I have been doing genealogy for about 15 years, ever since I discovered the pleasures of internet research. Many of my family members journeyed from New York and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania to settle in Whiteside County, Illinois, before they continued onwards to the West Coast so I have become quite interested in that part of Illinois. As for myself, I was raised in Seattle, Washington, spent most of my adult life in Calgary, Alberta, and recently moved to a small town north of Vancouver, B.C. Unfortunately I have never been to Whiteside County although when I was young I made several visits to Muscatine, Iowa, where my father's family lived.

Family names of particular interest are Blean, Burghardt, Burnett, Carruther, Baker, Craig, Efner, Ege, Craig, Grinold, Kilgore, and Weakley.

Recently I have been working on a local history project for the Calgary community of Bridgeland-Riverside where I used to live. This consists of researching the early settlers of the district and posting their profiles onto Wikitree. These folks were immigrants from all over the world, many from Russia and Italy, none of them my own relatives. Nevertheless, this has been an interesting task.