Ancestry Family Tree

Today I finally joined Ancestry. I had been planning on spending time exploring our family tree for the past several years but I had just not gotten around to it. I seemed to be so busy doing my writings, things around the house, enjoying the grandchildren and so many other things. Well, now I'm shifting my focus to that family tree which I created today in Ancestry. 

Last summer I started exploring our family history and was looking at various online resources. I created an account with FamilySearch that was free but limited. I also looked into Find My Past and a few other sites.

Back in the mid to late 1980's I did some family history research and got a lot of help from Uncle Ed who was researching his family. He sent me a lot of his information. My efforts were sidetracked by my aneurysm surgery and recovery. Then I started grad school and subsequently began another career. That put my family research on the backburner for decades. I did talk about it with Uncle Jack at family picnics over the years and he updated my data files in 2012. 

Now I'm ready to jump in. I was kind of egged on by my niece Marissa who was asking me questions about family history. I have been writing a lot of family anecdotal stories in my blog. I'm sure this trip into family history will give me much more to write about.

One of the first things I came across after creating my account was a picture of myself that I hadn't seen in many decades... my class photo from the Souderton HS year book which I never purchased but that's another story. Another thing I learned was the actual great age range of the Keegan children, I knew my grandmother was the youngest in the family but I didn't know that Aunt Francis was 17 years older than her. Another item I found right away was my father's draft card.

I'm very excited about this adventure. I've also decided to create new blog category for articles I'm writing about the family tree. I think I'll just call it "Family Tree". Some of the articles will probably be also listed in the older "Family Related" category which is a broader grouping of family memories new and old.