Sunday, April 16, 2006

Genealogy is my passion (Post 1)

I plan to use this blog mainly for genealogy posts. Every blog should have a focus, and I want this one to focus on genealogy and family history. Some time in the future, it may morph from being a narrative blog to being an education blog centered on genealogy.

How did I start? I started pursuing my elusive ancestors in 1988, after finally reading the book "Roots" by Alex Haley. I started late, but have worked hard to catch up.

I was blessed by having boxes of family papers, old books, photographs, and some correspondence from my mother's family and by having living siblings of my father willing to share their family stories. My mother was an only child of only children, and consequently had four generations of stuff. My father's siblings and my cousins were voluble and great correspondents.

The names, dates and places for my ancestry, and Angel Linda's family also, are all at my genealogy data web site at

http://www.genealogy.com/users/s/e/a/Randy-Seaver/

Over time, my interests shifted from "collecting dead ancestor names" to "writing family history" - that is, creating biographies for each ancestor based on the historical, biographical and social records available (vital, land, probate, military, census, immigration, cemetery, newspaper, biographies, etc.). Consequently, I am still in the process of gathering this data (which seems endless, and probably is!) and putting it into my genealogy database software.

My current projects and state of completion include:

1) Randy's Ancestry -- about 80% complete for names, dates, places, but only 60% complete for biographies.

2) Linda's Ancestry -- about 80% complete for names, dates and places, but only 10% complete for biographies.

3) Descendants of Robert Seaver (immigrant to Roxbury MA in 1634) -- about 80% complete for names dates and places, but only 60% complete for biographies.

Those numbers assume that I don't find many more ancestors than I presently have - I have many "elusive ancestors" and, after 18 years of effort, I fear they will remain that way.

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