FamilyTies

I have 2 parents.  I know. Weird, right? They each come from people. And those people made people. And so on. And I love them all, and their stories. Hence the creation of this whole entire blog ordeal. Mom & Dad ca 1988 I’m doing separate research on both sides of the family. So I’ve decided to organize the info on both of these sides into two labels, or tags. For my Dad’s side of the family, I’m using the tag “Family Ties” and for my Mom’s I’m using “The Grapevine” .  To be completely honest, Family Ties is the name of the blog and the family tree project because it was the first thing I came up with. I think I’m pretty well stuck with it now. The Grapevine is the name of my mom’s side’s genealogical blogs because of her home town, North East, PA being home to Welch’s vineyards. It was even the name of North East High School’s yearbook (on whose committee my Gramma served as a contributor).  So there we have it. To keep up with the large-scale family tree organiza...

  In learning about my family’s history and looking through the archive of pictures my aunt keeps, there are certain people who are just compelling. I can’t quite put my finger on why, the look of their faces, the mystery of their life, the glamor of it, or maybe even the sadness in their wake. Today’s spotlight is one that just caught my eye. I don’t know why, maybe because she’s so stunning. I’d love to introduce you to my great-great-grandmother, Bertha May Watson Sawyer. Bertha was born to George and Susan Watson in 1879 in Boston. She grew up well, going to the local schools and eventually an all girl’s school. She had one brother, Arthur, who was a businessman and consulate to, what was then, Arabia. She had 2 sons, my great-grandfather Richard and his brother Gilman. As you can see from these two pictures side-by-side, her health deteriorated rather quickly. My Nana told the story of how she had diabetes and it took her life very quickly. A mere 7 years later after her death...

  I feel like most people who read these days have some understanding of the massive impact that the Outlander series has had on the literary scene. I loved the first book, then found the subsequent books too sloggy and slow-paced. However, I am MADLY in love with Jamie Fraser, the king of men (and the *completely fictional* main character in the Outlander series). Before I even set eyes on those books I’d fallen MADLY in love with the idea of Scotland. I’m not sure if it's due to the idyllic setting it offers to the medieval smut that I adore or if it’s genuinely the magic in the landscape. The beauty of that country convinced Queen Victoria to love it and buy Balmoral for herself and her family, calling it "the proudest, finest country in the world". I just have this feeling that if I ever get to visit Scotland I will not want to leave. There's this show that comes on UK television called Escape to the Country, where families who live in UK cities want to buy homes ...

  My mom’s family, very nearly every single one of them on both her mother’s and father’s side live in Pennsylvania. She was born in a tiny, idyllic town northeast of Erie called…well…North East. North East is home to many many vineyards, small farms, a quaint township, and some of my family’s favorite people on the planet, among them are Dave and Marge Montgomery. Uncle Dave is my deceased Gramma’s brother and knew her better than just about anyone, which makes him a precious commodity indeed. His life stories are coveted remembrances among those of us who knew her. Uncle Dave lives on the family homestead, and has for many many years. That home belonged to his grandfather and holds enough precious memories to fill all of Lake Erie. Once I had dug into my family tree I realized that I had huge chunks of missing information about people that I was curious about. I used every tactic in my niecely trick bag to bribe my great-uncle into divulging details about the family I had questio...

One of the interesting things you come across when you start to research family trees is the massive difference in record keeping depending on the regions you’re looking in. I have to say that I'm a bit spoiled, not only from the work of previous generations, but because the majority of my family is from New England. I’m sure it’s because those states are much older and have been colonized for a longer amount of time. The family was based mostly in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and a little bit of Maine. I even have some ancestors that immigrated from Northern Ireland to Truro, Nova Scotia as grantees. Evidently they helped to found the city. To my surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have been, while researching my husband’s tree, I found that every single person I came across, like 8 or 9 generations back on either side of his family, were LITERALLY ALL from Virginia. Like, ALL of them.  A place where all my research (and anyone else’s who has looked into it) has...

If you can believe it, I began talking at a very young age. My Mom says my first full sentence (and it *is* a full sentence, lest you forget) was “NO!” followed closely by “GET IT”. All of which TRACKS cuz ya girl can be opinionated and bossy. Again, I’m hitting with the one-two punches of multiple *shockers* in a row.  Growing up my aunt and my Nana lived together, and would often “kidnap” my brother and I for the weekend. Pretty much as soon as I began to use words my Nana taught me nursery rhymes. I’m not really sure why, but probably because she loves them and learned many as a little girl. She had an old record with nursery rhymes sung to cute lil tunes. I began singing them and begging to play that particular record. A record which, years later, I happened to find while rummaging through the recesses of a record store. The record has many songs I still sing to my kids - “Sing a Song of Sixpence” mostly, which was one of my favorites. Among the nursery rhymes I learned as a we...

  I’ve been sitting here staring at my computer screen for a hot minute, trying to figure out how to say what I want to say. That’s the trouble with writing. Why write if you have nothing to say, but conversely (and herein lies my problem), how can I possibly write when I have all these words in my head screaming to get out. As I sort through the thought tornado spinning wildly out of control through the grooves of my, today, insufficiently outfitted gray matter, I just decided to start typing. I just got a brand new keyboard that makes the most delightful typing sounds. I’m very happy with the tactile feel of the keys and the rainbow leds lighting it from underneath. My kids are somewhat occupied for the time being, somehow, so I have a moment to begin to collect my thoughts and ideas about how I want to move forward on this blog. . I have come upon a sort of project. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I am utterly obsessed with genealogy. I constantly live with one t...