Genealogy and Ancestry

Welcome to my latest addiction, Genealogy!

Ironically, one of my very favorite life long sayings is this:

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
--Winston Churchill

Regarding genealogy, no truer words were ever said.

The last few years have found me tracking down our ancestors. Honestly, it's been one of the most rewarding ventures I've ever done. I'm very pleased to be able to hand down this work to our children.

While the study of genealogy doesn't answer the 'all important' question of "Why am I here?" --it does answer the question of "How am I here?" It is beyond interesting to read about the lives of those people who lived before us, people whom we've never met, usually know nothing about and who are basically mysterious strangers to us --but those very people live on through us the by blood that runs through our veins.

Genealogy is the second largest hobby in the world. With the internet, it's so much easier than it would have been just one generation ago. Before the internet, a person who was truly interested and committed to learning their ancestry would've had to have hired a "professional genealogist", and that would have cost big bucks! The genealogist would have to travel all over the world to review legal documents in Court Houses and Churches. Now anyone with a modem and a credit card can do it!

But, I could not have done anything without my subscription to Ancestry.com. Allow me to get a little commercial here, if you're serious about building your family tree you have to start somewhere. I've been very pleased with their services.

At first I was little peeved at what I thought was an expensive annual subscription, ($199.00) but after having it and using it for over a year and being able to build such a large database of useful, pertinent, personal information of our ancestors, I realize that what I have now is priceless!

The best part is that at Ancestry.com, you can try their FREE TRIAL to see if genealogy is your thing!

I would like to thank all the volunteers who've spent massive amounts of their personal time transcribing old records, such as; Federal Census records, old Church and Parish records, State Birth, Death and Marriage records, State Land records and Immigration records. Without all of these volunteers hard work, none of us would be able to search the digitized versions of the documents. So, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

My husband's and my genealogy:

Working on my husband's side has been much more fulfilling because we've got proven family lines going back to the 1600's and unproven lines going back to the 1300's. If your relatives have been in America for a few centuries you'll have much better luck tracking them down than if they were recent (post 1900) immigrants.
See my husband's genealogy

My family are all Russian Jews who left their respective homelands with only the shirts on their back and in fear for their lives from Czarist Russia (1910-1920) and their relatives who chose not to immigrate and who remained in Russia and old Europe were then slaughtered in the Holocaust. I am a (proud) second generation American. My four grandparents were from Minsk Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and Odessa Russia. I am thankful that they all made the fortuitous trek to the United States of America, the greatest country in the world.
See my genealogy

Lastly, email me if you get addicted to genealogy because of this webpage and/or if you think we're related!

~Robin