Peterborough to Stratford

The little village where the Barbers, Bill's ancestors, settled in the 1820s.

And of course, here's where some of them ended up....

This marker was placed in 2000 in memory of the very first Barber settlers; graveyard in Perth

In Peterborough at a municipal park; dry evening for a nice bonfire!

Peonies in bloom everywhere! These were at the Lang Pioneer Village, Keene, Ontario

The restored church at the Pioneer Village, a very well done village with blacksmith, tinsmith, homes, general store etc

Monument to the 30,000 Home Children sent to Canada from Britain in the 1800s

We continue pushing westward, and are now in southwestern Ontario in the lovely old town of Stratford. We're having a nice Sunday lunch in a beautiful old restaurant, and rudely taking advantage of the first wifi available in several days.
Our visit to the Scotch Line and the Glen Tay/Perth area netted us some new photos of graveyards where Bill's Barber and Dodds ancestors are buried, including the marker of Thomas and Janet Hannah Barber. They were married in Scotland in a little town called Troqueer, which we have visited; they moved to Ontario in the early 1800s, the first family among all our ancestors to arrive in the New World.
We continued on to Peterborough, enjoying partly cloudy skies for a change, and had dry weather to visit the excellent Lang Pioneer Village which depicts life in the general time our ancestors were settlers here. I rank it as high as Williamsburg for the educational experience, the expert "interpreters" dressed in period costume, and the wealth of information they provided.
That afternoon, we spent a great deal of time at the Peterborough museum, learning even more of the early times in this area, plus a couple of hours with an archivist, trying to discover more information on the first Lambert settlers. The next morning, we also visited their county archives, with still no luck. There was an old cemetery near downtown, and with development in the early 1900s, it was demolished and most of the bodies moved elsewhere. However, as they were building the Quaker Oats factory on site, they uncovered "several" bodies....perhaps our ancestor we were seeking is still there, resting under tons of oatmeal?!
Yesterday (Saturday) we drove through Toronto, with its horrendous traffic, and arrived in a town near Stratford where we spent a nice evening. This morning, rain again, but we'll take a bit of time to see if we can visit the Annie McPherson "Distribution Home" where hundreds, if not thousands, of Home Children were deposited, then "distributed" to adoptive families. My great-grandmother Louisa Lock Hughes was one of those children, and her remarkable story will also be in my book.
Tomorrow, we'll connect with a Lambert descendant from another branch of the family, and hope to see her old photos, research and visit around the area with her as our guide.