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04 October 2012

From The Beginning...

In about 1995 I was bitten by the bug, the genealogy bug that is. It's a bite like nothing I have ever experienced. It makes me do crazy things like stalk cemeteries, dig through records of long ago and decipher handwriting that most would throw away as illegible. I have read thousands of books, articles, census records, birth, death and marriage certificates, blogs, message boards, phone books, court documents and more. 

My journey is far from complete and I have found so many shocking things that sometimes it makes my head spin. I'll give you an example. One morning about 4 a.m., I was pouring through family histories and suddenly found out that my soon to be husband was my cousin. Now before you flip out on me, he's my tenth cousin 6 times removed so it's legal but needless to say I thought I was going to fall out of my chair upon finding this revelation. 

See one thing I have found while searching for my roots is that we are all one degree of being connected somehow some way. Most people think they have two sets of grandparents and some Aunts and Uncles and cousins. Well boy are they in for a surprise when they realize they have hundreds of grandparents and thousands of Aunts and Uncles and close to an infinite number of cousins. Some days I go around singing "I'm my own Grandma"  and scary enough I could be! 

Seriously though, tracing my roots and the roots of my children has been the most exciting thing I have ever done, next to giving birth. Finding out that my sons are direct descendants of Peregrine White, the first baby born on the Mayflower while it was docked at Provincetown Harbor, Massachusetts or to find out that my Straits and Westfalls were the founding settlers in Orange county, New Jersey and that my Perry family escaped religious persecution from Northern Ireland has really shed a whole new light on who I am. It has helped me know that no matter what I may have gone through in my life that they were probably going through so much more.

I will be showcasing different things about my family branches in posts to come. I tend to follow rabbit trails so forgive me if this blog also bounces around. I have so much information to share, to clarify and to research that I decided this would be the best place to help me and others piece our tree together. 

A few prominate names I have confirmed are Kennedy (Canady, Kenedy), Scurlock (Sherlock, Spurlock), Bennington (Pennington), Barnhouse, Strait (Streit, Straight), Perry (Peery), Westfall, Spalding (Spaulding), White, Byrd (Bird, Burd), Lincoln, Grant, Boone  and many many more. 

Happy Digging and please Don't lose your census along the way.


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