Overview - Why the Site?
My decision to embark upon genealogical research was influenced by my own attempts at trying to locate my birth mother which introduced me to the term “brick wall”. In genealogical circles it basically describes the point at which there is no way to document and or find a particular individual and there are no clues or anything to go on, in essence the proverbial dead end.
After conversing with my mother (adopted) about her desire to find out more about her own father’s people I decided to do a little searching around to see what I could find out for her. It was in the midst of doing that searching that I discovered a true desire to find and document as clearly and concisely as possible the lines in the family. Additionally I felt as I have for a long time that there are so many stories, that I grew up hearing about different family members and situations that needed to be told and not “lost”.
With all this in mind, I decided to start looking and quickly found that It felt unfair not to share the information that I had found and because I already had some skills and knowledge of website creation and coding that I would begin to develop a website that would contain the information that I had found, as well as the stories that I had been hearing.
Update - July 2008
My search has expanded to include the family tree - Fenners out of Halifax, North Carolina. The surnames included in this research can be found here.
Site Summary
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This site will contain the following areas:
- Family Trees – based on the main family lines.You can view the current tree data here.
- Family Stories – oral and some video clips of stories as told by my grandmother about some of the individuals that are listed in the family tree with links back to their places for reference. The stories that are written will have links back to the individual in question or the line in question. Citations will be placed accordingly with links to the originating document(s).
- Location Maps-
I thought to include this after searching and finding information that would allow me to if not identify outright the exact location of some of the family members, enough information to give an approximation of where they were. This is important in the Brunson line as the maps will show that they for the most part stayed in the same area for several generations.
- Pictures/Images -
My mother literally has boxes of pictures going all the way back to her grandparents. I believe the only known photographs in existence of her grandmother and grandfather. It is my hope to eventually have all of those images scanned and available online through the image gallery on this site.
The albums will be sorted by family surname – and those images that cannot be identified will be in a separate album and will provide an email link for anyone who recognizes someone in an image and wishes to provide that information.