I have been having the darndest time finding out anything about my maternal grandfather's family tree. He divorced by grandmother so the two families did not keep in touch at all. Well, We just found out that my step-grandmother Elizabeth passed away last Sunday. Our families lost touch after my grandfather's death but my Uncle stopped by the funeral to pay his respects. Her children were very happy to see him and as it turns out, she had some of my grandfather's things (including his and his father's birth certificates). Once all the funeral craziness settles down they are going to arrange to get those things to us. Hopefully the documents she has will shed a lot of light on that branch of the family tree. I will be sure to post with what I find.

Well, I finally caved and updated my FTM from 06' to 08'. I have to say that I'm pretty impressed. I've added a ton of new individuals and sources that I just wouldn't have had the time or know how to find on my own. I love how it now interacts with the website. Before, I would have to update both seperately whenever I found new info. There are a few kinks, as there would be with any computer program. The one thing I don't like is you cannot ignore a hint the same way that you can on the main site. I also can't seem to find the old book function, where you were able to put together a PDF book of your info. You can order they from the Ancestry website though so its not that bad. However, I keep getting a script error in the search window for some reason. Does anyone know how to get rid of that?

This has been a great research week for me. I uploaded my tree to Ancestry.com and stumbled upon relatives that I didn't even know I had. Their tree traces my Gaffney line all the way back to and individual who was born in 1752. I cannot wait to quiz my Grandmother about them and possibly get in touch with them to swap information. :) I've also had great success with getting started on tracing my boyfriend's family tree. His family really doesn't keep in touch and all of my searching made him curious about his own background. It felt great to give him that missing piece of history. I always tell him, you can't know who you really are until you know where you came from.

I've been rather frustrated with my research lately as it seemed I had a permanent brick wall on my maternal grandmother's side of the family. Last night I managed to find my great grandfather's draft card and census records which also enabled me to find my great great grandparents in one fell swoop. I was so excited to have such a huge breakthrough. It seemed the problem all along had been that the information I got from my great aunts proved to be extremely inaccurate. My family really has no information on my maternal grandmother's family. The info I found was rather ironic too because my great grandfather's name, Nicholas, is also the name of the youngest addition to my family. I'm sure my cousin Nicholas will be proud to have such a historic name for our family.