What, you ask could be better than finding a whole new family?  Well, not much, but we did manage to fit in some pretty interesting adventures!

First was Niagara Falls. It was pretty amazing–a lot of water.  We could use some in Arizona.

Mark, Jeff, and I decided to jump off a very tall platform and take a zip line to the bottom of the falls.

Here we go!!!

There we go!!  And we all survived.

Took a walking tour with our new-found family through Old Town Kensington Market.  This is the part of town where Annie lived.

Jeff standing in front of Annie’s house, now an office.

Met up with Rebecca, Ted, Edith, and Ian, pals from the India trip, along with Sandy and Annabel.

Ted suggested going to Niagara On the Lake.  What a pretty little town full of beautiful flowers and other tourists.

But, it was Mark’s birthday so we stopped at Orzo and had a great lunch!

When you are in New York you might not naturally think of the Erie Canal. We did and set out to find it.  In Lockport there it was!  Here lives a five tiered set of locks which are like giant stairs to get boats up and down a 60 foot change in elevation.

It’s hard to see, but the five layers are still there.

Sixty foot weir gates holding back the water behind the boat we were on.

The mechanism which operates the weir doors.

Leaving the locks.  This canal is 363 miles long and was started in 1817.  It only took 7 years to complete and was opened in 1825 to help shuttle good and people to the less settled west.  It runs from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Quite a fear of engineering!!

What a time we had this past 10 days!  Family, Falls, Flowers, and the Erie Canal!!  What is next?  Wait and see!

Yes, Jeff did walk around the edge of CNN Tower in Toronto.

 We began our journey driving through Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.  We arrived at Grand Island, New York and settled in just south of the border because there was no room at any campgrounds nearer to Toronto. You may not have heard this story so I will tell it once again. My Dad, Mike Kauffman was born in 1913 in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. He was the third son born to Jacob and Katherine née Tetenbaum. The family emigrated to Canada late in 1913 and eventually moved to Rutland, Vermont where two more sons and a daughter were born. Prior to my dad’s birth, the second son died and there was also a stillborn daughter born in Vermont.  In 1922 Katherine was again pregnant.  Her children ranged in age from 14 to 2.  Jacob was a traveling salesman and took the oldest son with him. Katherine went to Toronto to be with her sisters, Sarah and Annie.  While she was there one of Sarah’s children got married, Sarah died, and Katherine went into premature labor delivering a baby girl who wasn’t expected to live. Katherine got blood poisoning and died two days after giving birth but not before asking her sister, Annie, to take the baby and raise her.  Jacob returned from his sales route and, instead of leaving the children in the care if family, left with them in the middle of the night and went back to the United States. My dad and his brothers and sister were put into foster care because Jacob couldn’t raise all of them and do his job. He and the oldest son left and the last clue we have about them is that the son was in university in Havana and Jacob was also there suffering from”brain fever.”  My dad kept the family together as much as he could.  And they grew up depending on each other.  They never forgot the baby who they thought had died and looked for information on her their whole lives.  They all died never knowing the rest of the story.

Enter detectives Kathie and her brother Jeff!  Starting in 1991 when we lived in England I went on a mission to find traces of my family  I found Katherine and Jacob’s marriage certificate, my dad and his two brother’s birth certificates, the second son’s death certificate, and my great grandfather Tetenbaum’s death certificate.  At this point Jeff took over and in 2003 we found a sister of Katherine whose family still lived in Newcastle.  A genealogist Jeff knew found the family of Sarah who were still in Toronto.  Then last year Jeff and I did a DNA test and Jeff posted what we knew of our family tree on several web sites.  This spring we heard from two more descendants of Katherine’s family, one in England and one in New Jersey who really filled in so many blanks  AND, finally we got a clue as to what happened to the baby Katherine had given to her sister.  Dolly, as she was called, also grew up in Toronto, had a daughter and a son and died in 2013.  Again, we searched and Jeff found the death notice of Dolly’s husband and reached out to the funeral home in hopes we could get in touch with the family.  Long story short, we found a wonderful and new to us first cousin!!!

Me, Jeff and Gail, our cousin!

Jeff and me celebrating! More new family!  Above are me, Gail, second cousin Sandy, her daughter Shayne, Jeff, and another second cousin, Jude. This is our new family.  Katherine had six brothers and sisters and I think four branches of those siblings are gathered here.  I am still so moved by this whole experience and all the strangers who gathered us in and made us a part of their lives that I get all teary.  Mostly I thank Gail who, even though she thought we were pretty weird insisting she was our cousin, went along with the DNA test and accepted us into her life.  Thank you Sandy, Shayne, Pam, and Rhonda, who come from Sarah’s line.  Thank you Jude who comes from Baruch’s line. Thank you Avi, David, and Eileen, from Annie’s branch.  Thank you Rob, Joanne, and Daniel also from Annie’s branch.  Thank you Annabel and Ted.  Thank you Joan and Howard.  Thank you Lew for your help in finding Dolly, and thank you Emma for the comprehensive story of “our” ! family!!

Jeff and I have full hearts and a great sense of accomplishment in our feat.  Thank you all for reading this whole saga!  Next time more about what else we did in O, Canada!