BLOGGING 101: Be Inspired by the Community

Is my granddaughter looking down a rabbit hole? I fear not. Maybe it is an opening to a fox’s den. I’m no expert. There was actually another, almost identical hole on the other side of this giant tree in a seemingly forsaken graveyard overgrown in weeds and thistles, but my granddaughter did not care which end of the hole it was—the entrance or the exit. Look! She is so close she’s almost in it! Isn’t the curiosity of children amazing? Another outstanding characteristic of kids seems to be their lack of fear.

Why was she playing in a graveyard? Our daughter and five grandchildren were doing their best to entertain themselves while Daddy searched for his ancestors. Even this week he is off on a trip to the New England states to search more such places. His desire to find every single relative is insatiable. Currently he is doing both sides of the family, his own and our daughter’s too. Who could ask for a more enthusiastic free service? Hey, the kids were more than willing to make the treck again, since their daddy promised they could visit Colonial Williamsburg.

Our son-in-law has been to the library in Salt Lake City, Utah more than once. His search has taken him way back beyond the Civil War and those tales of bravery and sacrifice. A relative commented that most genealogy searches stopped with the Civil War because families did not want to know they had African blood in their veins. Our family could care less. We already have so many nationalities on our family tree that it hardly bothers us to have another hue as kin.

Yesterday as I was searching for a new blog to review, I found Moore Genealogy. What a treat to see a gentleman staying busy doing something his children and grandchildren can enjoy for a long time to come. I mentioned to him that our son-in-law was searching for his own ancestry on both sides and for our daughter’s too. Of course that includes us—all the way back to Russia. Johann Wiebe died in Russia in 1840 (photo must have been taken there). His son Peter emigrated first to Germany and then to Canada. One of Peter’s children was Margaretha Wiebe, my husband’s maternal grandmother. The world becomes smaller and smaller as we live and learn.