Recently Big E asked me to look up some information on his biological Grand Father and see what I could find out. He unfortunately passed away at the age of 46 (?) and for what ever reason my father in law didn’t speak much of him. All I really knew was his name and where he lived when he passed away but wow the things that you can bring up on the internet. I saw his original obituary which gave me his father’s name because Big E did not know that either. So of course from there I went to Ancestry.com.

That is where the addiction was born! Oh my goodness. The information that you can find out on this website BUT only if other people have been using it and inputting information for their ancestors. This will be a free advertisement for them because I am not getting a dime I promise you but if you have any interest in your family and where they came from this site can be amazing. With Big E’s Dad I was only able to go back to his Great, Great Grandfather and the well ran dry. Not horrible it went back to 1873 and he nothing before and he found out some things that he didn’t know before. And that is cool. We might make a trip down to Missouri which is a nice place to visit and now we have an excuse On his Mother’s side there is a TON of information and actually I need to find out who actually owns the information so it can be brought up to date.

Of course while I was on it I had to take a look at my family as well and at this moment in time I was able to find out my great grandmother got married at 15 ~ why not, after all it was 1906 what else was she going to do? She had 5 daughter’s (this I knew) they all had unique names which I knew as well but one daughter that died as child her first name was Bethel, very different, very unique, and I think very pretty. I was able to take this line back to 1770 Virginia and 1840 Delaware which would confirm that Mamaw (or Great Grandma) was indeed Dutch because that is where the Dutch settled; in Delaware. You know I am going to try to look even deeper but I have to sleep!

On the other side of my family I have always heard storiesof Doc Taylor and I found him too born in 1829 Lord only knows what kind of care was given by a doctor back then but he had a good reputation so he must have been a good one! There is more to find out I am sure.

As I said, it has really becomes an addiction because you can see marriage license, census legers, things with your relatives signatures on it. To me it is just really cool. If someone has a picture and put it on there you can “see” someone you have only hear stories about.

Here is the other part of the equation. If you don’t know some of your families history you can easily go down a rat hole. I promise you it can make you a bit crazy, especially if you find some information that you didn’t know. When you start heading backwards there isn’t always records for everything. People were born at home, some states had common law so people didn’t bother getting married, children died and they would give the same name to the next child of the same sex born. Confusing to say the least.

So share those stories with each other. Ask your Parents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Siblings about family things. I promise you if you ask them all the same question at different times the stories may be slightly different. This is one time I am really digging what Social Media or at the very least a website can do in a positive way. All right I must go, I have to take a nap so I can get back to my addiction!