I feel that I have completed the circle now--

I have traced my family tree from the time they arrived in the United States. I now feel that I have come full circle by showing my daughter the grave of my grandfather and her great grandfather. We are all a link in the chain, and I was lucky enough to know my great grandmother, so now the circle is complete for me.

I found out that my ancestors lived or raised their crops during the 1600s and 1700s in the place I chose to live over 30 years ago. I only started my research on those ancestors about a year ago, but even 30 years ago I just felt right living here.

I SOOO want to move to Wisconsin where I can complete oodles and oodles of research on the weekends and really get a fuller picture of the family.

Right now I'm having to do it long distance and travel up every 6 months to a year.

fsc

I've been lucky on the Web finding information for my mother's Nebraska, Indiana, New England, English ancestry, although there have been times I've thought about hopping on a plane to Pennsylvania to find out more about my mother's paternal ancestors. Too bad the fares are so high. I've even gave up my plans to visit my niece in Boston, which really means visit the New England Historical and Genealogical Society's library.

But I have to admit, even though I've been working very hard on my research, I still am very lucky. The Saunders' (where my mother came from in Nebraska) county Gen Web has transcriptions of the grave sites for three generations of my mother's family. Plus my maternal Grandmother was an Atwood and I've traced much of her family back to the pilgrims. This is an area of genealogical research that is easily found in the NEHGS's database or from other's research.

I'm also very lucky to belong to two other genealogical societies, here in New Mexico that have worked hard to translate and publish information. So much of what I've been able to find wasn't as easily available to me just ten years ago. Also, there have been some wonderful folks here in New Mexico that have put valuable information online. Someone, who I later found out was my 4th cousin, transcribed the grave site for a couple of generations of my father's maternal ancestors which lies 90 or so miles south of where I live. I've been trying to put all my information on line so I can share my work to help other. My genealogy web site is at http://cybergata.com/roots/ :woohoo:

Oh dear, I forgot to mention how lucky I am to have a genealogy library here in Albuquerque that has everything from census microfiche to stacks and stacks of books covering the New Mexico Lucero de Gody families to the New England Cooley family as well as books full of translated New Mexico Catholic church records. :woohoo: :woohoo:

The lady who runs the Rock County, Wisconsin site has done such a remarkable job putting up so much information that I'm spoiled when I go to any of the others!!

She and I actually discovered we're cousins through marriage...one of her aunts married into one of the branches I'm researching, so she's been able to help me there too.

I'm lucky enough that I"ve done tons of traveling this year to help me with my book. I just rack up buttloads of airmiles and then start the sequence again.

I was also fortunate enough to marry a man from Alberta (where one of my Smith branches settled). Is that fate or what?? :hi:

Or maybe good taste! :-) You must be a saint to delve into Smith genealogy. In my parts, Lopez is sort of our Smith. I'm still searching for my GG grandfather's family. His name was Ramon López, which is a bit better than looking for Jose López. I usually can count out all the Ramon Lópezes from the Northern Part of the state which was called the Rio Arriba. The area he is likely to have lived is from Albuquerque south about 90 miles to Socorro. So I've narrowed it down to a couple of Ramon Lópezes. Now if I could only find some record of who he was married to before my GG Grandmother, Benigna Martínez, I could figure out just which one he is. I need to take my Spanish-English dictionary with me to the library and just wade through the records on microfiche. :-( It takes forever, especial since I can't read Spanish without looking up every other word in the dictionary.

For my part, knowing I was mostly French and German, I thought ahead and studied both so I'd know what all those words on the tombstones meant!

I was very lucky to have my wonderful uncle work on the family in the 70s, and I took up the mantle after he died. He had these huge butcher paper charts where he had sketched out the entire family. And he had information on babies who had died that no one else ever knew about, because he was closer to that generation.

Armed with his trees and an old article from the Beloit Wisconsin newspaper circa 1936 that explained all about my GGgrandparents, their trek west from New York, and their ten kids, I was HOOKED. I felt it was my moral imperative to figure what happened to all 10 of these branches (who spread to the 4 winds...SERIOUSLY) and re-unite all the modern branches with information, pictures and stories.

Some of the people that I've found had no idea where they came from before either their parents or immediate grandparents. When I've shown them pix of their GG or GGG grandparents, they are so tickled. And several branches had just lost touch through the years, and have had a blast getting reacquainted. It's very worthwhile.

Have you become masterful yet at rrrrrrollling your rrrrrrrrrrrs when you say RRRRRRRRRRamon? :P

I love rolling rrrrs. My father spoke perfect Spanish and even had a Masters degree in Spanish, so my pronunciation isn't too bad. He just never taught his children how to speak. Well, it was the 50s, and there was a push for people to be less Spanish/Mexican and more American. Heeeeee, being American. After studying and teaching Latin American History, it seems silly to refer to people in the U.S. as American since American really is both North and South American.

Actually the Spanish rule is to roll rs when they are double rrs. Ramon wouldn't be rolled but my grandmother's name Torres would be rolled. For some reason I do have trouble rolling the rrs in Torres. I found not only have I added a whole new dimension to teaching New Mexico History and even U.S. History from my genealogical research, I've also have begun to not even notice at times that a marriage or baptismal record is written in Spanish. Of course that comes from reading many, many, and many more marriage/baptismal
records.

Your research and work sounds fascinating. What a wonderful thing you are doing for your Smith cousins. I have a couple of female Smiths in my mother's family tree. I haven't been able to find any records for them, so I figured they would be very difficult to find, but then I have to remember that Lopez is the Spanish version of ... well maybe Johnson. Baca is more like the Spanish version of Smith, at least here in New Mexico. Every New Mexican has at least a few Bacas hanging out in their family tree. I have dozens of them. For the Rio Abajo in New Mexico, Chavez is another Smith.