I finally made it to Portsmouth tonight! Actually, the exit was closed and I overshot into Kittery. Fortunately, I made the investment on my rental to get the GPS. It recalculated my route about 6 times today and I was so glad I had it. I flew into Boston Logan Airport. My flight was a little late so I only had time to visit one library this afternoon. Many of the ones I wanted to visit weren’t open after 5 or on Monday so I chose an obscure one. I set my GPS on Ipswich, MA and drove there. Picture a scene from Murder She Wrote. Actually, the whole area looks like Cabot Cove from the show. I got to the Ipswich Library on the recommendation of Bert Hicks and managed to find the Archivist who spent 20 minutes of valuable time telling me how to thread a Microfilm reader. REALLY? I just wanted to slap her! Anyway, my big take away was that even though the town had gone to the trouble of microfilming their early records no one has been able to index them. In 350 years. I fumbled for about an hour trying to find anything of value. Not one Babb was mentioned there. It was the home of the Perkins & Wise families who married in to the Hussey line and eventually into the Thomas Babb (1-2) line. I eventually found a book that had taken the available documents and created biographys of the data and found some interesting stuff in it including a record that has puzzled me in the past. It is a record of a Thomas Babb from 1634 that predates our Phillip’s record on the Shoals. I’ve never known what to make of this record and still don’t. But would imagine that it bears some relation. It is one of the things I want to research more once I’m back in the comfort of my home. After the library I drove on to Portsmouth passing through towns like Newbury, Amesbury & Greenland all of which bear a Babb history all their own. But those are stories for another day. I’m off to bed and will make a fresh start of it in the morning. Good Night! Dan

Repost: Originally posted on Apr 12, 10