Generations

This is a picture of my great great Grandmother, Harriet Amelia Densmore born in 1846. She is standing outside her home in Noel, Nova Scotia. There is nothing all that remarkable about a photo of a ancestor standing in front of her home but to me what is remarkable is that I got to stay in this house. I got to sleep in a odd size feather bed with my sister in a room that my great grandmother had as her room. Actually it was the same bed. My cousin owns the house now. The house has been in the family since the 1820's. Its been added on to a couple times. It now has a big screened in porch and another room.
It faces the ocean, the Bay of Fundy, where the tide comes in at record speed.
At the top of the stairway is a huge old spinning wheel, a Great Wheel. When I saw it there, I stood there imagining all the hands that made yarn with that wheel. I was looking at something that those before me used to make needed items for their families.
When I was there, walking along the path to the road and across to the ocean, I felt part of a great legacy, I felt my history. Harriet died when she was 88 in 1934, 20 years before I was born. I look at her picture and imagine her feeding the chickens, lighting the kerosene lamps, milking a cow, spinning wool, making her clothes, cooking on wood, and loving her 8 children and still making room to adopt one more. I love this family history and living a part of it with our homestead lifestyle. Connections, through the generations. A good thing.