Welcome to my inaugural blog. So why this blog? I greatly enjoy sharing my genealogy finds with my daughter, my family, and my friends, particularly when the finds come from unexpected places. For some time, my daughter has encouraged me to document my genealogy journey. The time is now. My plan is to blog weekly, sharing my family research experiences, providing search tips and techniques, and sharing resources to help others in their research journey. Watch for the tagline Research Techniques in future blogs.

My mom was an avid researcher. She is deceased, but she left her legacy – a passion for genealogy and boxes of genealogy records, family stories, family pictures, and information provided by other family researchers. One of the most important gifts my mom left for my family research is the oral and written family stories. I’ve found “nuggets” in these stories that helped me validate family relationships. In my blog, I will share how some of these stories became “ah-ha” moments in my research. Watch for the tagline Family Stories in future blogs.

Find A Grave^TM biographies, family relationships, and burial locations are valuable sources in genealogy research. I am a contributor to Find A Grave. I focus on adding to biographies and to family relationship links. I also add gravestone pictures for cemeteries in my region. Recently, I engaged my daughter in helping me search and photograph an overgrown, abandoned cemetery. My daughter also videoed our experience. The headstone picture included in this post is one of the grave markers we found. In a future blog, I will share our experience, including the video, as well as other experiences in cemetery memorial research. Watch for the tagline Cemeteries.

About seven years ago, I began family research for a friend who was adopted. She was born in the Alaska territory, but grew up in the mid-west. She had limited information about her birth parents, but her adoptive parents had been told that one of the grandparents was Native Alaskan. Through the use of DNA, genealogy records, and some unexpected sources, I have created her family tree. This journey has been challenging, interesting, and rewarding. In my blog, I will share how we researched her family and the amazing outcomes of this search. Watch for the tagline Alaska.

I enrich my genealogy research with local and regional history. The history helps add to my understanding of the experiences of people who lived in the area and the reasons they may have moved to or moved out of the area. In my blog, I will share some history of where my family lived and how it helped in the search for my family. Watch for the tagline History. I also plan to add links to history resources in the Resource page available on the navigation bar.

I hope that you find something helpful and/or interesting in my weekly blogs. You can follow me on Facebook and on Instagram, and/or send me your comments or questions through the Contact page (menu on navigation bar).