17TH BLOGIVERSARY: LOOKING BACK

 I first posted this blog 17 years ago on 23Jan 2007. I'm surprised it's still here, especially after the last few years when my enegy lagged a bit due to health issues. But I seem to have gotten my second wind back and I've repurposed the blog a bit, and so I had a resurgence in 2023.

Anyway, I thought for this year's blogiversary I'd reprint that very first post:

BEGINNING

Well, this is a bit more serious minded a blog then I've done before.It will deal with my thoughts on researching my family lines, the Wests and Whites, and the times in which they lived. I hope also to comment on books that might be of use.

A bit of information at the start. I'm a late middle aged guy with a computer and time on my hands at night,and I've a limited income. I suppose I'm closer now to upper lowerclass than lower middleclass these days. I work in a book store and my salary is less than some teens working close shifts at McDonald's make per hour. On the other hand I like working the bookbiz, having worked in it now for close to 17 years. And working in a bookstore gives me access to a lot of books that provide at least background information on history and culture.

I have a B.A. in History and my interest in the field has never lagged,although until recently most of my reading has been mostly on ancient and medieval times.But over the past few years I've become more and more interested in early American history for reasons you'll see shortly.Some years back one of my father's sisters sent us pedigree charts that she'd made based on her own research into the family line. This was before the age of computers, mind you. We'd also bought a copy of Frances O'Connor'sbook on the Dunham and Ellingwood lines who we are related to through the marriage of Clara Ford Ellingwood to my great-grandfather. These were pored over when we first got them but eventually given over to me as the historian of our family and packed away in a desk drawer. Time, as they say,passed. My parents passed away, my younger brother and sister married and now have families of their own.


A few years back prompted by a conversation with an online friend who was talking about her own climb up her family tree, I dug out those pedigree charts and set about climbing up my own.Given my income I downloaded the Personal Ancestry File program from the Family Search site run by the Church of Latter Day Saints and filled in as much information as I could from what I already had and then went hunting on their site and elswhere for more. I found a lot, but so far I have not been able to verify anything beyond what my aunt had already sent us.


So to those looking at these pages, do NOT accept the information here as the last word on your search. Verify! I hope to be able to do it myself when time, money, and a car in need of repair allow.


And I think that's enough to begin with for now.