In 1962 before graduating from SMS, I visited my grandmother, Laly Sweaney to talk to her about the family history. She was very interested and told me what she could and gave suggestions as to how to begin and who to contact. I began keeping a record of the family. Later that year I moved to Hazelwood, St. Louis County.

One day I was visiting with another genealogist and mentioned that I was working on the Hildebrand history. She told me about Anna Sartori who lived in the south part of the county who was also working on Hildebrands. I visited with her and found her a very helpful lady. She sent me home with many notes to copy. A couple of weeks later when I wanted to return them, her daughter told me that she had died. I was sorry to lose her but so grateful that she had shared. Her daughter, not being too interested in continuing the work, let me borrow the rest of her mother's work. We did not have copy machines in those days so I set about to type up everything I thought would be important to my work. Anna also had written up her lines in a book called, "Among My Pioneer Ancestors." She had given me a copy of this on my first visit with her.

The St. Louis Public Library has a very nice collection of historical records. Every Saturday I could get away, I went downtown to extract everthing I could find about Hildebrands. They were very helpful in directing me to other St. Louis repositories.

About 1965 I met another cousin researching the Hildebrands of Jefferson and St. Louis counties. This was Myrtle Gunderson. We spent many afternoons working on Hildebrands together and apart and then comparing notes. She worked at the court house at Hillsboro and I worked downtown St. Louis records, then we exchanged and worked out the lineages as best we could. We still have some people we have not been able to place with certainty. The two earliest men in the area were John and Peter. Peter's line was much easier than John's.

During these years I was also writing to people in Dallas County, Missouri and to Millie Paul and Oma Deckard who were working on the Dallas Co., MO end of the work. There remains much to be done to bring all the lines on down. We found that many of the family left Missouri after the Civil War and that made tracking them down harder.

We are indebted to Lyman C. Draper who traveled to Virginia and many states between there and Missouri and his home state, Wisconsin. He interviewed as many of the Revolutionary War soldiers as were still living and their families. I found the Draper Manuscripts in the St. Louis library and they opened new doors. Lyman Draper was especially interested in the life of George Rogers Clark who led the expeditions into the northwest territory. James and Peter Hildebrand were with Clark at various points and this adds to our history.

About 1965 a small group of people got together who were interested in genealogy. We formed the St. Louis Genealogical Society and elected Craig Washabaugh president, Dot Griffin, Secretary and myself as treasurer for that first year. The following year I served as secretary and soon Mr. Washabaugh had to move and we elected Robert Parkin our president. The group expanded quickly. Committees were set up to census the cemeteries and to publish the 1850 census of St. Louis. Dot and I worked that first year or so on fund raisers to get things going. Later I taught classes as part of the education committee.

Before moving back to S.W. Missouri, I let the group microfilm my Hildebrand records. They were subsequently made available to others working on their Hildebrand lineages and also published by Bob Parkin in a book he and a friend did about early St. Louis families.

The first year of the St. Louis Genealogical Society, we began publishing the Society Quarterly. Bob Parkin was editor. I submitted a writeup of the work I had done about Fort Jefferson and the Hildebrand connection there. It is called, "Hold the Fort". This article was given honorable mention in the Missouri Historical Society Review the following quarter. That was really my first stab at historical writing.

In 1982 I began the Hildebrand Exchange. In it was published sources such as marriages, deaths, land records and other primary sources that would help Hildebrand researchers write their own lines. It also gave us advertising to put us in touch with many other people interested in Hildebrands and the exchange was successful in this.

Now we are writing the history of the families from the earliest records on down. This will be, for the most part, the descendants of Peter Hildebrand who came to Missouri from Pennsylvania.

We have located a record of the early German families but they are written in old German script and languange so it will take an interpreter familiar with the German script to translate. We hope to be able to add this to our record eventually.

The Hildebrand Database provides the original documentation to this work as well as for many Hildebrand lineages in the U.S.