contact you about unexpected events.
Overall, I was extremely pleased with the outcome. In retrospect, I would have done a couple things differently. First, solicit more help! I was so busy tending to details, I didn’t have as much time to spend with individuals as I would have liked. Second, the stop for lunch yielded some surprises. Everyone paid for their own lunch and management added a gratuity and beverage to each check, although some people only drank water. This resulted in some confusion and long lines when paying for the meal. Including the price of lunch with the bus trip would have solved the problem.
Reported by Virginia Aitken, Havelock, North Carolina
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Dreisbachs tour Allentown, Bethlehem and Kreidersville, Pennsylvania, area
The Hidden History Bus Tour was a full day in the Lehigh Valley's “Dreisbach Country,” where 1743 immigrant Simon Dreisbach and his sons lived, worked and worshipped. The Tour also explored the three groups who preceded the Dreisbachs in the area: the Lenape Indians with their peach-orchard and gardens, the first European settlers (the Ulster Scots), and the Moravians and their experiment in communal living.
The tour included historic sites such as Whitefield House, built in 1740-43, and its 1740 log house neighbor; the newly restored Jacksonville settlement; and an authentic, fully furnished 1756 Pennsylvania-German homestead, the Troxell-Steckel House. After lunch the tour continued to the lower reaches of the Lehigh Gap to see the path ancestors took when they moved out of the valley. The group learned about the area's recently identified prehistoric “sacred landscape,” about cheated Indians who wailed on a mountaintop through the night, about massacres and abductions, and about the Pennsylvania governor who had a Dreisbach mother-in-law.
This tour lasted eight hours and included bus, lunch, admissions, gratuities and a “Dreisbach map” made especially for the tour.
A second ten-hour bus tour experienced the Amish country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.They enjoyed an insider's look at farmlands, one-room schools, horses and buggies, the plainest of dress and life without electricity. They explored their common Pennsylvania Deutsch heritage.
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Schürch family heritage tours
After the Schürch family reunion registration and a delicious breakfast, we greeted “old” cousins and met “new” ones before 165 of us boarded buses for heritage tours. Two buses went on each tour. The “Blue” tour visited landmarks important to descendants of Ulrich Schürch (immigrated 1728), Casper Sherk (immigrated 1732), Ulrich Schürch (immigrated 1752) and Joseph Schürch. The “Red” tour concentrated mainly on Ulrich Schürch. Some kind proprietors permitted us to tour our ancestors’ homes. Can you imagine strangers walking through your home? We stopped for lunch at Denver Memorial Park and Fireman’s Park near Shirksville Crossroads, the first Schürch reunion site in 1982.
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Magnolia was a goal
For one Gilmore Family Reunion in Arkansas the family chose the theme “Celebrating Our Roots.” A highlight of the three days was a charter bus tour of Magnolia, the original homesite, and Pine Bluff, where they held a memorial service at the cemetery where ancestors are buried.
Getting there
The Taylor Family Reunion alternates their reunions between Buffalo, New York, and Chicago, Illinois. They hire a bus to transport the Chicago contingent to Buffalo and have transportation while they’re there. The per-person cost is better than any other form of transportation, for both the long-distance and local trips.
Cruising Biloxi
Laura L. Bedard, Hudson, New Hampshire, wife of Roland, member of 1st Special Seabees, wrote that their reunion activities in Biloxi, Mississippi, included a one-day bus excursion with lunch and sightseeing.
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Fleetwood family does Oklahoma
The Fleetwood Family Reunion gathers descendants of Charles Fleetwood and Lucinda Morgan of Oklahoma and their 14 children. The first reunion was in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Capitol of the Cherokee Nation West, where their 7th great-grandparents met at nearby Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, in 1834. Charles Fleetwood was a Dragoon in the Army from Bertie County, North Carolina, on the east coast and Lucinda Morgan was a Cherokee/Catawba immigrant from the hills of western North Carolina.
The reunion reserved a travel coach with an intercom and visited several historic sites in Oklahoma’s Delaware District, along with places the family lived, transacted business and are buried. Presentations on the tour included charts, maps, pictures, displays, books, and genealogy material pertaining to family history.
Friday they traveled north into the Delaware District and visited historic sites where policies had impacted their ancestor’s lives. They contemplated Charles’s involvement at the Battle of Cabin Creek historic site. At the Saline Courthouse they imagined ancestors coming to cast their votes in Cherokee Tribal elections. They visited cemeteries where Lucinda and other descendants are buried. That evening they showed a documentary called Last Raid at Cabin Creek.
Saturday, again by coach, they traveled south, first stopping at Fort Gibson State Historic Site, where their ancestors met and married. Lucinda was 16 and Charles was 24. From there the tour stepped out of the Cherokee Nation and 30 years into the future. They went south to the Battle of Honey Springs State Historic Site. Again they imagined Charles’s involvement at another pivotal engagement of the Civil War in Indian Territory and cried that he was an old man in the Union Army, who at this place faced his sons who were Confederates.
Each day the coordinator, Jennifer Sparks, called ahead and made reservations for the party. She chose moderately priced restaurants with which she was familiar and served good food. Everyone was satisfied.
Reported by Jennifer Sparks, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, who says in commenting about her reunion: “It was a great accomplishment to have successfully executed such a large event, and it was so worth it. I think the greatest reward was the wonderful people I came to know and love. I made so many new friends out of previously unknown relatives, and it is a satisfying feeling.”
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Civil Rights icon finds a new home
The bus in which civil rights activist Rosa Parks was riding when she refused to give up her seat to a white man is on display at the Henry Ford Museum.
According to the Associated Press, a Montgomery, Alabama, man bought the bus in the early 1970s, and left it to his daughter when he died in 1985. The museum purchased it from the family for $492,000.
There have been questions, however, about the authenticity of the bus. No bus number was written on the police records when Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott that famous day in 1955.
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