The Quest

This spring was my every-other-year genealogy trip with my mother.  When we were in Virginia a couple of years ago, we kept seeing that our Masons and related families had moved to South Carolina and we wanted to know why. For mother's side, we had discovered some time ago that one of her lines (Buser) was among the Swiss German immigrants who were encouraged to immigrate to settle Saxe Gotha in South Carolina. So... we set out to learn more about these things, as well as the many other family lines who came through this area back in the 1700s and on. Mom and I on our first research day at the South Carolina State Library As has become my practice, I blogged each day of the trip, so I will cross-link those posts here rather than repeating myself: Day 1 - Travel Day through the Shenandoah Valley Day 2 - Fun with Books Day 3 - The State Archives and Mysteries Days 4 and 5 - Land and Museum Visits We spent our travel time collecting information, not necessarily processing it. So at t

Bloom where you are planted. That saying is ubiquitous with my Aunt Melinda in my mind. It was on the wall in her guest bathroom, which I frequented with such regularity. It was so ingrained in my psyche that I thought it was Melinda’s personal challenge to me directly. She probably never thought about it again after she hung it there, but it seemed to me to be what she was doing her whole life long… blooming. Melinda repainted this plaque to be pink when she decided to change the color of her bathroom. She also meticulously repainted every orange-ish yellow flower on the wallpaper in the bathroom pink to match her new decor. I wrote a lengthy remembrance of Melinda for her obituary, which I honestly thought my family wouldn’t go for. I had prepared myself to post that here on my blog, thinking the long version wouldn’t see the light of day in any other way. But since they did go for it, I can link to that and use this space to say all the things I forgot to say there. In preparation