I live in the Midwest and caught the Genealogy bug over 30 years ago. I thoroughly enjoy research and spend hours going through Ancestry, Newspapers, Find A Grave and many other research sites digging up information on families. The information is like pieces of a jig saw puzzle, and I love putting the pieces together.

While I'm researching, if I come across interesting articles or obituaries, I research to find the family information. If a Find A Grave memorial exists, I will verify and add the information, editing the memorial with names, dates and locations. If a memorial doesn't exist, I will create it adding the information that I find. It's very exciting to see families linked together and remembered.

Over the years, I found my second passion is to honor veterans and first responders. I thoroughly enjoy researching the veterans past, updating their memorials and linking their families. THEY WILL BE REMEMBERED ALWAYS!

*Need someone to steward your memorials, incase there ever comes a time you can no longer take care of them? For any reason, please feel free to list me to take over management for you. Just email [email protected] to let them know. Please include my member ID 48554241 and they will make a note of this in your account.

My family line is as follows:

Henry Milden Raynor was my maternal great-grandfather.

The Raynor line has been traced back as follows:

Elaine A Raynor, Arthur Henry, Henry Milden, Joel, John, Josiah, Josiah, Joseph, Thurston Raynor, Edward Reynere, Robert Reynere

Thurston Raynor immigrated to America, with his family, departing from Ipswich, England, in April 1634, aboard the ship, ELIZABETH, and arrived at Massachusetts Bay colony, in July of that year. They originally settled in Watertown, MA., and he helped in organizing the new towns of Wethersfield, and Stamford, CT. Lastly, he helped colonize Hempstead and Southampton, NY., finally settling there.

I'm also researching my maternal-grandmother's line of Elphick's and Pinkerton's:

Etta Mae Elphick was born 1904 in Bruce, Ontario, Canada and married Arthur Henry Raynor in 1919, in Sandpoint, ID. Etta is a daughter of Cora Elizabeth nee Moore and William George Elphick, who is a son of Mary Jane nee Pinkerton, of Canada, and George Elphick, of England.

Robert Anthony Troxell was my paternal great-grandfather.

The Troxell line line has been traced back as follows:

Robert Leonard Troxell, Robert Anthony Troxell, Thomas Sherman, John J, Abraham, Jacob, Christian, Johannes Peter TRACHSEL, Jakob TRACHSEL

Johannes Peter TRACHSEL emigrated to America with his family on the ship "Samuel" and arrived at Philadelphia on 17 Aug 1733. They lived in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

My paternal great-grandparents were Joseph Patrick and Bertha Elizabeth nee Lego Leonard from Pennsylvania.

Also researching my husbands Lewis and Simmons lines:

Daly and Lewis from Boydton, VA and Morristown, NJ

Simmons and Gregory from Pontotoc, MS, Wynne, AR and Muskogee, OK

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~Dear Ancestor~

Your Tombstone stands among the rest

neglected and alone.

The name and date are chiseled out

on polished, marbled stone.

It reaches out to all who care.

It is too late to mourn.

You did not know that I'd exist.

You died and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you

in flesh, in blood, in bone.

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse

entirely not our own.

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled

one hundred years ago,

spreads out among the ones you left

who would have loved you so.

I wonder if you lived and loved.

I wonder if you knew,

that someday I would find this spot,

and come to visit you.

~Walter Butler Palmer

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In a Disused Graveyard

The living come with grassy tread

To read the gravestones on the hill;

The graveyard draws the living still,

But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say:

"The ones who living come today

To read the stones and go away

Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,

Yet can't help marking all the time

How no one dead will seem to come.

What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever

And tell the stones: Men hate to die

And have stopped dying now forever.

I think they would believe the lie.

- Robert Frost

published in 1914

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"Who will reap what I have sown here in this almighty sweet land? You and I will be forgotten. Others will come and go; these, too, shall pass, as you and I shall pass, and others take their places, each telling his love, as I tell you, that life is sweet."

- Jack London circa 1913

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Hey, it's October ~~~~

This from another graver:

'Much better to be looking for dead people, than to have dead people looking for you.'

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Frances Elizabeth Bavier "Aunt Bea" MEMORIAL ID 1457

"TO LIVE IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE LEFT BEHIND IS NOT TO DIE"

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"Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh."

~Matthew 24:44 King James Version

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