PDGray.com

When I began my journey to find the fathers of my fathers, I literally did not know where it would lead or where it would end. I had barely graduated from high school when I became interested in libraries as a places of research. Until then libraries had been important places where I could find an almost (to my mind) endless supply of books on astronomy, aeronautics, or music, the three pillars of my interest during my school years. Then I started asking questions- questions directed to myself.

I had been interested in history, and had always loved tales of knights and struggles and ancient battles. During High School I had read what was even then an old work by James Michener, The Source. This historical novel, set in what is referred to as The Holy Land but also includes locations such as Babylon and Europe, tells the story of the region, its history, people, religion, and does it through fictional characters, descended father or mother to son or daughter, over thousands of years. This fascinated me.  This fictional family had a long and, if not illustrious, at least interesting family story.

So I set out to find my own line, my own family novel, but this would be real.

I decided to start with my father’s line. This was not because of any prejudice toward my mother’s side, but because I love a challenge. All I knew about my father’s side was that my great-grandfather’s name was Frank and that he lived near Danville, Illinois. I knew my grandfather, knew that he was a veteran of World War I, but I was so young (he died when I was 10) that I was more interested in him than where he had come from, so to speak.

So, armed with this challenge I became acquainted with the local library. After asking some basic questions, and learning that there were resources that might help my search, I began the journey that I am still on. On this day I am no further back in time with my research than I was twenty years ago (I have been doing this for thirty-three years), but I have filled in many gaps, chasing detail when the trail had gone cold looking for the names of more fathers or mothers. I am not disheartened too much, because there is enough of the detail to make the people real enough to me to make all of the work worthwhile.

Please visit my Genealogy page for more.