Genealogy

I've always been interested in finding out my roots, not the ones on my head but my family roots. I like to do things the easy way which includes the free way, so I've never gotten very far with my search. I know up to my great-great grandparents on my mother's side (maternal) but because I've never met and only spoke to my mother's father once, I know nothing on his side besides his name.

On my dad's side I only had up to my grandparents names. My father has a bad memory for things like names and dates so if I asked him questions, most of the time he couldn't remember his own mother's birthday. And to make matters worse, my grandpa, Robert married Jean. Grandpa had a cousin, Robert, who married a Jean as well. All of them were born around the same time and because I didn't know my grandma's birth date, I was stuck.

So last week, when my uncle passed away, we ended up with some new and interesting information about my family history. My grandfather's youngest sister, Viola (known as Babe) had all kinds of info that her daughter brought to the funeral to show everyone! Oh My Gosh! I am beyond excited about it! I now know the names of my grandfathers parents as well as the names of my great-great grandparents. And there were pictures! It was so awesome to see my history unfolding right in front of my eyes.

My dad's cousin promised to get us copies of everything and my dad offered to pay for the subscription to some genealogy sites if I did the work. I can't wait to learn about where I came from because up until last Saturday I didn't even know how many brothers and sisters my grandpa had let alone names and dates of important things. So I guess out of the tragedy of my uncle dying so suddenly, we got some good news that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Plus my family is claiming to want to try to get together more often. I guess we see if that happens when the time comes though.