Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Part 2

Randy Seavers, Gena-Musings, has posted this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. The subject matter for this week is Who's to Blame.

Instructions are as follows:

Read Brenda Joyce Jerome's post Who or What Do You Blame? on the Western Kentucky Genealogy blog. She asks these questions:

• Can you identify person or event that started you on this search for family information?
• Did you pick up researching where a relative had left off?
• Did your interest stem from your child's school project on genealogy?
• If you have been researching many years, it may be hard to pinpoint one reason for this journey.

On the paternal side of my family, my response to the first question has to be the fact that growing up, it was almost like we were lead to believe there were no other relatives besides the grandparents, dad / aunts/ uncles, the grand kids, and Cousin Alice whom I was always told was a distant relative and we were her closest kin. Funny thing is that all that all anyone had to do was ask, like I did, and they would have found out that Cousin Alice was my grandmother's first cousin. Not very distant at all.

My response to the second question is the same as on Georgia Black Crackers. No, I did not pick up where a relative left off. In the case of my paternal family, there weren't even any stories handed down.

As stated on Georgia Black Crackers, my interest steamed from my own curiosity about my ancestors and also the mini-series, Roots, which aired during my sophomore / junior year (1977) in high school and by Roots: The Next Generations, which aired during my senior year in high school (1979). However, I didn't really get started on actually attempting to research my family until the late 1980s. My first find on my paternal lineage was my grandparents marriage certificate, which contained my grandfather's biological mother's name.