Genealogy Jottings

Last week I spent time in upstate New York caring for my grandchildren. Not much opportunity for doing genealogy that week, but it offered precious time to know the youngest generation of the family. After all, I pursue my research in order to hand some family history down to them someday.

This year I will reach my goal of documenting for them the lives of my great-grandparents, except for one great-grandfather whose identity may remain unknown. These people are great-great-great grandparents to my grandchildren, just 8 of the 32 ancestors they have in that generation. Their lives spanned a huge time period from the birth of Samuel Harvey Reed in 1845 to the death of Ole Bentsen in 1976.

It is the story of immigrants and of homesteaders, and how they came to live in the American West. It explains so much about who we are today. How I wish I had received this much information on my own third great-grandparents!