More Ocean Travel

When we flew from Chicago to London this summer, it became clear to me that we were flying a similar route to the one Betsy and Edward Walker had taken in 1897. Our flight was at 33,000 feet plus and they were at sea level. Also our flight took slightly more than seven hours and their trip took seven days. I'm slow, but at some point, I thought, aha, that's why it's called jet lag. If you're taking a day to change one time zone, I believe you would be adjusted to the time change when you got to your destination. We did our whole trip in only a day longer than it took them to sail from Quebec to Liverpool. There are many aspects of their trip and our trip we could discuss, but I'll only say it's hard to fathom travel that slow.

The following is another excerpt from her diary. As Sally says, would it be that hard to put in a period or even a comma.

Left Quebec at 9 o'clock quite calm and very pleasant our ocean voyage commenced from Quebec and the log taken - life on an ocean liner commenced in earnest. The stewards and stewardesses are all very agreeable. Mr. Walker left the . . .

. . . and laid to directly after we saw the mail tender leave the shore the tide was going out fast and they made quite a detour to reach the steamer. They unloaded the mail freight and some passengers and then loosed their ropes and when they were cleared the captain started the S S California. We sailed until noon of the 7th and made 309 miles. (We covered 500 miles an hour)We were in the straits of Belle Isle and it began to get foggy.

We're back from the United Kingdom & I can now add to the blog. The following is a brief story of how we found the Walker Manor or Russia Hall as it is known. Through the family tree records that Cindy & others had collected, I found that Edward Walker was from Cheshire, England, although it may have been Wales at the time of his life. Through Ancestry.com I found that he had lived in Tattenhall, Golborne Bellow, before he moved to Kansas. I was able to look at the census records from 1800s in England & to see that his brother continued to live at Russia Hall. The British census records are only available until 1901, but also through Ancestry.com & other family records Cindy provided I could tell that Edward's nephew continued to live at Russia Hall through the 1940s.

Cindy had given me a picture of Russia Hall that Laura had. I scanned it in & tried to improve it a bit. I then printed it & took it with me. I tried searching for Russia Hall on Google, but all that came up was an antique store named New Russia Hall in the Tattenhall area. We went to that business and showed our picture to the proprietor and she said she had seen it and told us exactly where to find it. To me it looked like a generic English manor so I was surprised she could recognize it.

We followed her directions and were able to find it down to the mailbox with "Russia Hall" on it. It was startling to see that picture come to life.