Born in East Central Indiana in the early 1980's,
I have been researching my family tree for over 21 years with the help of my maternal grandfather, who done years of research before the day of the internet & even cellphones, & continued in the old way while learning to use the tools available online, he spent over 40 years of road trips, visiting tons of libraries in several states & counties, spending hours turning pages in books that may give no help to aid him. He taught me to never add information on a person in a family tree with proof that they existed, can prove the family relationship they are put in, & not only prove all that above, but also every date, place, & event attached to each person in a online family tree program (such programs all online like Ancestry didn't exist yet. Only disks with download able programs for the computer), but also get a physical copy of each document proving your story, because digital things can be erased in the blink of an eye (before the day of programs that protected the computer from virus', computers were very vulnerable. One day his computer went buggy, wiping out all its memory of every not factory. Thanks to his papers, he could start over without a loss of anything but his time typing it all back in.)
Thanks to his dedication in learning not only the dates & places of each name in our tree, but to also learn all available of their personality, lives, friends, & more, he had extensive time & money in his passion, & the patience to take his 15 year old granddaughter under his wing & teach her all he could of what he'd learned over the years.
Not only did he teach me the patience to search a library for weeks to only find nothing, yet not get discouraged & give up, but he also taught me how to find the places, not only public libraries but government & church records, manuscripts of previous genealogists who donated a copy of their work to aid the future researchers, but also how to locate long closed schools, hospitals, & even private institutions, when available.
I learned to rely on my ability to gain not just the information on each person & their lives, but to obtain the documents proving it on my own, without looking to his work to see if I was on the right track. I spent weeks researching the wrong guy with the same name born a year later then my ancestor, trying hard to make the puzzle pieces fit, I was so sure I had the right man, until I found his will, with different children, and the will of the right mans wife, with correct kids. It forced me to see all the pieces of the puzzle I had tried shoving in places they didn't fit just to prove I knew more then I really did, & forced to admit to myself that I'd wasted weeks of time because I was too stubborn to admit it even to myself. The kick in the pants was the discovery days later as I was trying to figure out if anything I'd attached to the wrong guy actually belonged to the right one....I'd had the truth & the proof, of most of his church & government documents already copied & in my files. It taught me to look beyond just what I wanted to see because it was the quickest way to gain information & continue on in the tree, but to see every possible piece & make sure it fit with what I already knew. If some did information fit & some didn't, don't discard it. Try to find anything to prove or disprove it belongs to that ancestor & not someone else.
Tracing your lineage isn't a race. You can't find all the information in a week. Most won't be able to trace every person in a year. Hit a brick wall on someone? Move on for a while & come back. A new perspective may reveal you had it all along, or new information might be available online or a book download able to your phone or sent to your local library where you can view & get a copy of it.
You will get discouraged, feel like you're getting nowhere, & possibly find 1 or 2 people who moved far from any family, changed their name & dates for one reason or another (I have 2 such fellows in the days long before government proof of identity. Just move, change name, & poof. Gone.) Accept some brick walls will never solved, but be patient & let the information you need to be found in some old dusty attic. Learn what you can about who you can. It's not a "he was born here, lived here, died here". Learning who they were & you may find you're love of nature, your red hair, or your sons temper. What they died of, rather when & where, can help you understand your allergies or where your families ADD came from.
Our ancestors have a lot to tell us. All we have to do is listen.

Any questions or concerns on any memorial I've posted, or if you would like one transfered, please contact me at the provided email. I will do my utmost to answer as quickly as possible (I don't check it often), & to help in every way possible with correction or additions. As to the transfer of memorials, as long as the person is not directly related to myself or my husband, I will gladly transfer any and all memorials.
Happy hunting!

Born in East Central Indiana in the early 1980's,
I have been researching my family tree for over 21 years with the help of my maternal grandfather, who done years of research before the day of the internet & even cellphones, & continued in the old way while learning to use the tools available online, he spent over 40 years of road trips, visiting tons of libraries in several states & counties, spending hours turning pages in books that may give no help to aid him. He taught me to never add information on a person in a family tree with proof that they existed, can prove the family relationship they are put in, & not only prove all that above, but also every date, place, & event attached to each person in a online family tree program (such programs all online like Ancestry didn't exist yet. Only disks with download able programs for the computer), but also get a physical copy of each document proving your story, because digital things can be erased in the blink of an eye (before the day of programs that protected the computer from virus', computers were very vulnerable. One day his computer went buggy, wiping out all its memory of every not factory. Thanks to his papers, he could start over without a loss of anything but his time typing it all back in.)
Thanks to his dedication in learning not only the dates & places of each name in our tree, but to also learn all available of their personality, lives, friends, & more, he had extensive time & money in his passion, & the patience to take his 15 year old granddaughter under his wing & teach her all he could of what he'd learned over the years.
Not only did he teach me the patience to search a library for weeks to only find nothing, yet not get discouraged & give up, but he also taught me how to find the places, not only public libraries but government & church records, manuscripts of previous genealogists who donated a copy of their work to aid the future researchers, but also how to locate long closed schools, hospitals, & even private institutions, when available.
I learned to rely on my ability to gain not just the information on each person & their lives, but to obtain the documents proving it on my own, without looking to his work to see if I was on the right track. I spent weeks researching the wrong guy with the same name born a year later then my ancestor, trying hard to make the puzzle pieces fit, I was so sure I had the right man, until I found his will, with different children, and the will of the right mans wife, with correct kids. It forced me to see all the pieces of the puzzle I had tried shoving in places they didn't fit just to prove I knew more then I really did, & forced to admit to myself that I'd wasted weeks of time because I was too stubborn to admit it even to myself. The kick in the pants was the discovery days later as I was trying to figure out if anything I'd attached to the wrong guy actually belonged to the right one....I'd had the truth & the proof, of most of his church & government documents already copied & in my files. It taught me to look beyond just what I wanted to see because it was the quickest way to gain information & continue on in the tree, but to see every possible piece & make sure it fit with what I already knew. If some did information fit & some didn't, don't discard it. Try to find anything to prove or disprove it belongs to that ancestor & not someone else.
Tracing your lineage isn't a race. You can't find all the information in a week. Most won't be able to trace every person in a year. Hit a brick wall on someone? Move on for a while & come back. A new perspective may reveal you had it all along, or new information might be available online or a book download able to your phone or sent to your local library where you can view & get a copy of it.
You will get discouraged, feel like you're getting nowhere, & possibly find 1 or 2 people who moved far from any family, changed their name & dates for one reason or another (I have 2 such fellows in the days long before government proof of identity. Just move, change name, & poof. Gone.) Accept some brick walls will never solved, but be patient & let the information you need to be found in some old dusty attic. Learn what you can about who you can. It's not a "he was born here, lived here, died here". Learning who they were & you may find you're love of nature, your red hair, or your sons temper. What they died of, rather when & where, can help you understand your allergies or where your families ADD came from.
Our ancestors have a lot to tell us. All we have to do is listen.

Any questions or concerns on any memorial I've posted, or if you would like one transfered, please contact me at the provided email. I will do my utmost to answer as quickly as possible (I don't check it often), & to help in every way possible with correction or additions. As to the transfer of memorials, as long as the person is not directly related to myself or my husband, I will gladly transfer any and all memorials.
Happy hunting!