Cabin Fever

With snow and cold temperatures making it less than enticing to walk and a tight budget preventing me from going to the thrift shops, I'm starting to get cabin fever.  I'm just about read out--I've almost finished a "thriller," The Spy Who Jumped off the Screen, by Thomas Caplan, an old classmate of President Bill Clinton who wrote an introduction for the book.  In that intro, President Clinton says he recommended numerous cuts in the original manuscript.  In my opinion he should have recommended more, but I'm slogging through.  I stopped for awhile to finish  Aftershock:  Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown.  I'll probably blog a bit about that book in another blog.  We're going down, but it could be three to five years!

This evening I decided to work on my family tree and that gave me the idea for this blog.  I've been able to trace one branch of my tree, the Beauchamps, back to the 1000s, before the Norman invasion.  After the Normans invaded England, one of the Beauchamps, Walter, [Walter DeBeauchamp (1020 - 1114) is my 32nd great grandfather], ended up, through marriage, owning this:

Elmley Castle. 

He probably never experienced cabin fever.

OK.  Here's the real kicker.  My paternal great grandmother was a Beauchamp.  I remember her.  She was tiny and had snow white hair and my sister dubbed her Little White Grandma and that's what we always called her.  She married a Worth.  Well, when I was working on my tree tonight, I discovered that Walter DeBeauchamp's great grandaughter, Matilda DeBeauchamp, married a Robert DeWorth.  I have yet to untangle the connection as it wends its way down through the centuries, but I think it's really interesting that both my great grandmother and great grandfather had ancestors who probably walked the halls of this castle and it took all those generations, a move to the New World, moves from the East Coast west to the various territories and states as they were settled until these two people ended up in northwest Missouri, fell in love, married and produced my Dad's mother.  It really is a small world.  Almost enough to give you cabin fever.  Teddee