I began researching my family tree in 1965. It was a history assignment given to our class over Christmas break by our fifth grade school teacher, Mrs. Frieda Lee (from Halls Ferry Elementary School, Florissant, Missouri). My parents, relatives and my grandparents actively helped me. After the assignment was over, my Grandaddy Mears presented me with 3 fragile marriage certificates that had been carefully rolled up in a metal tube. These original marriage certificates were his grandparent's marriage(1851), his parent's marriage (1892) and his marriage(1920). At ten years old... these old fragile documents changed me for the rest of my life! We took several trips to the cemetery where his family members were buried and I wrote down his stories along with inscriptions of tombstones, along with a cartoon drawing of a tree with their names and dates on it. Over the years my Dad, Grandmother & Grandfather, Aunts & Uncles & cousins added to my growing collection of family photographs and documents. Now my Mom had an uncanny skill of remembering her past and family stories in great detail, which had served as a great tool in successfully discovering long, lost relatives and ancestors. She would periodically take out her prized boxes of family photographs to share as she described her family events. By the age of 14, I started writing letters back and forth to my Mom's relatives that were already in their late 80s. These letters have always been a treasure to me. By the time I could drive, I started going to cemeteries and visiting libraries to research and cemeteries. My trips expanded to visit relatives who had the family bibles and old photographs. In the 51 years of research, I have actively visited, shared, and interviewed hundreds of cousins, (2nd, 3rd, 4th), aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandparents and traveled to old family homesteads, hiked through snake infested country cemeteries, copied and restored old photographs, shared family stories and recipes and collected thousands of documents of my families. To further my skills and having great interest in genealogical research of families completely different of my own, I developed skills and unique methods of research as I traveled throughout most of the United States successfully collecting documents. My educational background has been a collection of degrees and historical research courses that have assisted me in how to research anyone's family history. I'm presently collecting documents back to the 1700's.

I began researching my family tree in 1965. It was a history assignment given to our class over Christmas break by our fifth grade school teacher, Mrs. Frieda Lee (from Halls Ferry Elementary School, Florissant, Missouri). My parents, relatives and my grandparents actively helped me. After the assignment was over, my Grandaddy Mears presented me with 3 fragile marriage certificates that had been carefully rolled up in a metal tube. These original marriage certificates were his grandparent's marriage(1851), his parent's marriage (1892) and his marriage(1920). At ten years old... these old fragile documents changed me for the rest of my life! We took several trips to the cemetery where his family members were buried and I wrote down his stories along with inscriptions of tombstones, along with a cartoon drawing of a tree with their names and dates on it. Over the years my Dad, Grandmother & Grandfather, Aunts & Uncles & cousins added to my growing collection of family photographs and documents. Now my Mom had an uncanny skill of remembering her past and family stories in great detail, which had served as a great tool in successfully discovering long, lost relatives and ancestors. She would periodically take out her prized boxes of family photographs to share as she described her family events. By the age of 14, I started writing letters back and forth to my Mom's relatives that were already in their late 80s. These letters have always been a treasure to me. By the time I could drive, I started going to cemeteries and visiting libraries to research and cemeteries. My trips expanded to visit relatives who had the family bibles and old photographs. In the 51 years of research, I have actively visited, shared, and interviewed hundreds of cousins, (2nd, 3rd, 4th), aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandparents and traveled to old family homesteads, hiked through snake infested country cemeteries, copied and restored old photographs, shared family stories and recipes and collected thousands of documents of my families. To further my skills and having great interest in genealogical research of families completely different of my own, I developed skills and unique methods of research as I traveled throughout most of the United States successfully collecting documents. My educational background has been a collection of degrees and historical research courses that have assisted me in how to research anyone's family history. I'm presently collecting documents back to the 1700's.