Stories

I just love a good story, don't you?  In putting this blog together I have done a lot of thinking about stories.  Family stories, the very best kind.  They are true, at least as true as a person's memory, full of humor, pathos, sympathy, empathy, sorrow, joy, anger, happiness and most of all love.  When I started down the path of looking for ancestors, I thought I would find a few stories and rubbed my hands together in expectation.  I never expected veritable river of stories and information that began to flow right to my electronic front door.    In fact, I was going down for the third time, drowning in new information when a cousin I had just met through her own constant genealogical search, grabbed me out of the uncontrolled flood and set me upon a nice dry organized path  I have found so many wonderful stories on that path that I will be sharing with you.  Many of them are my stories, many are your stories.  And if you have ever tried to find an Aunt Susie from Peoria, this is your personal story.  


If you start trying to find Aunt Susie with any seriousness at all, expect to meet new people, not just discover past family members.  There are cousins out there who like you want to find out about their family and they will find you!  That is a really good reason why you should always document ancestors you find before you decide they are a "keeper" for your family tree.  I had met and enjoyed so many cousins I never knew before.  And some I knew as a child and lost track of completely.  It has been wonderful.  And because I did document each new addition to my tree, I knew they really were my cousins.  Oh yes,  I went down a couple of wrong paths at the start.  It is so exciting when you first go into Ancestry.  It seems like it will take about a week and you will have your entire family history down.  WOW!  Whoda thunk it?  Then you discover there were really 3 Susies in Peoria and only one of them was really your missing Aunt.  Uh oh.  And that's when you learn about documentation and chasing down leads and census information and all those magical terms.  You are on the road to being a genealogical researcher and it's fun!  The discoveries are triumphs.  And it can get tedious too.  It's like popcorn.  Not all the seeds pop.  But the ones that do are really good.  I will look forward to your comments.  I will guide some future scribblings from them so let me know what are your likes and interests.  If I don't have direct experience with them, I can guarantee that I have friends who do.  Happy searching.