I became interested in genealogy back in 1960 when my paternal grandmother passed away in Greencastle, Sullivan Co., MO., where my dad was born and raised, and we were going through her attic. We found this large portrait of, what ended up being, my gr gr grandfather. My mother did much research at the library before the internet and wrote a lot of letters by hand. I spent many happy weekends in Sullivan, Putnam and Adair counties, visiting cousins. Now they are all gone but 1, my father is deceased, my mother died of Alzheimers in June, 2012 and didn't know me for years before that. I miss all the conversations with them all so much and have thought of so many questions I wish I had asked when I had the chance. I live in Kansas City, MO and in my spare time, I am either inputting graves or going to cemeteries and writing down the information there so I can work on findagrave. I want everyone to be remembered, no one left behind. I try hard to connect family members so they can be together again, as in life. Isn't that a weird thing? I have no life. ---------------------------------------------- "The goal at Find A Grave should not be to manage all of your family members. If you have information to add, you should suggest it to the current manager and they should make the changes." ~Jim Tipton, creator of Find A Grave. I've never requested a transfer of my own grandparents, and the one who has it is no relation to them. I don't HAVE to have them in my "posession". In fairness to those who may have closer ties to a memorial, please read the Transfer Guidelines prior to requesting a transfer. You do not need to "manage" every memorial that is part of your family tree. Remember that this site is for locating burials, not building a tree. There are other websites that are more suited for that purpose. I will be happy to make any links and corrections. PLEASE use the SAC feature ("Edit" tab). Please feel free to add photos where appropriate, as you do not need to manage the memorial to add photos.
Please consider using the "virtual cemetery" feature on this site to keep track of relations.
William Hawley Hi Joanne! I added the info to his bio, with a request for information from anyone who knows anything about him. Who knows, maybe someone will see his memorial and respond!
Thank you, Bonnie
PS - It is too bad that there is not a field for "aka" because the maiden name field works great for finding women!
Sarah E Mitchell VanDyke Apparently there were 2 Sarah E. Mitchells. The one who was married to James R. VanDyke was the daughter of James M. Mitchell and Nancy Stone. The Sarah E. Mitchell who was married to John Wesley VanDyke was the daughter of John Mitchell and Sarah Weir. What is confusing to me is who the parents of John W. VanDyke were. His death certificate lists his father as James VanDyke. If that is true, then John W. was born in Jan 1844 and James R. in Feb. 1844. Either there was a mistake on John W.'s death cert. or they were twins born 1 month apart, or with 2 different women! Or, John W.'s date of birth was reported wrong. Anyway, I hope that this clears up your questions.
Isaac Mahurin Families Hello Joanne. I have to thank you for all the work you've done with the information I provided you recently. You managed to contact other site managers and assemble my great-great grandfather's children on one useable site. I know this took alot of work and literally hours of your time. Know that my family and future generations of my family fully appreciate this loving effort.
Reinertsen genealogy Hi Joanne - My name is Case Reinertsen. I saw your post about my Great Grandfather Raymond Reinertsen and read your comment about finding a bunch of pictures in your grandmothers attic. I was wondering if you had those posted somewhere online. I would love to see them. I have a cousin in Kansas MO (Kathy Ruoff)that would probably like to see these too. She's done a lot of research as well and actually just got to go to visit the farm in or near Oslo Norway, that (if I remember correctly) is the house Tobias (Raymond Reinertsens father) grew up in. Thanks.
