My Genealogical Roots –

 In Honor of what would have been

my mother’s 72^nd birthday.

Who gives us that innate desire to learn about our ancestors?  For most of us, someone in our past has tapped into our curious nature and captivated our inquisitive minds with stories about our family’s history and heritage.  The grandmother who was the family historian, the other grandmother, who was ‘keeper of the family heirlooms’, and the mother who drug you out to cemeteries in the sixth grade, and made you color tombstones with chalk so said mother could create an inventory of who was buried in the cemetery.

So, those people would be my dad’s mother, Gladys (Christie) McDonald,  my mother’s mother,  Caroline Faye (Smith) Lewis, and my mother, Nina Jo (Lewis) McDonald.  So, I guess you could say that I come by my love for genealogy naturally.

And in honor of what would have been my mother’s 72^nd birthday, I salute you, my genealogical mentors, especially my mom, who really did drag me to several cemeteries in the sixth grade, while she worked on the cemetery inventory project in Brown County.

Who is your mentor?  Genealogy is much more fun, when you have someone to share it with. Join a society, take a workshop, find friends that share your love for genealogy and mentor one another, sometimes others will see the obvious clues that you missed.

(The photograph is my parent’s wedding day June 23, 1961, and from left to right are: Perry Arthur Lewis, Jr.; Caroline Faye (Smith) Lewis, Nina Jo (Lewis) McDonald, Jack Herbert McDonald, Gladys Mayme (Christie) McDonald, Cecil “Herbie” Herbert McDonald.)