About This Blog

Welcome to my blog,
Ancestral Stories -- Family Heritage.

Knowing about our family heritage teaches us about ourselves.

In mid-July, 2011, I started this blog in order to create and share Ancestor Personality Sketches of my own ancestors. For over 35 years, I've gathered their names, dates, locations, relationships, stories, and pictures. I've created digital scrapbooks and web sites, engaged in correspondence and research, and developed an extensive database, complete with charts and timelines. But until now I didn't have a blog. 

I invite you to look back at my first posting, published on July 23, "Getting to Know Them." It sets the stage for all the others.

I view a blog as a discipline and an opportunity.  Writing is a craft which I find engaging. The books and guides I've had published as a professional genealogist have all been informational, usually giving advice about how to do genealogy research, how to organize one's family history research, or providing an overview of historical and geographical features such as early American roads and trails. I've never had an interest in writing fiction. But I do like to write essays, and that is what I hope to accomplish in this blog while randomly looking at one ancestor at a time.

You may recognize a surname in the blog topic labels and discover that we share an ancestor. If so, I hope you will enjoy my reflections on our mutual ancestor and share his or her story with your own family.

I'm overwhelmed with e-mail and am unable to answer most of it, but I do welcome your comments as you join me in getting acquainted with the personalities who make up my family history and heritage.

Eventually, I may add a simple chart of my ancestry in this blog, as a separate page. Meanwhile, if you are curious about my family lines, go to the FAMILY section of my web site. And if you want help getting started with your own family history, use the RESOURCES section.



     --genieBev  (genealogyBev)