We did enjoy the time.
One thing I did get from the pub owner (who may have been misinformed) was that Bishops Cannings had once been surrounded by several large estates. None, of course, were owned by my wife's ancestors, who must have been landless tenant farmers.
And landless tenant farmers, of course, were most skilled at the grunt work that farming requires. So, who better to carve farms out of the forested countryside of colonial Pennsylvania?
I also discovered that the English civil war battlefield of Roundway Down is virtually across the road from Bishops Cannings. Naturally, I wondered -- and still wonder -- whether and how the Pyles, Slopers, Nashes and Witherses were affected by all the ruckus. One of the few signs on the battlefield showed the defeated Parliamentary forces streaming away in the direction of Bishops Cannings.
(And, just as an aside, it also struck me that Brits would be amazed to see the granite forests that U.S. Civil War battlefields have become. Their battlefields are almost wholly unmarked. For anyone who has seen Gettysburg, the "neglect" of places such as Roundway Down seems...well, very strange.)
