Family History

Several months ago I started work on Stuart's family history. This work has fascinated and thrilled me. For so many years I never thought I would be interested in doing family history, or thought that I would have to, as my sister and mother are the geneaologists in our family. Both of them have completed a massive amount of work on both my parent's sides of the family. A while back Stuart expressed an interest in looking into his family. What a shame we did not do it then while we were still in England, as additional research needs to be done in London. Fortunatly, with the help of ancestry.com I am still able to get a lot of the work done. I have found so many wonderful and interesting relatives in Stuart's family. Both sides of his family are Jewish and are from what was the Russian Empire and is now modern day Poland and Lithuania. I am very grateful that so far all immediate relatives left before the war and were not caught up in the Holocaust, though I am ever mindful of the family members who were left behind and their descendents. So far, I have been able to do alot more work on his Dad's side of the family. I have had difficulty working on my mother-in-laws side, but know I will crack them as I know they want to be found as well.

I had decided to put the family history aside for the summer while the kids are off school, but Stuart bought me Family Tree Maker, and I haven't been able to resist. I just love the thrill of finding someone who has proved to be a bit elusive. I have also decided to try on concentrate on small parts of the family at a time, as I have been working all over the place and now find myself strugling to remember who is who!

I know this will sound a bit cheesey, but absolutely do your family history, it changes how you feel about yourself when you know where you came from and learn of the sacrifices made and the bravery of those ancestors who because of them, you are where you are today. They got you here.