I made a genealogy blog. I've been wanting to do it for quite some time, but I wasn't quite sure I would have anything to say. After thinking about it non-stop for the last couple of weeks though, I decided "Why not?!" So, here I am. It may be slow going at first, but I have a feeling things will pick up quickly.
To start this thing, I guess I will mention a bit about my interest in genealogy. I'm not sure what exactly got me started in it. The first time I ever remember asking questions about ancestors was in ninth grade. I had an English assignment that required me to write an autobiography. Me, being the over-achiever that I am, decided it wouldn't be just about me, but also about the people that made me me.
I asked my grandmother and my great-grandmother about any relative they could remember. They had a lot of stories. That autobiography would come in so handy right now because it detailed some people we know very little about in our family. I swear somewhere I still have it, but I cannot seem to find it. If I had to guess, my parents threw it out when they moved or when I went to college. Oh well. My great-grandmother has since passed away, but what I do remember her telling me has proved to be a big help in researching her family.
In any case, that time in ninth grade I think is what started all this mess for me. I became interested in knowing who came before me and how the ways they lived shaped who I am today. Later in high school I think is when I started working on a tree on Ancestry.com. They have since become very exclusive to members only, so I have left them and moved on to Geni.com. I LOVE Geni. They suit my needs perfectly and make finding cousins and relatives very easy. But back when I started using Geni, it was just a little here and there. It has now, however, become a bit of an obsession of mine. I blame my husband's mother.
I got married last March, and my mother-in-law was so excited because she knew I loved researching family trees. She said "Now you can do ours too!" I looked a little, but I wasn't able to find much. Then, this last holiday, she gave me the holy grail of her family: a book outlining all of her father's side of the family as far as they had reached (the 1700's). Since I received this book, I have, literally, been going non-stop working on her side of the family. Then! She gives me the name of someone on my husband's dad's side of the family that has been doing that line. Between all of this information, I have been quite a busy gal.
Since acquiring all of this data, I have added thousands of people to the family tree, and I have even found a few relationships between my husband and I. Very, very distant relationships, unlike the relationship of his parents, but still. I have also gotten closer to realizing the relationship between my own parents. Their relationship seems perhaps even more distant than that between me and my husband. It's in finding all of these connections that I find myself loving genealogy.
I also have the pleasure of having someone else in my family share my love of genealogy. My brother loves doing it too. He may not be quite to the level of obsession I have reached, but he has traveled across the country researching family lines. While I would love to be able to do the same, I tend to let my fingertips do the researching. I rely on whatever records I can find online and the wonderful site findagrave.com for photos and locations of graves.
So, with all of that, what do I hope this blog will be? Well, I came up with a few ideas. First and most importantly, it will be a place I can record all of the crazy relationships and ideas that circle my head when I find new information. I can also record progress made or not made in a certain area. I also hope to use it as a way to tell stories I find or hear about family members in hopes of remembering the way they lived, saw the world, or why they moved from one place to another. I can discuss discrepancies I find in data (which often happens) and try to hash out the truth and think of ways those discrepancies may have come about. There are so many ways I plan to use this blog. I'm so excited to start. Now to work on the tree some more so I have something to write about later!
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