Written as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge. This week’s topic: Kitchen

I wasn’t going to do this, but today it came to me. I’ve always been jealous of those who had warm cozy grandmothers who taught them how to cook – or mothers for that matter. My grandmother was far from cozy. “Pass the sandwiches to your father, child,” she would say

One day, in September 2009, I was on a solo trip in Scotland, searching for places associated with my father’s ancestry. One day, taking my courage into my hands, I drove up a long driveway, uninvited, to see “Gartur,” a dwelling I had been researching online for several years.

As President elect Joe Biden said a tearful farewell to Delaware and prepare to leave his hometown of Wilmington for the journey to Washington DC, I was reminded of our family’s singular connection to Wilmington.

I knew almost nothing of my grandfather, my father’s father. There had been a rift in the family, my father spoke little of his childhood or family, and both his parents had died before I was born. Yet, in an act that suggests there was some wish for connection, my brother was named for our grandfather.

I received a message recently, on ancestry’s message system from someone interested in my grandfather, Robert Hamilton McNee, whom he had discovered was his grandfather.