Adventures in England 3: Family Journey

My ancestry is English on my father’s side. We know the first Winder, Thomas,  came to New Jersey with his wife, Sarah, in the early 18th century, so we’ve been North American for quite some time. One my uncles had traced it all back to England, but we’ve never gotten much farther than Thomas and Sarah and their marriage around 1700. The incomplete genealogy has that listed in London at St. Margaret’s Cathedral. I often wondered what that is, as St. Paul’s is the cathedral for the city, and Westminster Abbey the other big deal church. Where is St. Margaret’s Cathedral?

Doing a little of that family research was one thing on my list for this trip. It turns out that St. Margaret’s is that smaller sister church next to Westminster Abbey. Back in the 11th century when Benedictines built the Abbey, they got annoyed when lots of the regular folk started coming to their services and disrupting the pattern of their day. (Go figure.) So they built another church next door, St. Margaret’s, so they could be left to their own devices in the Abbey. Because it was so much a “peoples” church, there were many weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and the St. Margaret’s register, faithfully kept all these centuries, is one of the best collections of those records in England. I’m going to have to pay someone some money (ancestry.com, or The Society of Genealogy here) to see if the record of the marriage of Thomas Winder and Sarah Bull  is there. The dates of the record go back that far. So today I braved the crowds at Westminster to go to St. Margaret’s. It is very lovely, although certainly the plain sister to its glorious older sibling. The thought of my ancestors’ wedding in that place gave it an interesting grounding for me.

From there I walked up Whitehall, passing all the parliamentary offices and Downing Street where the TV cameras were lined up waiting to hear how David Cameron is going to take action in Syria. I went to Trafalgar Square and to St. Martin-in-the-Fields to pick up tickets to a concert on Friday, and had lunch in the café in the crypt. The concert tickets are for me and Sarah and Lucca, who were already on their way to London from Rome. I went to the flat to await their arrival. Around three Sarah sent a text that the plane was stuck in Germany for an undetermined time.

They finally arrived around 8:30 and I walked down the street to meet them. Lots of fun. We came to the flat and got organized and then went “‘round the pub,” as they say, for dinner - fish and chips for Sarah, a meat pie for Lucca, and a fish pie for me. Very good.

Now we are all about ready for bed at the end of another London day. A family journey from over the centuries to our own family right now. This is Nana signing off on Wednesday. 15, 521 steps.