In the Beginning - An Introduction

Brownie Scout Sue with Snoopy

My Brownie project caused quite a stir.  Well, if not a stir, a lot of whispering.  The project was to fill out a form with our ancestry back at least as far as our great grandparents.  Then we used crayons to color in the appropriate national flags.

My ancestors: German, German and more German except for my maternal grandpa's parents. That's what caused the whispering until finally my mom told me: Russian.  The McCarthy era might have been over, but nobody wanted to claim Russian ancestry in the suburban mid-west.

Frankly, I thought it was pretty cool.  In spite of, or maybe because of, my Brownie troupe leaders deciding I should skip coloring that flag.

It wasn't until years later that I discovered my great grandparents weren't Russian.  They were Volga Germans. Unfortunately that discovery came after my grandpa died, when my mom gave me a manila envelope containing a short family history he'd written along with copies of Russian documents his father had gathered in preparation for immigrating to America.

Thus my mom's father set me on a journey to find my roots.

A few years later I was given a box of old photos and letters from my paternal grandmother. Among them were notes she and her sister had made in response to a genealogical query which included a phone number.  It had been more than a dozen years, but I called that number. Viola Haynes turned out to be a cousin of sorts and took me and my roots back to Colonial Virginia.

My genealogical journey has been filled with serendipity, synchronicity and adventures because of  family connections.  Along the way I found one great grandfather's log cabin in a museum, another great grandfathers home actually was a museum.  I found out I was living next door to a 5th great uncle's plantation.  I discovered my husband and I were 6th cousins once removed and I visited a cousin in Siberia.  And more.  Most recently I discovered a college mate and I are cousins and our families were connected in Colonial Virginia.

Though I gather information about the "begets" as I call them, I collect memories and impressions of the lives my ancestors lived which I'll be sharing here. It's not just names and dates to me. Family history is time traveling and story telling.