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Hello everyone!

So, this is my first attempt to blog - and to organize our family stories and history all in one place!  I know that I want to put a book together at some point, but for now, maybe this will suffice - AND get me motivated to start putting all the information I have into some sort of form that everyone can enjoy it, and not just genealogy nerds like myself!  ;)

I am going to try to start with explaining some general Genealogy lingo, because no matter how I try to organize this stuff, you're going to have to understand some of the lingo (sorry about that!).  So, we'll start with the absolute basics here.

b.  = born
d.  = died
abt  = about (circa, near, used before a date to show that we don't have a definite date verified)
bef  = before (again, used before a date to show that no definite date, but we know the cutoff date)
aft  = after (same as abt and bef, used in front of a date to show that we verified it occurred after the date)
nee = maiden name (Barbara Jean Harris nee Lehman, for example)
m. = married
s/o = son of
d/o = daughter of
w/o = wife of
h/o = husband of

When a place in the USA is listed in genealogy, it is listed by city/town/village first, then the county, then the state .  For instance, Wabash, Wabash, Indiana.  Or, Odessa, Lafayette, Missouri.  Many will also list the country, but I don't often do so when listing a place in the US (although I should!).

I will NOT list anyone who is currently living by name in any part of the history, ever.  It will say "Living" or "Private".  I may list dates and places, but no names will be provided for anyone living.  Anyone deceased will be listed by full names and places and dates.  This is just proper etiquette for genealogy.  :)

It is often hard to keep generations sorted in your head when viewing this type of information.  I will do my best to distinguish between folks in different families or generations that have the same name.  However, be forewarned, our family REALLY liked to re-use names over and over again, making our genealogy research sometimes worthy of screaming!  This is also a familiar naming pattern of many cultures and religions, and there is a method to the madness - but, not everyone followed the rules exactly - so again, sometimes, there is confusion.  I will try as hard as I can to sort everything nice and neat so you don't have to hurt your brain the way I have had to hurt mine with some of these families who apparently thought the only names available for their children were John, Mary, Joseph, and Anne!  ;)

I will also try to list as much information as possible.  Religion, occupation, education, etc.  However, I do not have all of this information for every single person in our tree.  So, what I list, is what I have.  Feel free to start doing your own research and help me out on anyone that you want to "fill in" a bit more!  :)  I will warn you on this too though, I am VERY particular (OCD maybe?) about verifying any and all information before I actually add it to our tree.  So, if you find something and submit it, I will run it through all the tests and verifications before it is added - it's not personal, I just don't want to be walking around thinking I come from a John Something when really I come from his brother Joe Something!

If you have any questions, honestly, any at all - please let me know and I will do my best to answer them.  This has been a hobby of mine (passion?) since about 1991 when I was assigned in a high school class to do a short family tree.  I was hooked from the minute I started finding documents about our family in the Wabash Carnegie Library (Wabash, Wabash, Indiana).  There are a few "brick walls" (meaning, I'm STUCK) that have persisted for years, but there are other lines that seem to go on forever!  By the time you are done reviewing all of this stuff,  you're going to have a really hard time answering someone when they ask, "where are your ancestors from?" - because ours are from EVERYWHERE!  :)

I hope that you all enjoy this as I do it - and please be patient, as it's very time consuming and I'm not sure how quickly I will be able to enter it all.  But, trust me that it's as accurate as current documents allow and that I have checked it and re-checked it and then again double checked it for accuracy!  I look forward to sharing all the info with you all and am hopeful that these stories of US, of our family and our ancestors, will get carried down and on for generation after generation.

Much love, Anita :)