Welcome!

When I started this web-site in 2005 I had no idea how it would develop.  I knew I wanted it to be easy to create and I knew I wanted it to be flexible so I chose the Family Group Sheet option from my genealogy program.  That has answered both of my initial concerns nicely.  I can make one FGS or many.  I can add people, data, notes, and pictures easily.  I can link new pages with just a bit of code. 

Another thing I wasn't sure of in the beginning was what to call it - everything seems to need a title but "My Family" or "My Roots" or many other of the names I saw on other sites just didn't seem to be "Me."  So I ended up with the basic four.  In alphabetical order.  Bakers, Barbers, Bests, Gilberts.  Then, there were those others which became "those associated."  I no longer like that name so it seems this web-site just won't have a name for a while!

I've started recently adding stories - either those handed down or ones that have come about as part of the research going on.  I think these are fun and add personalities to some of the folks found in these pages. 

I plan to put in more pages about locations.  One thing I didn't appreciate when I started exploring my family is how the locations would affect me.  I'm proud of being an Okie with sodbusters for ancestors.  My great-grandparents left the comfort of their homes and stood in the noon-day sun of September 16, 1893 suffocating in the heat and dust to begin a new life.  They carved lives out of a few acres of dirt and gave lives to future generations.  What I didn't think about is how Riedseltz, a small village in the Alsace province of France, would figure in.  Or that Connecticut, Buffalo, and Illinois might hold some particular interest for me.

Another thing I wasn't prepared for is how excited I would be every time I found a new relative - especially when that one person unlocked another entire line.  Just as exciting - but in a different way - is to find that I share ancestors with Herbert Hoover, Noah Webster, and A. C. Gilbert.  Of course, being quirky myself, I was delighted to find that one member of the ancestral group was tried as a witch.  (Her ultimate fate is debatable - either she escaped the state unharmed {that's good} or was hung for her alleged crime {not so great}. 

One of my other quirks is that I am 'consistently inconsistent.'  I want everything a particular way but unless I have a template, I generally struggle to make that happen.  One perfect example here is the way second (and beyond) marriages are handled.  Sometimes, the 'new' couple get their own page.  Sometimes, the 'new' spouses are just added on the same page.  I usually get the marriage on it's own sheet if there are children (that I know about).