So one of the earliest ideas of items to put on here was inspired by a gift my Mom gave everyone in the family for Christmas.

She made these books covering her family history and then a separate one for my brother and I also covering our Dad's family history.

Geneology has always kinda interested me. So I thought i'd try to take it a step further. Her books only went back to my great (or in some cases) great great grandparents. I want more in my history, so armed with her Ancestry.com membership and my internet stealth skills I started this project and am pleased to say I managed to get every line back at least 1 generation (and sometimes more) than she did.

Things I've learned while doing this project.

1. I'm related to people from England, Scotland, Ireland (never knew this one!), Canada (never knew this one!), Poland and the Czech Republic (I have a totally new scope for considering myself "a bohemian"!).

2. I got in touch with my Dad's cousin who I have not seen in probably 28 years through randomly finding her also doing geneology research online.

3. I may not actually be related to James Monroe. While growing up one of our fun family facts has always been that we are related to James Monroe the 5th president of the US. While I can make the connections back to the Monroes : George Monroe (my great, great, great grandfather who fought in the Civil War and was in-prisoned several times) and to Corporal Joe Monroe who fought in the American Revolutionary war in in the 1770's his 80's(!) and even all the way back to the first Monroe in the US in my family (William Monroe, who was deported to the US in 1652 for punishment for fighting for the king of England against the Scottish), yet I still can't find the connection to James Monroe. Most of my Monroe family comes from Massachusetts and New Hampshire At least not a direct connection.

And so here is my family tree