I began working on Find-A-Grave in 2008 after my mother was admitted to a memory care unit for dementia patients; however, she had taught me our family genealogy since I was as young as 9 when she commissioned an artist to paint our Clifton crest. She made some mistakes when gathering census documents and researching, but that only taught me to be careful with my own research. It was much easier to create a genealogy chart when electronic documents came to Ancestry.com!

After I found almost 4000 people in our tree, only then did I realize how blessed I was to have known the wealth of information and seen the photos/hand-drawn pictures of my ancestors for almost my whole life! Not everyone has been as blessed.

I want my contribution to be meaningful for others, whether in my family or not. Although my current contributor number is new, I once managed over 54,000 memorials during the last 17 years. I am back to focusing on family or neighbor families. Good wishes for a positive FindaGrave experience !!

Researching Cliftons from England to Yorktown, Virginia in the early 1600s, to South Carolina, then finally to Alabama. We were joined by the Shannon family from Ireland, the Thrasher family, the Moody family, the Prather and Windham families, the Panty family from Hungary, the Stephens , and many more. DNA tested.