I was born and reared in Lake County, OH - very close to Lake Erie. I'm an unemployed Spanish Teacher by occupation and a passionate genealogist by obsession. When I was 9 yrs. old an elderly cousin, extremely active in our local historical and genealogical societies took me under her wing. I've been hooked ever since. I began working on my Nichols family more than 25 years ago and am still documenting the descendants of Sgt. Francis Nicholls of Sedgeberrow, Worcestershire, England who removed to the colonies (Stratford, Fairfield, CT) in 1639.
All of my paternal lines came to the colonies very early -1600s (Nichols, Munson, Knapp, Balch, Chadwick, Hartwell - Murphy a bit later).

The past few years I've worked in spurts on my paternal grandmother's (Harriet Chadwick Nichols)families (Balch, Chadwick, Murphy, Hartwell). I'm always willing to share what information I have.

Years ago, the youngest of our six children remarked to me: "Ma you work hard with 12 hr. days Mon-Thurs, so you can go to dusty libraries on Friday and research dead people, on Saturdays you go to cemeteries and walk on top of dead people, then on Sunday afternoons you go talk to old people that are almost dead! Ma, get a life!"

Hopefully one day I will have all of our holes filled and up-to-date.