Genealogy has become a passion of mine over the years. It started because my uncle loves to tell family stories. He does not often find willing listeners in the younger generations of our family. He did however find one.

I listened to his tales and I heard not only the stories but the pride in his voice and I knew that it would mean so much to him if he could see a history with his memories incorporated into it. I set out originally to write down a few stories, add a tree chart to it so that it would show the connections to the people he was talking about and print out a little family report for him.

That was 12 years ago and what happened afterwards was truely amazing. It turns out that there was more interest in our family history than either of us realized. I found myself being the keeper and recorder of all things family,dates, places, events and activities. It also seems that my passion is more like an obsession and our tree is more like a jungle.

I have spent countless hours searching the internet, my local historic society, cemetaries in the area, and talking to friends neighbors and relatives. I have not spent any money on the project and have found enough information to link one branch all the way back to Turkey circa 1100 a.d. The resources are out there, not always easy to find, but out there.

Don't give up!

If you are just looking for statistics it might be best to join a site like Ancestry.com But if you are looking for the whole story

• Talk to family - young and old
• Talk to the neighbors - All of my grandparents are gone but the neighbors knew them well.
• Write everything down.
• Type your ancestors name into a search engine like google and see what comes up
• Most churches are posting historic records on the Internet but if not go to the source.
• Becareful of internet sites that claim to have free access.
• Free trials are ok but make sure you know the true cost before you sign up.
• http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start in my opinion the best free info site for census records.
• Visual documentation adds a little more interest, Draft records, Service pension records, census records, church documents etc.
• http://www.myheritage.com offers a really nice tree builder and will allow you to publish up to 250 names to your own family webpage. This limitation can be changed by upgrading your membership if you choose and only applies to what you publish not what you build for personal use.They also have a smart search that matches your tree to other trees as you are building it. Really cool and helpful.
• Find someone in the next generation to continue the record keeping.
• Don't give up.

Here ia a to partial list of names associated with my family tree project. It is a work in progress and I have not published it to the internet at this time. I will be posting the entire project both here and on the rootsweb site when I have everything entered into my favorite free tree building software "MyHeritage Family Tree Builder"
I will be happy to help anyone that might be interested.

Current Living Adults

Related thru Esther Becker March

Related Thru Oliver L. March