I had knitting blog for a long time. I enjoyed it and kept it up until our lives had some upheaval back in 2006. It petered out and was deleted by the hosting company. I stopped knitting about the same time, so it seemed like a natural conclusion.
I started this one for a couple of reasons. First, I jumped into Google+ yesterday again, hoping to cultivate some more genealogy knowledge. I've been a Facebook user for awhile, but I don't have any genealogy contacts there at all, other than a New York Genealogy page I follow and contribute to. Google+ seems more conducive to what I am looking for. Sadly, I have not yet found a New York Genealogy community.
Second, I started this blog because I have been doing some research I think is very exciting and I wanted a forum to share my methods. I could post my experience directly to Google+, but I have a tendency to be verbose so this way it makes things a little easier for people to ignore me.
Background:
I was born in Rochester, New York. My father's maternal grandparents were immigrants from Belgium (Maldegem, Oost-Vlanderen) and his paternal great-grandparents (both sets) were Dutch immigrants (Zeeland, specifically Zeeuwsvlaanderen). My mother's family has been in the same two counties (Wayne and Cayuga) for generations. I have not yet found her immigrant ancestors.
My earliest genealogical memory is a family tree I had to prepare for 6th grade history class:
I was a little unclear on maiden names.
I wasn't close to any of my grandparents. We moved to Texas when I was nine and we had very little contact with them. Nevertheless, I have dabbled on and off with genealogy since that first chart. I did have the opportunity to visit with my maternal grandmother in 1996 and got some fantastic photographs and information at that time. I also got to visit with my paternal grandfather a couple of times before he passed away in 2011 and got some photos and information from him. I am very lucky in that regard.
My daughter had a family tree project in the 4th grade at her school. If you have read this far, you probably know it was really my project:
We made an A+
Since that time, the leaves on my side of the tree (right) look my fluffier, although I still haven't found any Revolutionary War ancestors, they must be there.
Here we go! Next stop: Belgian archives.
