My name is Dolores and I have been doing genealogical research on my family for over thirty years. Researching in and from a small town can be the most fascinating, frustrating fun for those of us with the desire to know our history.

The intention of this blog is to relate a little of my story, to help those kindred spirits who have been at this for a long time as well as those just starting this journey.

I came from a broken home and am luckier then many. I was placed with my aunt and grew up with a loving family, but I knew nothing about my father’s family and very little about mom’s side of the family. As I got older the question just kept bothering me. What are my bloodlines? I knew my maternal grandfather and he was a happy person who used to sing little made up songs to me. I loved him very much and my heart was broken when we lost him in September of 1955. At that point, I began listening to family conversation and whenever I heard someone mention our ancestry and tried to make note of the names filing them away in my memory. I had never heard of doing genealogical research then and just thought it was my own curiosity and feeling of disconnection from my family.

When my foster mother’s daughter, Katherene married her husband Kenneth in 1946, I kept running away to her new home so the decision was made for me to go and live there. They provided a loving home and a good family life but there was still that sense of something missing.

Neither my father nor any of his relatives kept in touch, they had moved to Connecticut by then leaving me with little information on where or who they were. When I graduated from high school in 1961 my father did send me a dozen red roses, but declined to attend my wedding two weeks later. It turned out that he disapproved of my marrying a Frenchman. My husband is Canadian.

It wasn’t until my brother died in 1979 that we reconnected and his opinion of my husband changed. I was unable to go to Connecticut for the funeral, but my husband went in my place and kept an important promise I had made to my brother. He had asked me not to let anyone bury him in a grey casket. He had been in the Navy and had grown to hate the color grey. That was when my birth father learned to respect my spouse.

By this point I had lost a son, my birth mother and now my brother and the need to know more about my ancestors was growing. I began asking questions and writing things down making records the best I could. I went to the town office to ask questions and find information. That is when it became obvious that it was difficult for a clerk in a small town office to take time from their duties to answer questions from someone who didn’t really know what she was doing. I found a book on the bookmobile that used to serve our town about family history research and read it from cover to cover and made notes.

The next step was a trip to the Archives in Augusta. I spent a lot of time there in the 80’s gathering information but was still missing many tools so in the mid 90’s I decided to take a home study course in genealogical research from the National Genealogical Society. It was the best thing I ever did for myself. I completed the course in 97 and have my certificate hanging proudly on my computer room wall.
The course taught about citing my sources, the correct way to record the information gathered and places to search. It told what questions to ask people who could help and suggested recording the conversations and taking photos with permission, of course.

At last I had some idea what I was doing and how to do it. I will be adding more to my Blog and I hope you will find something that will help you.