My sisters and I discovered a passion for our family "roots" back in 1998. We have been on many trips (our kids mockingly call it our "dead man walking tour" or "ghost busting") We have found "cousins" we never knew about, helped restore a pioneer cemetery,
(see http://sites.rootsweb.com/~intcpcrg/2002-Routh/Routh_PioneerCemeteryProject2002.html)
visited many cemeteries, historical sites, libraries, courthouses, etc. The expanding internet sources are making our research much easier and it's amazing how much new information in available since that first trip 20 years ago.

I think the most surprising thing about my family tree is that most of my ancestors have been on this side of the pond (Atlantic Ocean) since before the American Revolution. I live in northern Wisconsin and almost everyone here is first or second generation Scandinavian. I do have one great grandmother from Norway, but everyone else has been here for generations.

My Dad is a "Routh/Fox" and my Mom was a "DeRosia/Sharp". Our mother's French side was relatively easy, big Catholic family equals many church records (baptisms, marriages, deaths). The others were easy until you get to the 1840s and before.

Digging up documentation to prove your ancestry is not always easy, especially since there is so many geneologists with less than exacting standards in authenticating with documents and source detail.

In conclusion, I have a wonderful husband, father to our six children, we managed to collect 24 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren (so far) in our 45 years of marriage. The most important legacy I could leave them is a relationship with Jesus Christ and a sense of family. God has willed that, after Him, we should honor our parents to whom we owe life and who have handed on to us the knowledge of God. We are obliged to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with His authority. Here we see in concrete form the passage from the “love of God” to the “love of neighbor,” beginning with the family which is “the original cell of social life”.

My sisters and I discovered a passion for our family "roots" back in 1998. We have been on many trips (our kids mockingly call it our "dead man walking tour" or "ghost busting") We have found "cousins" we never knew about, helped restore a pioneer cemetery,
(see http://sites.rootsweb.com/~intcpcrg/2002-Routh/Routh_PioneerCemeteryProject2002.html)
visited many cemeteries, historical sites, libraries, courthouses, etc. The expanding internet sources are making our research much easier and it's amazing how much new information in available since that first trip 20 years ago.

I think the most surprising thing about my family tree is that most of my ancestors have been on this side of the pond (Atlantic Ocean) since before the American Revolution. I live in northern Wisconsin and almost everyone here is first or second generation Scandinavian. I do have one great grandmother from Norway, but everyone else has been here for generations.

My Dad is a "Routh/Fox" and my Mom was a "DeRosia/Sharp". Our mother's French side was relatively easy, big Catholic family equals many church records (baptisms, marriages, deaths). The others were easy until you get to the 1840s and before.

Digging up documentation to prove your ancestry is not always easy, especially since there is so many geneologists with less than exacting standards in authenticating with documents and source detail.

In conclusion, I have a wonderful husband, father to our six children, we managed to collect 24 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren (so far) in our 45 years of marriage. The most important legacy I could leave them is a relationship with Jesus Christ and a sense of family. God has willed that, after Him, we should honor our parents to whom we owe life and who have handed on to us the knowledge of God. We are obliged to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with His authority. Here we see in concrete form the passage from the “love of God” to the “love of neighbor,” beginning with the family which is “the original cell of social life”.