December 15, 2016. Madison, Mississippi. Breakthrough.

Ken has been poking around the Internet finding ancestors.   Since early in the summer he has been looking into his own family as well as his cousin Ian.  Ian's family were from Finland.  Evidently, the Finns kept careful records because Ken was able to follow Ian's mother's family back a long time.  That was fun.  Ken takes it up for several months, then drops the search for a year or two before picking up his search again.  Every time he gets back to searching his ancestry he finds more tools on the Internet.

In the past, he has had no luck searching out my family.  Both the Buckleys and the Houghtons moved to Canada in the early part of the 20th Century.  He had no luck tracking the families in England.   But yesterday he found the family of my Grandmother, Alice Swallow, my father's mother.  She died before I was born.  The only thing I knew about her from other people was that she was a lovely lady.

Now I know that she was one of 8 children, all girls.  I even know the first names.  Ken told me the name of Alice Sallow's Mother too.  I had never heard the name.  So far, he is back to the early 19th century.  Now he will keep going.   The Houghton family is difficult because there are so many of them.  My grandmother Houghton was a Bowler, which is also a common name.   Ken does not know if records were lost or if the English have been slow to put information on the Internet.  But Ken is pleased to have had a breakthrough.  He found the family of Alice Swallow, my grandmother Buckley.  Now that is fun.