There has always been an interest in genealogy by most members of my family even if it was just the traditional school genealogy research project. Perhaps the most influential person in my genealogical background was my mother's Kansas cousin, Nota. We talked and talked about genealogy and then she shared a copy of the extensive research that she had done; what a great gift!
After I joined the U.S. Army in the early 70's, we were stationed in Germany and we subscribed to "The Genealogical Helper". We conducted most of our research through it by submitting advertisements, sending handwritten letters and completed forms. It was always exciting to get a reply to our queries and occasionally visit the hometowns of some of our European ancestors. Over the course of time my son, Joel, and my first cousin once removed, Tim, have become very involved with "the family" history.
Recently when I went to visit my mother in Indiana she gave me an article about two gentlemen that were involved in cleaning headstones, mostly from the 1700's. In that article it mentioned about findagrave.com. Resources have certainly changed since I originally became interested in genealogy. What a great resource!
One of my goals is to transfer our (and Nota's) old paper forms into digital format and add some new information along the way.

There has always been an interest in genealogy by most members of my family even if it was just the traditional school genealogy research project. Perhaps the most influential person in my genealogical background was my mother's Kansas cousin, Nota. We talked and talked about genealogy and then she shared a copy of the extensive research that she had done; what a great gift!
After I joined the U.S. Army in the early 70's, we were stationed in Germany and we subscribed to "The Genealogical Helper". We conducted most of our research through it by submitting advertisements, sending handwritten letters and completed forms. It was always exciting to get a reply to our queries and occasionally visit the hometowns of some of our European ancestors. Over the course of time my son, Joel, and my first cousin once removed, Tim, have become very involved with "the family" history.
Recently when I went to visit my mother in Indiana she gave me an article about two gentlemen that were involved in cleaning headstones, mostly from the 1700's. In that article it mentioned about findagrave.com. Resources have certainly changed since I originally became interested in genealogy. What a great resource!
One of my goals is to transfer our (and Nota's) old paper forms into digital format and add some new information along the way.