"Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for." ~ Henry Wiencek ~ The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and WhiteI couldn't have said it better myself so I left it to someone else's words to express my feelings about this genealogy path I have taken. My father's mother left behind a very large scrapbook, which is very well documented, of pictures and memorabilia so that her family and her husband's family would not be forgotten. I feel it's my duty and my privilege to pass along this information. With the help of the internet and sites like findagrave.com and ancestry.com, I can help other people find their roots and look into the eyes of family members and maybe find a piece of themselves in them. This way, they will always be remembered for who they were and what they experienced during our history.Thank you in advance for any help that I am given by this community of people. This is an important site and I am excited to be a part of it. ~ Pam

"Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for." ~ Henry Wiencek ~ The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and WhiteI couldn't have said it better myself so I left it to someone else's words to express my feelings about this genealogy path I have taken. My father's mother left behind a very large scrapbook, which is very well documented, of pictures and memorabilia so that her family and her husband's family would not be forgotten. I feel it's my duty and my privilege to pass along this information. With the help of the internet and sites like findagrave.com and ancestry.com, I can help other people find their roots and look into the eyes of family members and maybe find a piece of themselves in them. This way, they will always be remembered for who they were and what they experienced during our history.Thank you in advance for any help that I am given by this community of people. This is an important site and I am excited to be a part of it. ~ Pam