A few years ago, I started our family tree on ancestry.com. I started it with Kelly since she was the youngest, and then that way I figured I could get both branches. I do like the website and it has upgraded a lot of the features over the years, but there is only so much you can do with their free account. So, I was showing the tree I had made at that point to my father in law, when he tells me that he started one too, but never used it, oh -- and he bought the membership (!) so did I want to use it?
Yes I did!
Like I said, there is only so much you can do with their free account, but there is a ton of records you can search when you have a membership. I worked on our tree all the time!
I have always had an interest in genealogy. When I was little, I loved looking at The Tree in my baby book and I knew all the names of my great grandparents. I also used to count up all my cousins. Like, name my aunt or uncle and then their kids. In my head. And count them. I know, weird right? Thinking about it now, I guess it made me feel more connected but it might not be a genealogy thing (or that's the excuse I'll use to feel less like a dork)
Working on our tree takes up a lot of time, so I tend to work in spurts. It is harder to find information one generation back than 100 years ago, and even harder if you don't have a mother's maiden name, but still I search. The website is always being updated, so I can find even more things now than when I started.
I have also shared it with other family members, but no one really seems all that interested in checking it out or has answered my request to help me fill in blanks. I'm not sure why. I think that the website itself makes it hard to share with people and is one thing I would change.
In January I received a call letting me know that my great aunt had died the month before at age 93. She was my grandfather's sister on my mother's side and had never had children. We always called her Aunt Betty, but she was called Nettie Belle as a girl. The name on her birth record is Jeanette Belle Hopper. I didn't really know her very well. None of my grandfather's siblings had kids, which is one of the reasons (I am sure) why I got the awesome box of her old pictures. After ooo-ing over the ones I had sent her of my kids -- and me as a baby, I started scanning some to post on our tree.
Some of the pictures have writing on them, letting you know who the people are and/or where they were and when. Some are blank. Some have a name, but I still can't figure out who it is... Some of them belonged to her sister, Sarah Katherine -- Aunt Kay. She died when I was about 12. The oldest one I have come across is of my great grandparents.
I grew up only having seen pictures of him when he was old, and never one of her. His name was Thomas Abert Hopper and she was Georgia Beatrice Lively. They were married when he was 19 and she was 13! (crazy, right!?!) They do not look happy in this picture, that is for sure. See how her fist is all balled up? He just looks mean. Another interesting thing about them is that his brother John, married her sister Lillie and so their children were "double cousins" to each other. All I know, is that it makes it confusing when you are searching for people!
