How It Began

Who were these people? Aunt Pansy, Aunt Pearl. I was always mixing up Pearl and Pansy. I couldn't keep them straight. And how about Velma, Alta, Mrs. Dolphin . . . which were relatives and which weren't? Who knew? My dad would say that one of these days he was going to sit down and do the family history. All he had to do was sit down with his relatives and get the stories from them. I was interested, too. When he got around to it, I knew that I would help him. But as the older relatives gradually departed, Dad would lament, "I wish I had asked him about . . . ." And then there were the stories about my father's "Spanish" great great grandmother. So it was my father who first got me interested in genealogy. I think his interest came from the fact that he grew up without siblings. But the spark that he did smolder long time before it caught fire. In the meantime I heard from my mother about her Indian great-grandmother, and her "English" great-grandfather. Just who were they? It took my Aunt Delorise Gines of Kansas City, Missouri, to really get the fire going. A few years ago, she published what she called the Gines family calendar and sent it out as Christmas gifts. It had names of relatives that I had never heard before. But it was a little bit short on dates and documentation. That was the shove that I needed. I determined that I was going to fill in the gaps in Aunt Delorise's work and my adventure began. It was really that simple. So here I am, obsessed.