Side-tracks while tracking down the ancestors

A joint post from Gary and Diane (all photos by Gary).

We are back in Cleveland—Lakewood actually—the Cleveland skyline is out the window about five miles away across a slice of Lake Erie:

What a week (or so) it’s been. After our colds had ceased enough for us to move on from my sister Dyann’s pasture southeast of Cleveland, we headed up the shore of Lake Erie toward Niagara Falls.

But first we stopped at Kirtland, Ohio, just a few miles from Dy’s to tour the Kirtland Temple. Interesting, how we keep crossing the path of the Mormon pioneers. Kirtland was the Latter Day Saints’ headquarters from 1831 to 1838. We sat in the third-floor meeting room of the temple they built, light and airy thanks to large windows and a high ceiling, where Joseph Smith conferred with other Saints and they all prayed for guidance. The temple now belongs to the Reformed LDS, which according to our well-informed guide is one of 70-some branches of LDS (in addition to the branch based in Salt Lake City (she said there were around 400 LDS sects in earlier times). Gentiles are encouraged to enter this temple, but not to take photos inside it: 

Around 3 p.m., we crossed the Peace Bridge into Ontario, Canada, at Buffalo, NY, then parked on the street. Several blocks of the city of Niagara Falls that you have to go through to arrive at the parkway along the river where the views of the falls begin is a gigantic "amusement park" (the worst of Las Vegas and Disneyland rolled into one), but once you get through that, you overlook a truly amazing natural wonder.

Like the Grand Canyon, no photograph can do it justice. As you stand on above the cliff that descends to the river, your entire visual field and aural space are filled by the cascade of the American Falls; about a mile to your right is the Horseshoe Falls, largely obscured by its own mists. As you walk along the crowded sidewalk above the river toward the Horseshoe Falls, the afternoon sun forms rainbows in the mist behind you, arching above boats ferrying hundreds of tourists clad in blue raingear toward the falls. You hear dozens of languages being spoken; sightseers come from Japan, India, Europe. They ask you to take their photos with the falls behind them, and you oblige, smiling all the while. You revel in the negative ions cast into the air by the incredible rush of millions of cubic feet of water falling hundreds of feet every second. The sun shines, life is good, nature is awesome and it's exciting to be part of it all.

We camped that night at the Brant Conservation Area near Brantford, Ontario, and walked the next morning through the native short-grass prairie being restored there (a young botonist we met as we checked into camp told us about it). Each Ontario watershed has its own conservation authority. Many of the conservation areas serve as campgrounds, which charge about $40! per night (but unlike public parks in the U.S., they are not tax supported). The following day— Thanksgiving Day in Canada—we moved on to the Warwick Conservation Area, near where my father was born.

Coincidentally, the night before, Ancestry.com had notified me of discovery of my paternal grandmother’s immigration form. Violet May Dupee, I learned, was born at Uttoxeter—now a crossroad a few miles from where we camped. Her dad, John Ira, was the postmaster at Uttoxeter till 1903.

After several hours in the Lambton Room at the county library, we had a list of a few area cemeteries where my Richardson, Dupee, Hoskin, Ladell and Lambert ancestors are buried. My great grandfather John Ira Dupee was born at Oil Springs, Ontario, which occasioned a visit to the local museum. Oil Springs, it turns out, is the site of the first commercial development of petroleum in North America—and the world. The fields there are still producing at the same levels they were 150 years ago! We boondocked that night surrounded by squeals and squeeks of metal-on-metal pump contraptions and the scent of "sour" (sulphur-bearing) oil.
Yet another fascinating and unlooked-for experience on our voyage!