I am completing the genealogy that my grandmother Velma (Martin) Horansky began back in the late 1950s. She began researching the Martin/Ward/Reed lines by writing letters to distant cousins. As a child she spent a lot of time with her Aunt Mary E. (Martin) Coggins in Barnesville. When I was able to drive, we spent a lot of time in Barnesville, where she would show me the cemeteries and the homes of family. She often wondered where the family homesteads were primarily because some family were buried on their own land. My grandmother and I were on my computer in the late 1990s and I found websites and information about the families and we spent a lot of days in the Stark County Library and the Barnesville Library searching and writing information. Before my grandmother passed away in 2011, she asked me to be sure to continue her research and to post it on the Ancestry.com. I promised I would and I have been online for nearly three months day and night collecting data and adding to her information. While reading her notes and transcribing 44 pages of names, I located some clues as to where the cemetery was located. I used the google maps to locate where the clues were, which lead me to the cemetery of her great grandparents and other family members who had buried on the property, as well as their homesteads. Now I spend nearly every weekend or several days a week during the summer traipsing through old cemeteries. I will be conducting some archaeological digs around the homesteads in the near future. I am so excited I was able to locate these places and additional information.

I am completing the genealogy that my grandmother Velma (Martin) Horansky began back in the late 1950s. She began researching the Martin/Ward/Reed lines by writing letters to distant cousins. As a child she spent a lot of time with her Aunt Mary E. (Martin) Coggins in Barnesville. When I was able to drive, we spent a lot of time in Barnesville, where she would show me the cemeteries and the homes of family. She often wondered where the family homesteads were primarily because some family were buried on their own land. My grandmother and I were on my computer in the late 1990s and I found websites and information about the families and we spent a lot of days in the Stark County Library and the Barnesville Library searching and writing information. Before my grandmother passed away in 2011, she asked me to be sure to continue her research and to post it on the Ancestry.com. I promised I would and I have been online for nearly three months day and night collecting data and adding to her information. While reading her notes and transcribing 44 pages of names, I located some clues as to where the cemetery was located. I used the google maps to locate where the clues were, which lead me to the cemetery of her great grandparents and other family members who had buried on the property, as well as their homesteads. Now I spend nearly every weekend or several days a week during the summer traipsing through old cemeteries. I will be conducting some archaeological digs around the homesteads in the near future. I am so excited I was able to locate these places and additional information.