Where my passion for family research started

Growing up I had my nose in a book more often than not, so libraries were a magical place for me, but I wouldn’t have known what a family history library was. I didn’t have an interest in relatives from the past, I barely knew much about my living family, so the word genealogy might as well have been another language. History was also my worst subject in high school. I thought reading about another war, another president, or another person who did that one thing, in that one place, that one time, was pure torture. So, I would have never imagined that I would end up being so obsessed with family history that I started a business.

Just like genealogy, there’s always more to the story if you’d like to know more. It wasn’t something I started young, or dreamed of doing my whole life, but eventually I found a love for the stories and research that grew past my own family. Because of that, I’d be honored to help you with yours.

In 2012 when my son was born, I decided to start building him a family tree. I added the basic family members, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, people I knew, or knew of. I would have never thought to do any research to find more. When my paternal grandmother passed away, my dad brought me a giant stack of family records that she had compiled over the years, which included two paper family trees she had obviously spent years compiling. The last time she updated it had been in 1975, including all the relatives born before then. My dad asked me if I could do something with it, so I pulled up that online family tree I had started years before and began what I thought would be a quick project.

I was cursing my father under my breath by day two for dragging me into what seemed like endless stacks of names, birth dates, death dates, and marriages. Weeks later, I had entered all the names of six plus generations of relatives and ALL of their descendants. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever care about any of it. Then one day I realized I did, and I had been completely sucked in. History had become fascinating because I was seeing it through the stories of regular people who had actually lived it. I kept finding more information on the people I had found in that giant stack of papers, and each record became another puzzle piece in the story of their lives. I started intentionally researching people, spending hours scouring records that might have anything to do with them.

Eventually I hit a wall in my research. I hardly knew anything about my paternal great-great grandparents. I knew there had to be more and I was determined to find it. A year of research hadn’t turned up much, so I decided I would go to their hometown and look anywhere I had to. The family history museum, county archives, cemeteries, and even the house he had built in the 1800’s. I left feeling like I knew them better than most relatives that were still alive. I had stacks of photocopies from books, maps, church records, and countless pictures I had taken myself.

I couldn’t stop talking about my trip and anyone who stood still long enough was going to hear about it. Because of that, I heard many people tell me that if I loved it this much, I should do it for a living. I thought it was a silly idea, but I eventually started branching outside of my own family and started doing research for other people. With each new and unique family, I had to figure out how to find information for a wide range of people, from different cultural and geographical origins. I spend all of my free time learning different research strategies, various record types and where to find them, finding new genealogical resources, and any other specialized techniques I thought could help. I confidently stepped out of my comfort zone and offered to try and find a close friends biological family using only DNA matches. When I did actually find them, I was amazed at what was possible. A hobby I thought I couldn’t fall more in love with, suddenly became life changing for someone.

However, I can honestly say that the life that has been changed the most, is my own.