I began to assemble bits of information on my family about 20 years ago, naturally, it was after the older members were gone. Working the various census, I found indications of where the family had been. I wrote for various records from several states, started contacting genealogical societies in counties where I had located family members. Contact by contact, information came my way; through new cousins, visits to courthouses around the country, searching through the basements where old record books are kept, helped me build on the information I had There is nothing to compare with the dusty, musty smell of fragile hand written books, over a century old. To hold one, you are holding history in your hands, written by someone long dead. They become your rope into the past. A past that lived, loved, fought, farmed, peopled by ghostly shadows of what once was. Old courthouse records, old census records, the new cousins I have met the last few years, to whom I owe a debt of much gratitude, have all come together, along with the history of our country, culminating in this effort.