Ancestor Hide and Seek

Everything but a witch. I thought of this idea for a title or theme to write about while lying in bed one morning. I was pretty much avoiding the day, so let the idea twirl around in my head, which in turn churned up some other good ideas. Since I was trying to be intentional about actually writing when I get an idea, as opposed to just writing it in my head and promptly losing track it in the general busy-ness of life, I got up and headed for the computer.   That was about 7:45 on a Sunday morning. Clearly there was something magical about the idea – prophetic even.   By 2:10 that afternoon, I had found a witch.   No kidding. Since I’ve discovered more branches of my family tree firmly planted in colonial America, I find I have a veritable checklist of American historical stereotypes. My tree has pilgrims and Puritans, farmers and founders, lawmakers and soldiers who fought to protect their homes and ways of life, first against the native Americans they took their land f

It seems appropriate (and a bit meta) to share a post I wrote last year about trying to choose a name for this blog.   In the end I decided to start with a Genealogy themed blog.  Hopefully I'll start another blog sometime soon to write about all the random thoughts that float around in my brain. Consider yourself warned. © Brenda Vouvalidis 2019 April 2, 2018    It was finally time to take the plunge and start an actual blog – I had the time, I had been intentionally writing, so no more excuses. (I know, I’m waaay behind the curve on this).   I started out by doing what I do best-research! I had to find out "how to" and there are loads of good online resources.   Next,  I figured out what platform I wanted to use, and any number of other important details.  With a bit of nervous exhilaration, I felt ready to take the plunge.  But wait! I needed a name to set up the url.   Full stop!  What the heck was I going to call it? The standard advice is to use

Welcome to my first post! You made it, and more importantly, so did I.  This blog has been a over a year in the making, which in hind-sight seems a bit silly, but I got mired down trying to find the perfect name. Read more about my blog naming tribulations  here. It really shouldn't have mattered so much what I called it, and perfection is clearly over-rated, but that's what happened. Then I proceeded to get sidetracked down 6852 rabbit holes (before I lost count), and here we are. So let's get you caught up. I spend a LOT of time playing hide & seek with my ancestors, and sometimes other peoples' ancestors too. Some have been quite easy to find, while other ancestors are particularly good at the game and are still in hiding. But I'm also pretty good at the game, and persistent too (did I hear someone say obsessed? shush!) With a combination of digging through records, solid detective work, collaboration, circumstantial evidence and/or plain dumb luck, one