Deep Roots & Twisted Branches

Bitten by the genealogy bug...

    In 1967 my maternal grandparents took on the enormous task of researching their collective family histories. Without benefit of faxes and e-mails, genealogy databases and forums they instead wrote countless letters and spoke to relatives by telephone.

When they’d done all they could do they compiled the names and dates, and most importantly the stories, on an old manual typewriter and presented it to each of their six children. These children in turn made copies and gave them to their children, of which I was one lucky recipient.

    Though very young at the time (11 or 12) I was intrigued by this memoir of times and people gone by. Of course the pressures and distractions of being a teenager soon took over and it was several years before my interest rekindled. But the difficulties of undertaking genealogical research at that time were enormous. Would-be genealogists needed time, money and access to records, all of which were in short supply por moi. So once again the family history was tucked away until that magical time when one had the means to indulge this hobby.

    Then along came the internet and slowly but surely the genealogical community recognized the opportunities and advantages of getting online (there are some disadvantages too, but I won’t go into that here). So out came the family history once more - but what to do with it, where to start? After much deliberation I decided the first thing I needed to do was share my grandparents memories - it’s their work and their words that are the inspiration for this site.

    But there was more - I wanted to find out if those words could be “proved”, or at least corroborated by other research, and I wanted to start filling in the gaps. AND... I wanted to see how much I could do online.

    I’m fortunate in that I have such a remarkable starting point and equally fortunate that there are several branches of my family that are very well documented. So this venture is perhaps not a true benchmark of tracing one’s roots online but it will no doubt have its challenges and brick walls. My successes and failures can be tracked in my not so daily blog, and hopefully we’ll all learn a little along the way.

    In conclusion I would like to dedicate this site to my grandparents, Louis Switzer and Grace Merrill Switzer, for caring about their family roots, for tirelessly uncovering them and for leaving those of us who’ve followed with such a precious gem.