About Me

My name is Anita and I've been doing genealogy research since about 1991.  In high school, I had an assignment that required me to do a full family tree back 4 generations.  The problem I found was that my families are HUGE.  It took me a long time to put all those names and dates and places together, while my classmates were mostly able to sit in one class and do theirs from memory!  At that point, not only did I realize that I really enjoyed collecting the data, but I also really enjoyed organizing it and seeing what I could find out about my family members who came before me.  Their stories fascinated me!

So here I am, a little over 24 years later, still at it!  In all those years, I have greatly improved my ability to search and organize.  Of course, the internet was invented in that time too, and it has been a HUGE help!  I started by handwriting everything on chart sheets and visiting my local library which was able to get me a pretty good start on my family lines.  Nowadays, I am back to the 1500s and in other countries.  I have spent countless hours searching and sifting and verifying and searching, sifting, and verifying some more.  I have made connections with faraway (distance and generational!) cousins who have also been a tremendous help in my search.

Luckily for me, I started very young at this, about 15 years old, and that enabled me to ask questions from 3 generations up as my Great Grandmother was still very much alive at that point.  I have been able to get some great stories and some really good leads.  And, of course, I also still have some really solid brick walls, but even that is enjoyable for when I break through them, I am ecstatic!  :)

I extensively use http://www.findagrave.com and it is worth its weight in gold!  I am beginning to manage my family member's memorials there also, which is proving to be very rewarding, making those links that I know so that others may benefit also!

I have an account on http://www.Ancestry.com also and use it almost daily.

I currently reside in the Kansas City, Missouri, area and am more than willing to assist anyone who would like me to gather things from here (cemetery pictures, homestead pictures, local documents, etc.) - just ask and I will find the time to do so!

I hope that you enjoy what you find here and if it helps your search, even better!

Much love, Anita :)