When Mark and I went to Italy, I felt a connection to the land of my ancestors. I had no idea I would experience a very close link to my past on this trip. It happened today, in the photo below, in the MacAuslin Woollen Mill, about an hour’s drive from where we’re staying.

The big machine on the right side of the photo is a wool twister. It runs almost the length of the room, and takes wool that has been washed and carded and twists it into yarn. My paternal grandfather, George Calvin Rand, traveled the country, including the Atlantic Provinces, setting up machines made by the Davis and Furber Company, based in North Andover, Mass., where I grew up. This is a D&F machine.

Mark and I traveled to visit the mill as that is where our friends Heidi and Tom (who own the house we’re staying in) bring the wool from their sheep. Upon entering the mill, we felt as if we had stepped into the way-back machine. Machines were whirring, belts were spinning overhead — it was an OSHA nightmare. And the amazing thing was that we could get as close to the machines as we wanted, and talk to the people running them, which is what we did.

As we watched the fellow running the twisting machine, we walked to the end of the long apparatus and there it was, a plate that said Davis and Furber. Made chills run up my back. Could my grandfather have set up this machine? The mill was rebuilt after a fire in 1947. George was working then. I’ll let my dad weigh in on whether he thinks his father may have had his hands on this very machine.

We bought a MacAuslin blanket for our bed, we needed a new one, and this seemed like the perfect gift to bring home from our vacation, that and the memory of this visit to the mill.