Leaves & Branches

After a few years of limited interest in what I consider my primary hobby, I became active and interested in genealogy again in 2009.  My accomplishments: I started putting my family tree on Ancestry.com I have made a lot of progress in organizing the family photographs and documents I have obtained over the years. I have met some distant and not-so-distant relatives with whom I have been able to exchange information. Sharing information with my heretofore unknown relatives has been rewarding.  I had shied away from sharing my research with others because of a bad experience in the past when I shared a great deal of information with a distant cousin who didn't as much as acknowledge receiving it. However, I had reached the point in my research where having only a few facts and maybe a photo or two wasn't enough.  I wanted to know more about the personalities of the people I have been researching for years.  To do this, I needed to network with people who had th...

Let me begin by saying that this blog post is not about St. Mary's church in Arnheim, Ohio. I was hoping that this title would catch the eye of someone who attends St. Mary's and might be able to offer assistance because of the strange thing that happened to me today. At work, I spoke to a woman in another department about a couple of business matters. She then said that her next question had nothing to do with work. Although I have known this woman for a number of years, she and I have never had a personal conversation and I have never told her about my family or interest in genealogy. She asked if I had any relatives in the Sardinia, Ohio area. I told her I might, because my grandmother was from the Sardinia area. She explained that she has a vacation home in the Sardinia area and visited over the weekend. When she visits, she attends services at St. Mary's church and she said there is a woman who attends St. Mary's and looks exactly like me. Now, if she had mentioned...