Yes, I remember that you had a relative from IoM. I think when you go, you’ll love it! Maybe you’ll still be able to locate other relatives still living on the island? I’m under the impression that the Manx archives are quite detailed and pretty well preserved. We found the people “very” nice and friendly! We were blessed with great weather (shortly before we got there it had been raining, and after we left, I read that it had rained, so we lucked out!)

We did visit Peel a couple times and is actually one of my favorite places there. I hope to post more pics of our trip there and explain more of what we saw there, so hope these will be inspirational, too. We visited quite a few of their Heritage Museums, very interesting!!! And we bought a few books, too. I’m currently reading one called, Never to Return by Hampton Creer, a native of IoM who is still living on his farm, Ballabunt. His book is about how hundreds of years ago crime penalties there were extreme and quite a few Manx prisoners (many for petty crimes likely due to extreme poverty at the time) were shipped off to penal colonies in places like Australia. I think he was originally doing a genealogy search and found that about 300 years ago, one of his relatives was imprisoned for stealing a sheep and a goat or something like that and recorded to have been shipped off to Jamaica to be a life-long slave there on one of the King’s plantations.

There was so much I enjoyed there, and I really wouldn’t mind going back there again some day! When you go, make sure you have lots of chip space cuz I’m “sure” you’re gonna want to take pics of everything! Ha! It’s gorgeous, and we took over 800 pics just on the IoM. We also bought some traditional Manx music to remember the feel, heheh. I also think the air is fresher there cuz I seemed to have so much more energy while hiking. Take good walking/hiking shoes if you like trails! They have many.

Take care!

Marla