Why I started this blog.

Do you want to know me? What do you want to know about me? What do I want you to know about me? It's only recently I began doing some ancestry research, getting in touch with people who are a part of my heritage yet I never knew it, nor them, that I began thinking about the information I may leave behind for anyone interested in it. It's fascinating and maybe something that only comes with age - having a voracious appetite for knowledge about one's familial history and then wondering what legacy I may leave. Oh, not the fame and fortune that some leave behind and not just the facts, not just the names and dates or places, but who really were these people and what will others want to know about me. It's difficult to know just from a census record, a birth certificate or a death certificate. The pictures I have of these people are few and far between and yet everyday I think I get a tidbit of understanding from the things I feel and experience - the joys, sorrows, fulfillment, disappointment, disatisfaction, longing, loving and observing. Might I know of what they may have been like from all of those same desires, wants and frustrations I feel every day? When I look in the mirror don't I see a glimmer of all of them?

I wanted to begin this blog to try to honor all those who came before me and maybe, in doing this, I will find a little of myself as well. Their blood does course in my veins, their hair does grow out of my head, their world is now seen through my eyes and felt by my experiences in the world they created, lived and died in. I now breathe the same air they breathed, used and expended to make their world. There are trees still here because they planted them. There are homes and buildings here because they built them and they are still here because they are buried in the dirt which now claims them.