Hello everybody!

My name is Wayne.  I started this blog as a way to help me focus as I delve into the world of Genealogy.

I should probably start from the beginning. While trying to incorporate my love of history and my hobby of computers I needed to find a way to blend all of my interests into one.  So I started looking around the computer stores and found a new DOS based program called Family Tree Maker.

Loaded it up on my 80286 computer and away I went.  You start out with your mother and father and in my case my sister.  I didn’t have the luxury of being able to talk  to my parents, since they had both passed away, so I talked to my Aunt Mildred, who was my Grandmothers sister on my mothers side.

It didn’t take long till I was talking to cousins I didn’t even know I had. Unlike today, the days before the internet meant spending a lot of time on the phone, libraries and historical society’s’ going through books, record cards and microfiche.  It was a very time consuming effort.

An example of what you did then was to go to the library and lookup a death notice.  That in turn may give you the cemetery where they were buried.  You go to the cemetery and look at their records for internment  date and maybe a cause of death or if anyone else was buried in their plot.  Many older cemetery’s used to bury as many as three in a single plot, such as a child that died at birth.

There are many good sources of information to help you in your quest.  Census records are an excellent way to see who was living in an household at a point in time.  Be careful though, many last names are not necessarily spelled the same way all the time.  An example of this is Bayes, Bayse or Bays, it was up to the clerk filling out the record.

In the beginning I found myself finding many people quickly.  After a while that began to slow down.  Sometime you will find 5, 6 or 7 people in a day, other times you a go a week or two and only find one person.

Don’t let yourself get burned out.  Put it aside for a while and pick it up later.

It is a fun hobby.  You learn a lot about yourself in the process.  Most of all it help you get close to your family.

Till the next time,

Wayne