Like Sand Through An Hour Glass, So Are The Days In Our Lives

My first entry for my blog is the beginning of an exciting and challenging journey for me to blog about my many years of research. As I do this, I will add my own personal values and insights revealing who I am. It would be very difficult for me to not reveal that as I share about who I am and the people and things that have been my history and those histories that I have discovered through several years of research.

It all begin in 1988 after the death of my father. As I am a Christian the grief process for me was one of knowing that I would miss him, but I would think about the future and realized that I have the hope that I'll get to visit with him again later when I see him in heaven.

This bible promise means so much to me. John 11:25, Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies."

As I read the bible, which for me is a faith document and not a historical one, my hopes for life after death and the renewal of knowing and being with my family and loved ones in my future are based on the promises that I find in the bible. This hope of looking forward has inspired me to look backward to try and put together the puzzle of the lives of those who were before me and who have gone before me.

My research started with reading and learning from books about genealogy and from professional genealogist who have shared their vast amounts of knowledge into the research process. I am a novice genealogist, but with the past 20 years of playing the game, I'm thinking that I have a lot of information about my family history that I can document here in my blog.

I can share with my family, and all that are interested, in knowing and learning about our family. I can share the process of my discovery, my gathering and my collecting these documents. I can share here about many family heirlooms that have come into my possession because of my research journey. The journey has and is so rewarding to me in learning and gaining the knowledge about who I am and who my ancestors were and where my ancestors originated from. It was a journey that began in Baden, Germany for my Haas and Grimm Family, in England and Scotland and possibly Ireland for my Dunlap, Pleasant, Gills, Rowland/Roland, Cobb, and Aiken Families which brought them to America.

They were pioneers, soldiers, farmers and ministers. They were the "salt of the earth". :)