To my family, with love.
a tutorial of sorts (who says love is easy?)
I always say that the work I put into researching my family tree is for my children. It’s a ridiculous thing to say, because they really don’t care about this stuff. Maybe they will some day, but for now, not so much. Genealogy is a strange thing. Some people are really interested in it, some people are willing to humor people who are interested in it, and some people just don’t care. Most of the people in my life either humor me or don’t care, so here we are. Time for honesty. I do this because I enjoy doing this. I love learning about my ancestors and figuring out ways to find answers to questions most people don’t really even care about. I enjoy honoring my ancestors by learning about them and keeping their stories alive. I guess that means I have to admit that a lot of the time I spend on this research is for me.
This website on the other hand, is for you. That is of course, those of you who care about this sort of thing. This isn’t just a blog or a site with a family tree chart, it’s that and much more. This site holds a searchable database filled with all of the information, stories, documents, newspaper clippings, photos, etc… that I’ve come across while doing research. It’s a work in progress that continues to grow every day. I’m putting it all here in this one place so it will be available for anyone in the family who would like to see it. If you prefer things on paper, that’s okay, I’ve thought of you too. The pages in this site should print out nicely so you can put them in a binder or whatever you’d like. This site is capable of a lot, which means it can also be slightly overwhelming at first. That’s where the tutorial part comes in!
If you’ve been here before, and already have a login, you can sign into the site by clicking on “Log In” in the menu under the photo at the top of this page.
If you haven’t been here before, but would like to register for a login, you can do so by clicking on the register button to the right. The form will ask for your address. This is not necessary, so you can leave that part blank if you’d like. However, I do need to know how you are connected to the tree so I can link your login up to your spot in the tree, so please be sure to tell me how you are connected to the tree in the “Notes or Comments” section of the form.
"Okay, I'm logged in. Now what?"
Once you’re logged in, if you hover over “Trees” in the menu underneath the photo at the top of this page, a drop-down menu will appear.
Click on “Tree Search” in the drop-down menu, and you will be taken to a new page.
Now it's time to start searching!
Now that you’ve accessed this part of the website, these pages have additional menu options under the main menu. Those menu options will remain on every page of this part of the site, so you can always click on “my page” if you’d like to go back to the page about you and start over. To the right, there are three drop-down menus labeled “find”, “media”, and “info”. I will go further into these as well as other features in a future post. For now, feel free to search for people (maiden names only for women at this time) or click on options in the drop-down menus to see where they take you. If you get lost, click on “my page” and you can start over again!
