So Many Relatives, So Little Time!

Why, oh why didn't I start working on genealogy 30 years ago, when I had all sorts of relatives to share stories with me?

A few years ago, I got a photo from my sister. It was a woman's photo, and was marked "Mary Ann Aitken", with the explanation that she had been our grandfather's grandmother.

I'm a scrapbooker. I'm one of those scrapbookers that feels a need to tell SOME kind of story about each photo that I choose to put in my albums. Every photo has a story...to scrap a photo without so much as the name of the person in the photo is just wrong in my book! I mean, how many times have you seen a mother look at a baby picture and say, "This is little Johnny....oh! No! Wait! That's not Johnny...it's Davy! No...can't be Davy...it MUST be Sammy!" My advice...mark every photo with a pencil on the back...and when you scrapbook them, make sure that there's a who, what, where, when, and why somewhere on the page.

I digress. I had to scrap the photo of the beautiful woman that I had never known, but was my great great grandmother. So I went to Google. I typed in her name and was sent to a website that had her lineage! I was thrilled beyond thrilled! I still don't know a lot about her, but I at least knew when she lived, where she was born, who her parents were.

That led to a hunger for more. I needed to find as much as I could about not just Mary Ann (aka "Annie") Aitken MacKenzie...I needed to know about everyone in my history. I've been hooked ever since! My sister often gets calls now..."I'm SO excited!! Guess what I found out????!!!" She just laughs and gets out her notepad so she can record the information that I'm about to share with her.

I started this blog so that I can share with whomever might be interested in the names in my research. I'm still trying to decide how to share what I've found...but I'm thinking the best way is to start the tree from the bottom up. My next post will be about my parents and grandparents.