My interest in our family roots began at a fairly young age and grew when I was a young teen when my mom handed me a three-page paper of her family tree marked up and requested that I re-type it for another family genealogist. I've worked on it off and on ever since taking long breaks when I'm just no longer in the "mood" for it or when my time has been required elsewhere. My methods have been a bit haphazard, seek and find with a lot of repetitious efforts, I fear. I have been going back over my notes and NOW re-entering my sources as I was very lax at that although I often wrote down where I found what. I am also actually entering my notes onto my Family Tree Maker which appears for all to see...mistakes and all. It certainly is a work in progress.
*Since writing this I have lost my life's work that was on the FTM...thanks to Ancestry to changing companies, I believe. I am saddened...extremely so by this turn of events but am hoping when I can afford to, have a computer geek see if he can retrieve it

Something I don't understand is volunteers who don't allow messages to be sent to them. That tells me that they are close-minded. It's not being very helpful if you refuse to be contacted.

NOTE: I apologize for not being able at this time to find graves for people. My daughter managed to total my car so am without transportation. Come this Spring I can take a bus to a few graveyards in my hometown of Cedar Rapids if anyone would like me to, please send me an email as I don't often check my messages here. I am not very good at checking my email either but am more likely to see it there.

Another Note: Please take care in what information you provide where there are immediate surviving members. If you are posting an obituary, be sure to exclude possible living members. I know it is great information to have but we should be researching ancestors not our living relatives. Also, with that same in mind, posting information that maybe the family doesn't even know about can be extremely upsetting. It's one thing to post a death certificate of someone where the entire family is deceased (including the children) but quite another to suddenly be faced with unwelcome public display of something very personal for all to see when the family isn't even aware of it.

My interest in our family roots began at a fairly young age and grew when I was a young teen when my mom handed me a three-page paper of her family tree marked up and requested that I re-type it for another family genealogist. I've worked on it off and on ever since taking long breaks when I'm just no longer in the "mood" for it or when my time has been required elsewhere. My methods have been a bit haphazard, seek and find with a lot of repetitious efforts, I fear. I have been going back over my notes and NOW re-entering my sources as I was very lax at that although I often wrote down where I found what. I am also actually entering my notes onto my Family Tree Maker which appears for all to see...mistakes and all. It certainly is a work in progress.
*Since writing this I have lost my life's work that was on the FTM...thanks to Ancestry to changing companies, I believe. I am saddened...extremely so by this turn of events but am hoping when I can afford to, have a computer geek see if he can retrieve it

Something I don't understand is volunteers who don't allow messages to be sent to them. That tells me that they are close-minded. It's not being very helpful if you refuse to be contacted.

NOTE: I apologize for not being able at this time to find graves for people. My daughter managed to total my car so am without transportation. Come this Spring I can take a bus to a few graveyards in my hometown of Cedar Rapids if anyone would like me to, please send me an email as I don't often check my messages here. I am not very good at checking my email either but am more likely to see it there.

Another Note: Please take care in what information you provide where there are immediate surviving members. If you are posting an obituary, be sure to exclude possible living members. I know it is great information to have but we should be researching ancestors not our living relatives. Also, with that same in mind, posting information that maybe the family doesn't even know about can be extremely upsetting. It's one thing to post a death certificate of someone where the entire family is deceased (including the children) but quite another to suddenly be faced with unwelcome public display of something very personal for all to see when the family isn't even aware of it.