Back in the 1980's my mother gave me the antique Bible that my great grandparents had brought with them when they migrated from England circa 1850. In it were the successive birth, marriage, and death dates of many of the successive ancestors written on slightly tattered yellowed pages stuck in the Bible centerfold. What a find!

But later what really triggered my excitement and interest in genealogy was that my mother later followed up with a package of old photos and a bundle of roughly 100 writings of her observations and memories of being raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm by her half aunt, uncle and school-teacher cousins beginning at the age of two following the early death her mother on the Illinois farm that her great grandfather had built.

In 1995, after my mother had passed, my cousin joined me in the pursuit of our genealogy. There were mysteries to be solved! Mysteries dissolved when my cousin discovered an old LaSalle, Illinois county "Who's Who" containing an accounting of our great great grandmother in which she states that many of her grand fathers had arrived on the Mayflower.

I have been addicted to genealogy ever since. My interest in FindAGrave is to connect families and give an additional face to my deceased and remembered ancestors.