This website is about my family genealogy. I starting working on my family history when I was around 13-14 years old and doing a project for school. Also at this time we met a cousin of my father’s father (Margaret Keith White Lane) and she had traced our White family line. She told me she started this project to join the DAR. I was fascinated about what she had done and decided then to join DAR as well. My mother also got interested and started tracing her family history as well. We were lucky because we had a number of older family members still living who Mom could interview. My great-great aunt Julia (Julia May Malone Dillard) was still living and gave my mother a good bit of history on the Malone family line. Also my mother’s mother and her 2 sisters were still living & knew a good bit about the Warren family history. I really enjoyed going to the courthouses & cemeteries with my mom searching for records. After finishing college I first worked in Washington, DC. My mother would come to stay with me & spent so much time in the National Archives. It was amazing all the time she spent trying to trace the different families. Mom died in 1981 and I inherited all her research. I was still working so time to work on genealogy was limited but I tried to do what I could. The internet was just beginning to come into its own. Today it is where most people start searching their families. My mother would be amazed. I wish she was here to be able to see what can be accomplished.
As I said my cousin (1st cousin 2x removed) Margaret had said she started her genealogy search as a means to join the DAR. She had also said we were linked back to the Mayflower, although not via the White line but through a female line. That made me want to join the Society of Mayflower Descendants as well. Luckily my mother had gotten information about Margaret’s research & I have mom’s note cards she made of the research. I never looked at them too much because I had thought Margaret had joined the DAR. Many years later I went to the DAR in Washington and tried to look up Margaret’s record. I was so upset when I found out that she did all this research & never joined the DAR. It was my goal along with joining the Mayflower Society. No where on the note cards did my mother note a line to look up as a DAR Patriot. So I would have to start all over to research my Patriot to be eligible to join DAR. It also meant I didn’t have a Mayflower connection as well.
If you want to hear more about my goal to join the DAR & Mayflower Societies, check out this blog post.