Genealogy fever has hit

     Genealogy fever has hit me.  Blame it on the TV show Who do you think you are?  on Friday nights current season with NBC.  The same thing happened to me last year with its debut and I was hooked and fascinated with how the guest stars traced their roots.

     I joined Ancestry.com and began adding what names, birth dates, marriages, children, deaths I had from what my mom had written down.  I scanned the census records but was frustrated that I have no access to any of those records after 1930.  Next year they open up the census records of 1940.  

     This year I found some new information and even a photo of my father's parents that looks like from the 1930's (?).  They look pretty happy though the house behind seems decrepit.  Hope that wasn't where they were living.

 

     I am on a mission to find out more about my mother's mom, my Nan, and her husband Eugene.  Of course they must have wed after the 1930's census and therefore I can't find out anything.  I know he was widowed and that union had a baby boy who died but while I can find the wife I can't find out what happened to their child.  It is a mystery that is just one of infinite mysteries when searching back with genealogy.


     I am attracted to all this simply because it is a story.  It is the wonder of who my family are, where they lived and loved and died.  It is hoping for connections to some distant relative that can answer or post a photo that I have never seen.  


     It is contagious.  Worse than facebook.  Hard to pull away from the computer when you keep looking deeper and deeper.  I have a note book in addition to the computer to jot down names and dates to keep a rough draft of the family tree.  Question marks, eraser marks from corrections and additions, then I feel like I am doing it wrong and wonder if I need to get a larger sheet out to do this off the computer.  


     Last night I had to pull myself away to cook dinner.  My Love was outside doing who knows what, while I am clicking and reading to my hearts content.  I managed to put some mixed grain brown rice on with some chicken broth knowing it would take 50 minutes to cook, then I was back in front of the screen.  T. was going to BBQ /roast a chicken outside and I figured that when he came back in to do that I would pop the artichokes in a pot and that would be it for me.  R. would set the table and the animals are all fed.  Let's, see....I have 40 minutes to dig some more!


     Yes, I am addicted.  And as much as I am frustrated I am captivated.  Who are all these people?  Now I am going to find all the photos I took on a trip to Selma with my mom back in 1995.  I was taking photos of grave stones.  Yes, grave stones.  Never knowing that they could be of some grand benefit to me all these years later!  Hope I can read them.  Even then I wish I could have done rubbings of some of the headstones since age has faded the writing to be illegible on many of them.  Others I can scan and zoom to read.  

    If you find I haven't been commenting much or even writing....blame it on genealogy.  Who knows what I will dig up!