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My Father Was Speechless Swords and Spears The Best Birthday Present Lewis and Clark Honoring Our AncestorsMy Father Was Speechless
Sue Dewey, Pflugerville, TX—I am an only child of a father who was an only child, and we both came from families that were estranged. Everything was a secret, and no one ever talked about what happened or why they were estranged. Through Ancestry.Com's census records, my own resourcefulness and diligence, and, of course, sheer luck, I was able to trace my Simontons back to the Adam Simonton of Ohio line ... For Father's Day 2002, I gave my dad a priceless gift. I printed out our family's tree on parchment paper, and gave him his ancestry. For the first time ever that I could remember, my father was absolutely speechless. He was touched in ways I'll never know.
Swords and Spears
Robin Julius, Kennewick, WA—I've had an interest in my family history since I was young. My maternal grandmother and I would talk of her growing up family members and stories. I was able to retrieve a lot of information from my paternal grandmother and the family that immigrated from Germany, Ireland and England. I have a wonderful family history and am continually striving to find out more. Many thanks to others on Ancestry.com, I have been able to gather family history back into the 400, 500 and 600's AD. It is very exciting to find out you had an ancestor who fought in battles with swords and spears for a cause he believed in and even died for or an Indian beloved woman who picked up her husband’s spear, rallied the braves to continue fighting and won the battle against a warring tribe. I knew my strong character came from a long line of strong women and men also of strong character. I have made contact with many distant cousins and continue correspondence with them. Thank you, Ancestory.com.
The Best Birthday Present
Cynthia Ourada, Prague, NE—Because of Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com, I was able to locate missing relatives and most astonishingly, missing photos. I met a relative online from South Dakota who filled in volumes of missing gaps and sent pages of photos that no one here knew existed. In 2002 my husband's grandmother turned 100. As a present to her, I concentrated on her line, bought Family Tree Maker and worked months putting a book together with hundreds of pictures, maps, censuses, orbits, land deeds, etc. The book ended up being about 300 pages. The family decided to give her a huge birthday party that year in November 2002. People I met online and lost relatives of hers attended. When I presented her with the book I made and showed her a picture of her great-grandparents born in the 1830s, I asked her, “Grandma, do you know who these people are?” She stared at it for a very long time and then tears started running down her face, she looked up at me and said in her Czech accent, “Child, where ever did you get this? These are my grandparents, they died when I was but a girl, no one ever had a picture of them, oh how I miss them! This is the best birthday present yet! Thank you child.”
Lewis and Clark
Stephen Danko, San Francisco, CA—Several years ago, I started to seriously research my family tree. I was told that there were men in the family named Lewis and Meriwether. Using Ancestry to find family members and verify connections, I found a relative who told me about my Uncle Clark, who is a descendent of George Gibson, who was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark ... It turned out that I was communicating with Clark's great grandson in Scotland. We exchanged family trees and family legends and just about everything matched up ... Since then, the family in the States has visited the lost branch of the family in Scotland twice and has established a wonderful relationship after a separation of over 70 years.
Honoring Our Ancestors
Stephanie Varney, Epsom, NH—Genealogy is such an interesting hobby. It's like following a maze, solving a mystery, or putting together the pieces of a puzzle. It also gives a person a feeling of connectedness to generations past in a way that is almost impossible unless you spend time searching for and learning about these people. It's also a way of honoring our ancestors, who were real people who lived real lives...they deserve to be remembered. Ancestry.com has helped me in my family history research in so many ways, from providing new information to confirming suspicions. The U.S. Census collection has been especially helpful in this regard, as it has helped me fill in numerous gaps in collateral lines, as well as discover a few direct ancestors by making connections to a previous generation that would have been impossible otherwise. Plus, having the census right at my fingertips saves me a trip to the library, so I can use this valuable tool much more often. This has allowed me the leisure to do extensive searches that have uncovered many more ancestors than I would otherwise have known about by this time, and that in itself is worth the price of a subscription. Ancestry.com is an invaluable tool for anyone researching their family history.