Welcome to my Family!  I have spent several years researching my family, and a lot of what I know about 20th century family comes from conversations I had with relatives in the 1980's and 1990's.  

I am extremely thankful to have had an interest in genealogy sparked by Alex Haley's 1977 TV mini-series called "Roots."  As a teenager, I made the time to begin my own search for photos of the past and stories that often time were nothing more than unexplained remembrances of what my grandparents heard their grandparents say.  "The Kaiser has a wooden leg" never made much sense to me, but over time, I felt for myself the sobering fear passed down of a militarized government in Germany, and hope for opportunity in America.

My family, as it turns out, has experienced so many traumas over time that it has helped me to process the traumas of my own life.  Relatives bickered over money, which is the chief reason for family alienation where it exists.  But advancing social justice for freed slaves got one of my ancestors killed.  In another case, murder was committed because a husband could not be loyal to a wife.  Many businesses were started.  Many served their country.  Many raised beautiful children who went on to live happy lives.  No one became President.  No one earned a Nobel Prize.  But everyone it seems was scrappy, and they found their place in our America.