Bitten By the Genealogy Bug

Some of you may have had this happen to you as well.  You are sitting in your high school biology class and the teacher says "I want you to research your family tree so you can see how your eye color, hair color, left-handedness or right-handedness, height and other traits you have come from your ancestors."  Well, that happened to me and when I got home I spoke to my mom about the assignment.  It was then that she started sending letters (and eventually family group sheets) out to family members to collect this information for me.  I wasn't very good at writing letters and after all mom was the one with all the family contact information.  Eventually I turned in my assignment (don't remember what grade I got for it) and that was it for me.  I had no further interest in my ancestors.

Well, that didn't stop my mom!  As a matter of fact, she got so involved in genealogy that she eventually became the Strait Family Historian and a whole bookcase next to your chair in the living room was full of family group sheets and other information on our family.  And there was more in file cabinets and etc.  She was constantly writing letters and receiving information in the mail.  And, we spent some of our family vacations visiting cemeteries.  Needless to say my dad and I weren't all that thrilled about trudging around in cemeteries.  After all I was a teenager and had better things to do!!!

This all started back in the 70's.  Fast forward to 1992.  In July 1992, my father passed away.  Several months prior to that mom and dad had been admitted to a nursing home because mom had fallen and broken her ankle and could not return home until the doctor's said she could.  With the passing of my dad, it was obvious that mom was not going to be able to return home because she didn't had dad there anymore to take care of her. 

So, it became a task for me and my three sisters to clean out our parents house so it could be put up for auction.  There in the living room was the daunting bookcase full of family history binders.  I knew that my sisters probably weren't interested in the stuff so I told them I would take it.  Well, we didn't have a very big car and all that "stuff" filled several big boxes that were no way going to fit in our car.  So, we decided to store the stuff at my husband's oldest daughters house until we could come back and get it.  It was several years later that we finally went to Kansas to visit the oldest daughter and retrieve the "stuff" we had left stored with her. 

Once we got "the stuff" home and I started going through the boxes my interest became piqued and needless to say the rest is history.

And that's how I got "Bitten by the Genealogy Bug".