First of many to come

So, today I'm starting to share my adventures with the public.  Let me tell you something about myself first, I am  married, a part-time Registered Nurse, my three kids are now old enough to do their own thing and leave me to my hobbies which have become obsessions at this point.  Okay, so if you are wondering what obsessions they might be, here it is...................  I love genealogy!  I am hoping by starting this it will help keep my families (mine and my husband's) aware of what's happening in my crazy world of tracking down that elusive ancestor. 

I've been doing this for over 30 years now, I started this when my father, Francis Smith, wanted to take a class on "how to find your family" back in 1977.  He didn't want to go alone so convinced my since I liked history that I might also like this.  The rest is history.  I now have done and continue to find more (it's never done you know) about my family, Mark's (my husband) and now have started doing my son-in-law Justin's family with tracks to Terrasini, Sicily,Italy and France and now my daughter-in-law's family with tracks to Germany.  

Whenever I hear someone chatting about family it's always interesting to hear where the family name came from, it's to the point I'll even ask some of my patients "any idea what nationality your name is?"  We get chatting if they are interested and sometimes I get people started in thinking about starting their own trees.   I guess that might be dangerous to some.  

I'm lucky that I married into a family that understood about genealogists, my mother-in-law Phyllis and her mother Marion were avid genealogists, although it is my policy to double check everything before adding it to my tree.  I did inherit ,most of Phyllis's "stuff",  do I continue to double check as I go.  It's pretty interesting when I get into the different countries, like the Alsace-Lorraine areas, France, multiple areas of Germany, Finland and Sweden, and of course Italy.  It's always a challenge putting together what I've learned over the years and continuing to learn languages to read the church documents.  I'll be adding some of those so you can see what I mean.  My roots, as I'm only second generation born in the United States,  for my paternal grandmother is Quebec, Canada to France in the 1600's and England into the 1400's for my paternal grandfather, funny story there for a later blog. My maternal grandmother was born in Glasgow, Scotland; her lines go into the late 1700's, and lastly my maternal grandfather was born in Dundee, Scotland; his lines are kinda exciting as he has an Excise Supervisor whose tombstone I've visited at Arbroath, Scotland.  It was so exciting to stand in an Abbey and be next to a stone with my Wright family on it.  

So many stories to tell and so little time............ 

Some of my main surnames:

My group:

Ashby, Audet dit Lapointe,Bouchard, Chaplain, Groves, Harvey, Laidlaw, Newman, Pilote, Reaper, Robertson, Rollo, Surman, Thomson, Wright

Mark's surnames:

Boberg, Damberg, Gigerich, Hell/Hill, Isrealsson, Johansson, Jonsdotter, Kieffer, Meisberger, Miller/Muller, Shelton,Stark/Stork, Swisher, Tamme, Winter