Monkwearmouth-Sunderland-England

Dan and Linda Hull
The weather changed during the night and it went from mild to cold and tonight bitter cold. With the wind blowing off the sea it is very cool. We had another great day of searching for Morrisons in Monkwearmouth and talking to local historians at the local library. We also went to St Peter's Church to photogragh it for Debbi and then we head to the Museum to learn about all of the ship building that occurred in Sunderland. In the 1800's, Sunderland was the largest ship building center in the world-so they say. They made hundreds of clipper ships like our ancestors sailed on from Liverpool. The ship was probably made here. About 1900 they started making metal ships or the more modern kind and so the industry changed from wood to metal. Linda's family mostly worked as ship carpenters and they all lived in a place called the Barbary Coast which is where Monkwermouth is.
Tomorrow we travel west through the Lake District and over to the Liverpool area to visit the area where the Rigby side of our family originated. It promises to be quite cool on the last three days but the scenery is supposed to be the most beautiful of England. Kristin is going to take the lead on this part of the trip as Linda did the last couple of days. By time we get back the different families will all be jumbled a bit but with all of the photos, documents and notes we should be able to seperate them all quite well.