At that time I had taken my mother who was in her early 80s and my then 10 year old daughter who is now married and in her 30s to Zurich, Switzerland. At the time I didn't realize that this was where my ancestors on my Father's side came from (this area). However, since then I have learned a lot more about when they left this area to come to America then around 1725. I have been able to track my ancestors back to about 1580 in Switzerland at this point. They all had families of 5 to 10 children at that time from about 1580 onwards to when the 6 brothers came to England and then across the ocean in a boat something like the pilgrims traveled in only about 100 years later in 1725 up the river to Philadelphia which is where my family's ancestors first started their colonization of America at that time.
By the 1840s my great Grandfather was born in Kansas and was a Captain in the Civil War in the northern Army and after the war started a pharmacy which started with herbs bought from Native American Medicine people on a nearby reservation. The Pharmacy was very successful and so he continued this business from the 1870s until he sold the business in 1925 there in Kansas and retired and continued living until the 1940s so he was close to 100 years old when he passed away there. His Wife my great grandmother lived to be around 105 years old in the early 1950s.
So, my mother and my then 10 year old daughter met my son who was then around 25 years old and still single and his friend who had just graduated from UCSC with a physics degree and we met in Munich, Germany where my mother and daughter and i had flown into from Edinburgh, Scotland through London to Munich. In Munich I rented a 6 passenger Motor home that was diesel and a stick shift that slept all of us and had a bathroom and a kitchen on board. We drove south first to Oberamagau, Germany, then to Austria and then to Zurich Switzerland where we got a room in a hotel for several days and I noticed that the wooden beams in this hotel were dated back to the 1400s which is remarkable if you are an American because nothing is that old made by men that far back here in the U.S. Things start with the 1500s in Santa Fe, New Mexico and everything else is younger than that throughout the U.S. So, we all rested for several days in Zurich, Switzerland before we continued our journey throughout Switzerland and into Northern Italy. We went as far as Aosta, Italy which is relatively near the Matterhorn Mountain in Switzerland. I was completely amazed by the tunnels dug through the Alps by the Swiss that I drove through to get to Italy. There would be sun in one valley and then you would go through another tunnel under a mountain and then it would be snowing and then you would drive through another mountain tunnel and then it would be raining coming out the other side into Italy and Aosta. My son and his friend put on their backbacks and left us in Aosta for the Amalfi Coast of Italy and Rome but I needed to get my motor Home and my mother and 10 year old daughter back to Munich to return the motor home I rented and fly my mother and daughter to London for a few days before we flew home to San Francisco once again to my wife and 2 1/2 year old daughter then. This was fall of 1999.
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