About Sandy
History has always been a favorite subject.
My family and I have visited museums, historic sites, and house museums
across this country. I love jigsaw puzzles too. Researching the family
history is really just one big historical jigsaw puzzle waiting for
me to find the correct pieces and fit them in the big picture.
My introduction
to genealogy began in the early 1970's when my husband's grandmother
gave us some papers about the Kinter family. These papers showed that
John Kinter was a Revolutionary War veteran from Pennsylvania and his
wife, Isabella Finley, was related to President Abraham Lincoln's wife,
Mary Todd. I was hooked. Ft. Wayne, IN is my hometown. I had a 20 minute
drive downtown to one of the best genealogy collections in the country
at the Allen County Public Library. It was there that I learned about
genealogy. It didn't take too long to discover that those papers given
to us by my husband's grandmother were slightly incorrect about the
relationship to Mary Todd Lincoln. Oh, the Kinters are related, just
not as closely as those papers led us to believe.
Now, after more than 30 years, my own genealogy
collection takes up a small room and a good part of my time. During those years
we moved from Ft. Wayne to a Detroit suburb, to upstate New York, and back to
Michigan. A trip to the library in Ft. Wayne now takes 3 1/2 hours so I don't
get there as much as I would like to. Much of my genealogy work is now done
via the internet, something unheard of when I started about 1974. Once a year
I manage a trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, UT. I get to
spend one week doing nothing but family research, what heaven!
For 10 years I was the editor of the Van Schaick
Kinfolks, a newsletter for the Descendants of Cornelis Aertsen Van Schaick.
I am no longer the editor, but I contribute articles for the newsletter. I teach
beginning genealogy in a local adult community education program. Over the years
I have discovered that I enjoy introducing people to genealogy.
With more than 30 years of genealogy
experience under my belt, I like to help others start fitting those family
jigsaw puzzle pieces into their own family picture. |
I am active
in a local genealogy group, the Waterford
Genealogical Society of Waterford, Michigan.
I
am a current member of:
I am a past member of:
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