WELCOME!!! New home - New Focus

Welcome to my new home!

I’m Kim.  Pure and simple…Kim.  I am 50+ years young, the wife of a pretty amazing man, mom to 3 great kids and 3 fur-babies, and Nana to the most adorable 6 year old granddaughter you’d ever want to see (just ask me).  Due to my employer’s decision to sell his business, I no longer work outside the home.  I am finally free to follow my dream, which is to build a super-successful genealogy business, including researching for others and teaching, lecturing and writing.  I began this adventure into my family’s past over 30 years ago.  It started out as a simple school assignment and then snowballed from there.  30+ years later, I am still in love with the chase.

What can you expect from me?  I am a simple small-town girl.  I grew up in a community that was so small (How small was it!?), if there were three cars waiting for the stoplight to change we considered it rush hour.  I am not going to give you ‘fancy rhetoric’, I am going to be me, down home and real.  I will spin tales of family holidays, war heroes, my favorite classes in high school and my first love.  My goal is to share history in a way that ties everything together into one neat package.  

So why a blog?  I finally realize the importance of blogging...of telling our stories, teaching people how to find theirs, and reuniting family history and world history.  It is all fine and good to talk about the dates and places that marked our ancestor's life.  It is neat to hear where they went and what they did to survive.  But without knowing the big picture - the worldwide picture - we don't realize WHY they did what they did.

By bringing world history and family history together, we get a better glimpse into what our ancestors were going through, the turmoil they were facing in their everyday lives, the challenges of being where they were, when they were.  The wars, the famines, the government corruption, Hitler, Mussolini, the Great Depression, the natural disasters...these all played a part in defining who they were and therefore, who we are.  Remember, you and I are products of those who came before us.  What, you don’t agree???  Check out how important DNA has become in the last few years.

I love to teach and research, and now, thanks to the economy, I can do it for a living.  I love to teach people how to find things for themselves.  I love to share my experiences, my mistakes, my successes so others can learn from them.  And I have stories to tell.  Boy, do I have stories to tell!  Stories of families separated due to floods and how they worked to come back together and rebuild what nature took away.  I have stories of men who go off to war and never return – for one reason or another.  I have stories of travels across the pond to lives and experiences unknown.  I have stories of joy…and sadness, success…and failures, life…and death.

Family histories are to share.  We are all connected, somehow, somewhere.  It doesn’t do anyone any good to do all this research and then not let others in on the stories you find.  You will be hearing a lot about our family… Farmer, Macdonald, Ormiston, Weir, Courts, Reed, Lickliter, Deitrich and Marlin.  If any of these names sound familiar to you, be sure to email me and we will share notes.

So, welcome to my blog.  The first few posts will be from my old blog which was posted on my website, http://deep-roots-genealogy.squarespace.com/  .  If you have already read them, tune in for the new stuff coming up.  Please share this blog with your friends, family, heck – even your enemies.  Everyone is welcome to come in and put their feet up with their favorite beverage.  There are hot rolls and homemade bread waiting on you.  Welcome, neighbor.