I have been interested in genealogy most of my life. I remember my first project was in junior high school when I completed a basic tree. From there I visited a family cemetery and did some gravestone rubbings with a paper sack and crayon. Then I dug up my grandparents’ marriage license at the courthouse (my Mammaw was NOT happy about that!)
So I had the bug and I had an uncle who was serious about family tree snooping. He shared some of his research with me and encouraged me in my own research. On the other side of the tree I had a distant cousin who did all of her research way before the internet was a concept. I can remember no greater Christmas present than when I received a copy of her research: great, big, desk-sized sheets of family tree info. Pure gold.
I live in a small-ish community where one branch of my family has been planted for generations. Sure, we’ve got folks from sea to shining sea at this point, but we still have family living in this little spot that was established before our state joined the union. This side of my tree has family cemeteries local to me and document after document stuffed into our courthouse. We’ve even had some of our family tree research published. So I have the benefit of lots of resources for this part of my tree. But the branches get a little wonky, twisted, and knotted sometimes because we had distant cousins marrying each other and the families are all blended together; that has produced a challenge or two and has crossed my eyes more than once.
It was the other side of my tree that prompted me to get into serious research. There wasn’t as much information available, even with the cousin’s treasure map of goodies I got for Christmas that year. I started doing my own research online (the horror!) with a basic Ancestry.com tree. That was over 10 years ago. I have over 5000 people on my tree and at least that many hints I’ve yet to muddle through. I’ve done an AncestryDNA test. I’ve made a few road trips for research purposes and attended one genealogical conference.
There are innumerable tips and tricks pages out there if you’re interested in bettering your research. I am self-taught so I can only share a little of what has worked for me and what has not. This page, though, is more about the stories I have uncovered along the way. I have found some truly interesting stuff while researching. One day I was sharing a “one time, while researching my 4th cousin twice removed” story and I thought…why not publish that? That was the beginning of NutsFromMyTree.