Let the Journey Begin

Hello, and welcome to my brand spankin' new genealogy blog.  I'm hoping this blog will serve as an organizational tool, as well as a means to share my genealogical data with my relatives.  Maybe it will even allow me to connect with distant relatives with whom I can share information.  We'll see!

My genealogical journey actually began back in 2007 when I was enrolled in a college history class.  We were assigned a project in which we were to research our family tree.  We only had to go as far back as our grandparents, but as is the case with most things I do, I just had to go above and beyond.  I signed up for the free trial on ancestry.com and couldn't believe all of the information I was able to find.  It was truly remarkable, and I just couldn't stop!  But, then we moved and my husband deployed to Iraq.  I was in school full time while taking care of our 1 year old son.  I just didn't have the time to work on my family tree anymore.  It was especially unfortunate because at that time I was actually living in Illinois, near my roots which lie in Wisconsin.  Now, I live in Virginia and can't do any of my research in person.

I am still quite busy.  My son is now four and I've added a 10 month old girl to the mix.  My husband recently returned from another deployment, but is working 12 hour days.  However, I am taking time off of school to stay home with my kids, so that offers me a little more time to research my roots.

I have been meaning to get back into my research for some time, but as is life, other things just kept coming up.  Then, a few months ago, I received an email from a woman who had seen one of my discussion board queries on ancestry.com.  You can read this fascinating story on my primary blog, here.  Long story short, together we were able to find the information we had both been searching for regarding my Great Grandmother (her Grandmother), who died much too young and not much was known about, until now.  The experience has re-lit my desire to organize my family tree and research further.

I will start here by sharing the closest branches of my tree. If you click on the pictures you can view them larger.  Here is the tree from me.

Here it is further extended from my father.

And here it is further extended from my mother.

I plan to add individual pages for each surname, at least the ones that I have the most information for.  I will label each post with the surnames that apply to it.  If you ever have any information to contribute or would like to request more information from me, please leave me a comment!  You do not have to be a registered user to comment on my blog.  I look forward to sharing my journey with you!