Growing up in Texas, Amanda Akes-Cardwell loved hearing stories of her grandmother Ella Gibbons Jones’s childhood in Bermuda. Mrs Jones, born in 1925, lived in a house called Stone Hill on Tee Street, Devonshire, before marrying a US serviceman and moving to the United States.

“Her father, Joseph Watson Gibbons, was a plumber,” Amanda said. “He installed many of the pipes in Bermuda. He had rheumatoid arthritis, so he was bedridden from the time my grandmother was born. It got progressively worse until he was in a wheelchair.”

Amanda, who now lives just outside Washington with wife Sarah Akes-Cardwell and their five-year-old son, Sam, grew up with Bermuda as a kind of magical place in family lore.

“She would talk about Bermuda all the time,” Amanda said. “Bermuda has always been a place that I have wanted to visit.”

This month Amanda finally ticked that wish off her bucket list. She travelled to Bermuda with Sarah and Sam to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. The women, both Episcopal priests, decided to combine their anniversary trip with a pilgrimage into Amanda’s family history.

Before coming to the island, Sarah wrote to the Bermuda National Trust seeking information about Stone Hill.

BNT researchers Linda Abend and Margie Lloyd began digging into the records. Ms Lloyd reached out to Jeanie Flath, who lives on Leeson Lane, Devonshire, on the north side of Tee Street Hill. She and Amanda were hoping to connect with any family members on the island associated with the house.

“She asked if I knew of anyone named Gibbons who lived close by,” Ms Flath said. “The only person I knew was Gordon ‘Gordy’ Gibbons.”

It turned out that the house they were looking for was one that Ms Flath’s grandmother and father had bought years earlier.

“It has been renamed and my daughter lives there now,” Ms Flath said.

Mr Gibbons, 82, grew up on Tee Street and still lives there. His father, Ernest, was Amanda’s grandmother’s brother.

Ernest Gibbons cofounded Astwood Cycles with Colonel Sir Jeffrey Astwood in 1948 and later ran a Tee Street guesthouse called Grandview.

Ms Flath organised a gathering so that Amanda and Sarah could see the house and meet some of their Tee Street cousins and neighbours. Amanda brought with her a memory book her grandmother had written for her grandchildren.

Mrs Jones had seven grandchildren and meticulously wrote out a book for each of them.

She described her childhood in Bermuda, her family and her life in the United States.

“Even though we were at war during my teenage years, there was a gentleness and sweetness to life,” she wrote. “Men were gentlemen and women were expected to be ladies.”

The book included old photographs of relatives and the houses they had lived in.

It was through this book that Amanda knew her grandmother had once lived at Stone Hill. When Mrs Jones died in Florida in December 2011, the memory books became priceless treasures for her descendants.

During the gathering, Mr Gibbons spoke about growing up on Tee Street. He remembered a woman named Irene Harvey who worked for his family for many years.

“I remember when I came out one day and she was ironing my father’s shirt,” Mr Gibbons said. “I was fussing. She said, ‘Let me finish your father’s shirt. Then I will give you a sandwich’.”

Except he kept on whining until Ms Harvey gave him a spanking. When his father came home, Mr Gibbons ran to him to complain.

“He said Irene has been there longer than me so had seniority,” Mr Gibbons remembered. “He said if she spanked you, she must have had a good reason. Then he pulled down my drawers and gave me another spanking.”

Irene is also mentioned in Mrs Jones’s memory book as taking the children on picnics to Devonshire Bay.

Mrs Jones met her husband, Howard, during the Second World War when he was stationed in Bermuda with the US Army.

Amanda recounted how before he could ship out with his fellow troops, he fell off a cliff and broke both ankles.

“Thank goodness that is all he broke,” she said.

The accident was lucky in some respects because it stopped him from being sent to a dangerous posting. Instead, he remained in Bermuda to recover in hospital for several months.

During his convalescence he met Mrs Jones at a dance at the Methodist Church. They married in Lake Worth, Florida, in July 1944 and settled there.

She returned to visit Bermuda a few times, but, Amanda said the last time was before she was born. In her memory book there is a photograph of Mrs Jones and her siblings with the caption: “The last time we were together.”

On this trip, Amanda took the opportunity to walk in her grandmother’s footsteps. She attended church, walked around Spittal Pond in Smith’s, swam at Devonshire Bay and visited Stone Hill.

“The first time we went to the beach, on the first day we got here, I just felt a connection to the land that my nana loved so much,” she said.

Visiting Ms Flath in Devonshire and seeing the house that had been so central to her grandmother’s early life, was especially emotional. “That was a real connection point,” Amanda said.

Her wife, Sarah, said everyone had treated them with remarkable kindness, from the BNT researchers to their Tee Street hosts.

Mr Gibbons said he felt as though his family had suddenly expanded. Sam Akes-Cardwell said his favourite part of the trip was going to the sea.

The Akes-Cardwells hope the trip to Bermuda will not be their last. They are already looking forward to coming back.