Thanks Mike and uncle Bob. We have nothing like it in God's own; but I can understand the thinking behind it.

My lot were of peasant stock; it was the Irish potato famine of the 1830s and 40s that drove them out.
Rosie's lot were the same, (but 100 years later,) we went back to see where her father was born and raised.
The cottage (on the west coast of Scotland,) where Andrew's father was the kennel keeper, was not as flash as the kennels the local Laird's dogs lived in.
So we too have many reasons to be thankful.

Seeing first hand where he came from made me understand the man a lot better. His obsession with flashy trinkets and 'intellectual' books, (which he never read,) showed the world that he had 'made it'.
He was rich and could afford these things was the message he was sending.