It's been too long since I've posted, no excuses.

Here is pic of me and my Grandson Spencer last week Sept 09.

Thursday morning I received news that my Mayflower Society application was approved!  After a year of research and sending away for documentation, etc., having my cousin sit on the floor of a court house in Kentucky sifting thru very old paperwork to come up with one specific marriage certificate, I've succeeded in proving my lineage to Capt. Myles Standish of the Mayflower.   A couple of times I almost gave up, and thought it might never come together, but it finally did.  I've been one busy genealogist this year, joining the DAR and now the Mayflower Society, and I personally added to the gene pool by becoming a grandmother.  :)

I'm reading Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick and I'm amazed how different the real story is from what I learned in school.  Has anyone else read it?

I just got home from Portland after attending the birth of my first Grandchild.  He was born Aug. 10th. 

He was 7 lbs, 12 oz and 9.25 inches long.  He is healthy and adorable! Pictures to follow!

A few months back I completed my DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) membership application and off it went to Washington with all the documentation and certificates.  DAR is a lineage society and not easy to get into because you have to have all your t's crossed, etc. Well, yesterday I received a phone message from the local chapter saying I would be installed today!  This was a complete surprise because I was totally expecting to here back from DAR saying that I needed more documentation, etc.  My research and documentation was right on the first time!  Not only is it an honor to be accepted into DAR, it is validation that my research was accurate. What's really cool it that  the lineage I  used to join DAR is straight maternal line to my 4th Great Grandfather who fought in the American Revolution.  When I started doing genealogy about a year a half ago I only had my Great Grandmother's name and that's all.  Wow! 

For the past few months I've been compiling all the required documents for one of the lineage societies I want to join, and I'm telling you it hasn't been easy. My cousin Virginia even spent two and a half hours sitting on the floor sifting through boxes at one of the county clerks offices in Kentucky. She was able to find the marriage certificate for my Great Grandparents that links my Great Grandmother to her father which I desperately needed. I have almost all the docs I need, then "they" tell me I need the birth certificates for my two ex-husbands (two much info, I know) and that just seems too much to ask for. Does that seem like a reasonable request?

Soon, Wayne will have another video to post about his family genealogy. This is the first time I've done someone elses genealogy, and the cool thing is that I was just as excited about doing it as I was my own.

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I love this picture of my Grandparents, Carl & Helen. It must have been on their honeymoon. They would have met in Gladwin when she was teaching high school and he was visiting his father. The school, which I found out this weekend on my Gladwin Trip, was directly across from my Gr. Grandfather's house. You can see the house on my video, towards the end.

Margaret, age 92, (the woman I was sitting with in the video) who was her student so many years ago, told me "Your Grandmother made learning fun." Then she sang Jingle Bells in Latin that my Grandmother taught her....

Back in January of 2007, when I started my genealogy research I had no idea how addicting it would become.  For several years my Father has been researching his own father who came from Denmark as an indentured servant in the 1800’s and had taken on the name of the people he worked for making the research fairly difficult. He is very enthusiastic about his genealogy research, and after spending many hours at it myself, I now understand that enthusiasm completely.

The primary reason I became interested in genealogy was to find information about my mother’s mother Helen Gertrude Phelps who at the young age of 28 died tragically on the Fourth of July, 1935 when my Mother was only four months old.  Unfortunately all touch with that side of the family soon weaned away leaving us little information about my maternal Grandmother’s lineage.

I signed up for a 14 day free membership with Ancestry.com and started looking for her.  I had very little to go on.  I knew of course her name and those of her parents, and the most important fact: Fairfield, Illinois the birth city of Thomas C. Phelps, Helen’s father.  I found Helen, age seven, residing in Jacksonville, Illinois in the 1910 U.S. Census records, and then again in the 1930 Census listed as a boarder in Gladwin, Michigan. The 1910 Census revealed several gems, such as the names her siblings and the birth states of her parents and grandparents.  It also had her father’s occupation, a barber, and the apprenticeships of her brothers, which confirmed their identities later in other census records.  

Just two days into my research I hit paydirt and found Kimberly, a third cousin, once removed, on Helen’s mother’s side. My second Great Grandfather was her second Great Grandmother’s brother!  In other words, our Great, Great Grand Parents were brother and sister! Kimberly has been researching for the over twenty years and has accumulated thousands of names on her Family Tree. She has been very generous in sharing with me much of her research, primarily that of the Guthrie family, Helen’s Mother’s lineage.  However, I soon realized that because our families had split at the Great, Great level there was little, if any research done on Helen's father’s Phelps side.  So, with little experience, beginners luck, and Kimberly‘s encouragement, I was off into virgin genealogy territory! 

My research was like a human puzzle with the pieces spreading over a forty to fifty year period.  In order to simplify my research, I lined up these decades in columns with the names of the players in each column from one census to the next.  It became clearer just how these families stayed together and inter-lived. It was however, frustrating that I had very few records, other than census records to go on.    There was a terrible fire at the Wayne County’s Court House in the late 1880’s that destroyed many court house papers, including marriage and birth certificates.  The census records are considered proof and without marriage certificates and birth certificates they are all I have to go on.  The longer I have looked at these families the more I’m convinced these families are my family. 

Another thought here, one that is really an astonishing thought: I am the living breathing “result” you might say, of their existence.  Yes, within in me are the Phelps, McMackins, Borahs and Kings!  When I think about these people, their lives lived hard and true, it amazes me that I’m am a part of them.  They were just as alive as you and I are now.