My Family Tree Pt. 1

Shawn | December 27, 2007 in Journal | Comments (0)

I laid in my bed trying to sleep one night. I thought of my family and all the endless local history conversations came into my mind for some reason. Being from a small town, or rather a closely knit cluster of small towns, everyone is pretty well versed in who’s who’s son or father or whatever. Each new name in the conversation would lead eventually to a new line of ancestors and stories about one or more of them. My mind raced through some of them while I tried to remember how someone (can’t remember who) is related to me.

Wouldn’t it be easier I thought, if I had some sort of organizer to filter all of this through? How cool would that be to have all that knowledge at my disposal. There must be something out there that can help me. And then, like a shot I realized that if I didn’t record this information, it might be lost. What a strange feeling. It bothered me. I snapped the light on and sought out the widget that would aid me in my now blossoming idea.

I found a program called Family Tree Maker. The program, is exactly what I was hoping to find, and then some. Since I acquired it from a clandestine source, I wasn’t going to register it, potentially rendering it useless… until I found that it offered a 14 day trial to those that registered on it’s online research database and genealogy community Ancestry.com.

I gave it a shot and successfully registered the product, signing up for the 2 week trial period. I called my mother and filled in as many blanks as I could from her datebook and memories and began my research. I’ve been hooked ever since.

I used up my trial and exhausted all the leads I could find with my U.S. only document access. Over Christmas, I met with my grandfather Stratton (my mother’s father), and with my grandmother Martin (Formerly married to my grandfather McGowan, my father’s mother) to ask them a whole bunch of questions. I came home with a bunch of new leads and data to research further.

So begins my journey to understand my ancestors’ voyage through history. I’ve found so many fascinating things already! Stay tuned, when I know more I will be posting what I’ve found (and confirmed).