The Search Begins

After the episode with the baby book, we began to gather information in earnest from other family members. When we would visit with our parents and with older relatives, we would jot down on random pieces of paper what little information that they shared. Our search started before the popularity of the Internet so we copied chart outlines from books and filled in names and dates as we begin to piece together our family history puzzle.

We quickly realized that even uncovering accurate dates of birth, places of birth and yes, even full names was going to be much more difficult than we ever dreamed. Over the years, we erased a lot of information in these manual charts, ripped them up and started all over again. We made trips to the local genealogy library and more information came to light. We made hundreds of photocopies at the library, not even sure that we were photocopying information on the right ancestor. And we created file folders and filled them with those photocopies along with charts and random notes. We visited local cemeteries and paid our respects but this was before the days of digital cameras so we didn't even think to take a camera and take pictures of headstones.

As the computer age began to grow, we quickly embraced this new technology. One of our smartest investments was to find a computer program to start collecting all our family history information. We were fortunate and found Family Tree Maker very early on and then began the laborious process of transcribing all that earlier information into Family Tree Maker. We had little documentation and very little source information but continued to plow ahead with our quest.