My Story
Hello! I'm so glad you found this corner of the internet. This website is a labor of love. In 2004 I bought a 26 part CD set of genealogy software and began poking around. My maternal grandmother was already far ahead on genealogy, finding her patriot and joining the DAR and exploring more of her history. My paternal grandmother's ancestry was tucked away in Slovenia with a significant language barrier. She had collections of notes and scribbles where she had tried to map things out but didnt' make it very far across the Atlantic. She also inherited boxes and albums of pictures from her mother, her husband and her brother in law, very few labeled. While not a history buff, I am a problem solver and saw this as an intriguing project to put all these pieces together, falling in love with the people and their stories along the way.Along the way, I also spent a short stint as the museum director in the county where my parents were born. I knew my stories weren't the stories represented in the family histories in their archives because we didn't have money and political clout, we had hardship, love and family and the stories that go with that. Though my family had been there for a long time, no one saves the stories of the coal miners and small farmers and this is just one small thing I can do to make certain my family history, and the story of the average family is not lost.
My Goals
Mostly, I hope to use this as a webpage to connect and share because while I've found all this information, I don't own the stories or the information I've found, I just organize it and try to make sense of it and my own history. The stories of our ancestors belong to all of us.More Details on How This Website Works
I also understand that everyone has different feelings and ideas about what information is and should be public. This site is designed so that you must have a user account (for free!) be a member to see any information about a living ancestor. However, once you become a user, you can update and add your family's history for yourself or to share with your (our) family. If you don't want to become a user but have things to contribute, you're always welcome to add that information here. This is a website I own and design (with lots of template help) and update with my research. Any errors, omissions or mistakes are mine, but I humbly put this all out here in the firm belief that sharing is the way we connect.If you believe I've made a mistake and there's something on this site you don't think should be seen or if there is information here about a deceased relative you'd like marked private, reach out right away and we'll have a conversation about it. I didn't start collecting this information with a concrete plan for a website like this, so there could be information in the corners that has been mis-added or mis-labeled.
