The Quest

Since I wrote the post about genealogy writing, it's really bugged me that I didn't write about our Virginia trip. Mother and I had planned for years to make it to Virginia, where many of our family members first landed in America long before the American Revolution. We knew it would be one of our toughest trips to find actual information, but we had high hopes.  Starting out at my home in Troy, we drove south through the Hudson Valley, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland on our way to Virginia. We took a little side-jaunt to look at The National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, America's first Saint of the Catholic Church. The only reason we knew this was here (besides the billboards on the highway) was from a historical information marker at the Mason Dixon Welcome Center at the Maryland state line. Our first stop of the trip was Culpeper, Virginia, land of our forefathers. We arrived to our Airbnb in the early evening and had some great dinner at a local Italian R...

My mother and I recently returned from an amazing genealogy trip through the south (see my travel blog for details). As we were driving home, we counted up 13 family lines that we touched on... Thomas, Brevard, Jetton, McKnight, Robinson, Deering/Dearing, Gideon/Giddens, Dickey, Crow, Vandiver, Cox, Russell (on Dad's side), and Clack (for Cheri). I might even be missing one. One of the exceptional things about this latest venture (besides finding SO MUCH good information) was the amount of help we received from expert genealogists. The cousins we were meeting up with are experts in their own right, but we encountered genealogy librarians, DAR representatives, local experts, and volunteers of genealogical societies that were beyond generous with their time and expertise. One thing I realized is: I want to be them. I want to be the person who goes out of their way to pull piles of files for people in order to connect them with their family. I don't know what will come...