I have been researching my family history for almost twenty years, and it is the one thing that I never get tired of doing. Back in 2005, I had a major setback when almost all of my research was lost in a fire. What records I was able to rebuild came from two sources: family members who sent copies of anything I had sent to them in the past, and from what little information I had previously loaded on the internet. Thus the seed was planted in my mind that it would be a great idea to build a website on which I could store and share all of my research, family photos, etc.

I love finding new relatives, both living and deceased. I think my passion for genealogy got started in part because I grew up with very little contact with or knowledge of my extended family. We had a handful of relatives who would come to visit during Thanksgiving or Christmas, and some of them would wander through during the summer. I would listen to my friends talk about big family gatherings, reunions and vacations, and always felt more than just a little envious!

So, when my oldest son was born, I decided I wanted him to know who his family was. I bought a book on 'how to trace your family roots' or something like that, and got busy with the task of driving all of my relatives crazy with my endless phone calls and questions! I was absolutely blown away to discover that my father had 13 aunts and uncles!! I was only aware of six of them. And while I knew my mother's aunts (she had no uncles!) I had always assumed that the man married to my great-grandmother had been my grandmother's biological father. I discovered that her real father had died of appendicitis when she was almost five years old!

So, I was hooked, and still am today. I find out new and fascinating things all the time, and I love it. This site is devoted to sharing my information. However, there will be no information on here about any living members of our families. My GEDCOM files begin with each of my grandparents, all of whom are deceased. My husband's GEDCOM files are handled the same way.

Please, feel welcome to contact me with any additions or corrections! The longer I've been doing genealogy research, the more important I have come to believe it is to "Cite Your Sources!", and do not want to add any information that is not 'sourced' in some way. When I first started doing research, I sometimes added information to my 'tree' that didn't have any sources. More often than not, it turned out to be wrong! So, while not everything in my tree is sourced yet, I am diligently working on adding sources for every piece of information I have. (If you don't see a source, please email me...I will do my best to provide one!) It is so much easier to go back and find things if you know where they came from in the first place! It also helps to prevent really big, embarrassing mistakes! If you know you have to 'prove' your information, you are a lot less likely to just grab any tidbit you find on the internet and add it to your family tree just to fill in those charts.

It's tempting, in the beginning, to just 'Google' an ancestor or look them up on Ancestry.com and copy everything you find into your records. But that will only fill your tree with strangers. In the process of documenting my sources, I get to "know" my ancestors so much better than if I had just copied down their names and birthdates. So, please, take the time to document your sources!