Alfred, Plantagenet, Papineauville

Plantagenet, the township name of my Hughes ancestors

 After driving east all this way, we arrived at the first settlement of my Hughes family members who immigrated to the New World from Ireland. Here they claimed land bordered on the north by the Ottawa River and raised at least one generation here.
We had been here before, following my Aunt Grace's footsteps, and found the cemetery tucked behind a row of houses in the little town of Alfred. I had taken photos here in 2007, but my camera jammed before I had time to download them.

My great-great-grandmother came from here, and married into the Hughes clan

 This time, we  used a couple of devices to make sure we wouldn't lose them!
Today, we drove across the Ottawa River into Quebec, and started our long trek WEST!!! as we made a short stop in Papineauville to look back at the site of the Hughes' farmstead. There are some interesting stories about Catherine Cummings that will be in my book (shameless plug!).
Tonight we are in the biggest little city in Quebec you've never heard of: Gatineau, just across the river from Ottawa. Bill found a Mercedes dealership and made an 8am appointment tomorrow morning to get the oil changed on the RV for our long trek west.
We had a wonderful "tasting menu" dinner at a little restaurant in the old town that we found on Trip Advisor, and horror of horrors, we're spending the night in a Walmart parking lot! (With all the rain, a little asphalt is better than mud, and it's close to the dealership.) The same shopping center has a Starbucks, and there we're parked for the evening, borrowing their WiFi to catch up on all things online.
We'll head to Peterborough tomorrow, check out the settlement of Bill's Lambert ancestors and hopefully visit a Pioneer Village to learn more about daily life for the early settlers, then onward into southwestern Ontario to see if we can learn more about the orphanage my great-grandmother was sent to from London. We'll also visit a descendant of part of the Lambert family - fairly far removed on the family tree, but she knows some of her family history and will show us around. Then into Michigan by mid-week next week....and hopefully better connectivity.

The Ottawa River - we're on the Quebec side in Papineauville looking across at the Hughes farmland

Hulda Robinson, my great-great-great-grandmother, a descendant of the Robinsons who came on the Mayflower!

Humphry Hughes was the first immigrant from County Wicklow, Ireland and the uncle of my great-great-great-grandfather James Hughes (married to Hulda above)