Stayed Tuned - I'm way behind except for my reading list, of course.

I want to blog something on our family history because I've become obssessed with it. But I'm too busy doing it so I haven't made time. but I've found some stuff that is fascinating like:

I have Confederate blood in my veins. I always thought I was, if anything, pure Union. My 2nd great grandfather died "defending the stars and bars." Ouch. I'm a little conflicted and thought maybe they just drafted him (and other relatives) and they didn't have a choice. They did. And some were very bitter and hated my main man Abraham. I'm trying to get good with it.

One line I've discovered can be traced back to Peppin III, King of Francs (500 AD.) I need to do some pick and shovel on that because I've heard it can get fairly flacky to go back that far and huge leaps of logic have been made to get anyone there. So I'm checking it out.

The Internet is absolutely awesome in regard to family history these days. It's unbelievable what is out there. I've found pictures of ancestors going back 5 and 6 generations that none of my relatives have discovered yet. The books you can get your hands on, like on the Google book project, are amazing also. These are out of print, rare things they have scanned it that have very valuable in the information they contain.

I'm also in trouble for now having, in addition to my piles of books, piles of binders with all my research, charts and stuff. What can I say, it's one of the three missions of the church. Nobody would complain if I had missionary stuff laying around or if I stacked friends of other faiths stacked on the floor and end tables. But nobody has bought my argument that the books are involved with perfecting the saints, so I'll just procrastinate finding a better home for them.

Indexing. Everyone should go to "familysearch.org" and sign up for indexing. It's a great way to gain penance for a day of not living up to your fullest capabilities to pull up a census and "index" it to assist with the great family history work. The goal is to get all the microfilmed records in the granite vault digitized into databases so they can be searched. It's actually fun. You'll never know how much until you sign up and do it. You work at your leisure and at your own pace. It's a great space filler. Since July 23rd I've done 4,500 records. Trust me. Do it.

More later.