From roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com Sun Jan 1 09:31:04 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.16.34]) by lists5.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k01GV4g3001211; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 09:31:04 -0700 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l.rootsweb.com [66.43.16.22]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k01GV34b001684 for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 09:31:03 -0700 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l [127.0.0.1]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id k01E4oFI029759 for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 09:04:50 -0500 Received: (from roots-in@localhost) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.8/Submit) id k01E4o4v029758 for roots-approved@rootsweb.com; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 09:04:50 -0500 Received: from lists5.rootsweb.com (lists5.rootsweb.com [66.43.18.41]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id k019HvFI014826 for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 04:17:57 -0500 Received: (from slist@localhost) by lists5.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) id k01Bi0V3018900 for roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 04:44:00 -0700 X-Envelope-From: altaf@world-net.net Sun Jan 1 04:44:00 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.16.34]) by lists5.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k01Bi0g3018888 for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 04:44:00 -0700 Received: from blackbird.world-net.net (root@blackbird.world-net.net [204.57.72.6]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k01Bhw6d002417 for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 04:43:59 -0700 Received: from world-net.net (s2p2-99.world-net.net [207.71.22.99]) (authenticated bits=0) by blackbird.world-net.net (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id k01BhikO087822; Sun, 1 Jan 2006 05:43:46 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from altaf@world-net.net) Message-ID: <43B7C180.8040708@world-net.net> Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2006 05:48:16 -0600 From: Alta Flynt User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en, th, ko-kr, ko, ko-kp, ja, in, zh-cn, zh-hk, zh-sg, zh-tw, zh, ar-dz, ar, ar-bh, ar-eg, ar-iq, ar-jo, ar-kw, ar-lb, ar-ly MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tom Kemp CC: ROOTS-M@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ROOTS-L] How old were you when you started your genealogy? What got you started? References: <45c595dc0512301944j43c2c33bx628bec0082ec6931@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <45c595dc0512301944j43c2c33bx628bec0082ec6931@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.86.1/1219/Wed Dec 28 16:57:59 2005 on blackbird.world-net.net X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.16.34 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.16.34 Sender: roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com After looking at the other responses, I have to admit I'm a late bloomer. I had thought it would be interesting to find my family's history for many years but put it off because I just didn't have the time. Then about 10 years ago, when I was 65, my daughter visited a cousin and came home with a copy of a letter to my mother-in-law from her grand aunt giving her paternal family back to the mid 18th century. That was the push I needed. I was still working full time and going to college part time, but I got a "how-to" book from the library and started putting things together. I had a few odds and ends of newspaper clippings, etc. and then I found that the main library had the census records on microfilm. I found my husband's great, great grandfather in the 1790 census and I was HOOKED! No illegal drug could ever be more addictive. Since then I've found interesting characters on nearly every branch of the tree and even found the truth of an old family story in my husband's family. (Great, great grandfather Flint wasn't really a horse thief. He was a bigamist who took his mother's surname when he married the second time. Two of the sons in his second family spelled the name "Flynt" and the rest "Flint.") I've found new cousins and restablished connections with some that I haven't heard from since I was a child. And, shown that my children are their own distant cousins. Both my mother's family and my mother-in-law's family were in New England from the early 17th century. There had to be some intermarriage. There just weren't enough spouses to go around otherwise. My husband and I bought a small country store in upstate New York in the mid 1960s. It was one of those towns where nearly everyone was related somehow to everyone else. We were outsiders, but one of the highlights of my research is finding that one of the earliest settlers of the town was my mother's cousin and that one of my friends is the wife of one of his descendants. The fun part (or maybe the frustrating part depending on how you look at it) of genealogy is that every time you find the answer to a question, it leads to more questions. Genealogy research never ends and I enjoy it! Alta