About Me

My interest in family genealogy began with a homework assignment in high school. I had to prepare a simple pedigree chart and gather information about my ancestor up to my great-grandparents to include in a report to go along with the pedigree chart. I remember calling my grandmothers and asking all kinds of questions and learning things about them and their parents I never had known before. After turning in the assignment however I did not take it further until after I married my second husband.

One evening after attending a family gathering my new husband expressed an interest tracing his family tree but admittedly knew nothing about how to go about it. Recalling my high school assignment I knew it started with asking those who would know and organizing the information in a chart. After much digging through old papers, I found that pedigree chart and so had a basis for my start but my husband was starting from scratch. However even having those old charts and my report I knew my knowledge on how to a more complete genealogy was sorely lacking. To gain that need knowledge we decided to go to our favorite bookstore (Barnes and Noble) and find books on genealogy to help us learn more about how to do proper research and where to find the resources and information.

After hours of reading and armed with our new found knowledge we made copies of pedigree charts and family group sheets from one of the books and began calling our parents and grandparents to gather the information. We additionally asked for the addresses and phone numbers of cousins, aunts, and uncles to call them as well. We wrote numerous letters to family members across the country and in no time had a lot of charts and group sheets. Even suck in a binder it soon became hard to manage and find what you were looking for quickly.

About this time, we had purchased our first computer and low and behold, there was a program called Family Tree Maker to help us organize the whole thing. We started with Version 1 and have used Family Tree Maker ever since. It has been exciting to see many of resources we spent hours traveling to come online so we can now refer back to them from the comfort of our own home at 2:00 am if we like.

Do not get me wrong some of our favorite things to do are visit libraries, courthouses, and cemeteries (the haunts of many a genealogist). We have made wonderful trips all over the country to meet relatives we never knew and distance cousins galore. However, the Internet had made to world of research a bit smaller and put in touch with other family researchers we might never have meet otherwise. I hoping this new venture into blogging will expand that base (and my research) even further.

My family tree (Connections Far and Near) can be found on Ancestry.com!

Dana Lynn (Hester) Kapp (September 2008)

Visit my other family surname sites:

Earnheart Genealogy

Hester Genealogy

Kapp Genealogy