This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Shipmeadow, Suffolk, England • This is my last column from merry old England. You're probably bored with the travelogue by now. Hopefully I'll be able to adjust back to Utah time.

On a typical sunny/cloudy/rainy English day, we traveled to the precise place my ancestors lived when my great-great-grandfather's sister came home one afternoon with a couple of Mormon missionaries. It changed everything.

The idea was to drive ourselves to this momentous spot while visiting various other Kirby sites along the way. We had a guide in the form of a local landowner named Bill Hammond, whose sister, Josie Stone, lives near us in Herriman.

I offered Bill a place in our rental car, but he said it would be better if he drove his own vehicle and we followed him at a considerable safe distance. He never said so, but I got the impression that Josie had been telling him stories.

Shipmeadow is 15 miles south of Norwich, as the crow flies — about an hour as the country road system works. There isn't much here, just a few farms, a couple of old churches now privately owned, and a large apartment building that was once a fearsome workhouse.

I've heard that it's sometimes strange to stand in a place you've never been and feel completely at ease, almost as if you had come home. Maybe it's true that humans inherit memories the way we do physical traits.

I don't know if we do or not. What I do know is that Shipmeadow didn't resonate that way with me, even though I'm fairly certain any number of my ancestors sank permanent roots in nearby cemeteries.

There's no way of knowing for sure because the Kirbys were too poor to afford durable headstones. Still, there's no sense in me that this was anything other than a temporary place in our bloodline.

If the Kirbys left any lasting mark on Shipmeadow, it's no longer here. There are no headstones, streets or farms bearing our surname in this tiny part of East Anglia. It's like we never existed here at all.

As we explored Shipmeadow, something did start to sink in. Whatever else happened here, it was still the place where my ancestors made a decision to leave it all behind for something unknown.

The four Kirby siblings who departed here fully understood that they would never again see the family members who stayed behind. What was it that made them so committed/desperate to come to that conclusion?

I get the part about joining the LDS Church and abandoning everything to build up the kingdom of God in some faraway desert. But couldn't they have stayed and built it up here? Maybe if they had, there would be something to show for it.

If they had stayed, maybe they could have become missionaries and made sure that today's inhabitants of Shipmeadow knew at least something about Mormonism.

Ironically, things would have to come full circle for that to happen.

We made one final stop before leaving. At the end of an overgrown lane, we paused and talked to a woman working in her garden. No, she didn't know of any Kirbys still in the area. Why was I asking?

I explained that my ancestors had once lived here but had immigrated to Utah in 1863. That's when I saw the connection flicker in her eyes. She smiled happily.

"Oh, goodness," she said. "Utah, of course. Could you possibly help me get tickets to the 'Book of Mormon' musical? I hear it's hilarious."

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.