My introduction to the actual research involved in genealogy took place in the early 1970s when I lived in another state just two counties away from an ancestor and was sent there to see what I could find. Several years later when I remarried, I could fill in the charts for my family in our wedding book, but the opposite page was essentially blank which enabled me to research my new family's history literally from scratch. At the time, my new in-laws couldn't tell me the maiden names of their respective four grandmothers. As the months passed and information gathered, it was fascinating how each new puzzle piece joggled one or more memories.

Years later after computers and the Internet came along and I connected further and further back, I realized that I could proudly boast that every one of my lines on both sides have been in America since the early 1600s ranging through the late 1700s, and that no ancestor arrived on our shores after 1800. It was an awesome, yet humbling experience when this realization swept over me and I realized that each and every ancestor had played a part, each in their own unique way, in settling this vast country in which we live and made contributions in one way or another to all that we know and enjoy today.

Now that I've created several dozen pages at Find A Grave, written brief biographies for each one, and connected family members together when possible, a new realization swept over me -- that each and every grave represents a person who has a story to tell, a real story and not just a collection of dates. So that is my reason for being here -- to tell those stories to the very best of my ability and connect once again family members often separated by long distances.