I'm getting ready to start a new scrapbook, about my mother's ancestors. So far, we've been able to trace back several generations for her maternal grandparents and her paternal grandfather, but haven't had much luck with her paternal grandmother's family. It's much more difficult to trace women, we've found, not only because of the name change but also because there are usually no service records.

I'm working on the geneology, along with my sister, and my brother is working on the photographs, scanning them, putting them on a DVD and trying to clean them up a bit.

Man, they had huge families back then. Ten kids, twelve, no big deal. Often children who died in infancy. We have a couple of sets of twins among the ancestors and a set of triplets, named (get this) Faith, Hope and Charity. Yikes.

Another obstacle I found when doing my family's geneology was that lots of people changed their names at Ellis Island. Or...they are in the census records with a "nickname." And then some people were listed just as "Jr." instead of by their real names.

Good luck with your research! I loved doing it.

JJ