Who do you think you are is back

I am so happy to hear that TLC is bringing back Who Do You Think You Are.  I loved watching this show.
I would always watch and DVR the episodes and my husband would even watch them with me.   Probably one of my favorite episodes was the one with Sarah Jessica Parker.  

article on who do you think you are.

The list of who is going to be on it looks pretty good also.   I was just so very happy to hear that it was going to be coming back on.
Thank you TLC

Items that came from our ancestors...

I have been catching up on reading some blogs today.   I have a great interest in reading other people's blogs on their own personal family history researching quest.    I enjoy with them every little find and drop of new information that they might find.
I have had so many ideas today.   I have so many newspaper clippings, obits clipped from newspapers, letters, photos, recipes, etc that came from my ancestors.   These things need to be added to the family tree for others to enjoy.  I know that a lot of family history research is based upon records, but let us not forget that their is more than records that tie us to our ancestors.  It could be a quilt that you great great grandmother made, or a picture of a man in uniform that turned out to be a grandfather or uncle that fought maybe during the Civil War, or a recipe that is barely legible that belonged to one of your ancestors.
I have the certificate of graduation for one of my grandfather's cousins from a school that does not even exist anymore.  I have the funeral books, from the same ancestors parents  from the 1950's that are so different than what you may get today from the funeral home.   We need to preserve every piece of history that comes from our ancestors, no matter what it may be.

Immigrants and Brickwalls

I have read so many books on starting genealogy and researching your own family tree.    I have went several generations back on each line however, I am nowhere close to discovering an ancestor that came by boat from another country to this country.   I am excited to find one though, because it will be interesting to find  where they come from and why they came to this country.
I do have a couple of brick walls.   I sometimes think that I am not exhausting the search to see what else I could possibly find on each ancestor.   I think some of my "brick walls" would not be brick walls, if I would just take the time to research in greater depths.
Here are some of my problems...
On the Lemons side of the family - my line goes from Theodore to Samuel to William (1799) to his father who was also William.  After that William can find his father.   Its a theory that the surname Lemons, might have undergone a change in spelling to get to Lemons, maybe from Lyming or Lemmons.   I'm not sure to how to go back any further which is another
reason why I decided to take the DNA test.
Another problem.   My maternal grandfather is Frank Edward Maddle (1930-2004).  His mother Dora L Mccloud was not married when she got pregnant with my grandfather.   All we know is that his last name was Whittaker he died in the 1960's in possibly the White, Sparta, or Putnam county areas.   His mother then married Noah Madewell and that is how my grandfather got his last name.  This again was another reason why I decided to take the DNA test.

I need to start organizing my information better and start utilizing the forms that people have provided for free on the internet.   I am going to reread some of my books on genealogy and see where I might be messing up and not doing something right in researching.   I need to start making use of things specifically like research plans and calanders.   I have always loved organizing paperwork and using forms.  I just need to apply that to my family history research.

Why I started Genealogy...

Many people often ask why do you work on your family history, or what got you started into your search into your family history?   For me, I don't think that it was any specific thing that happened.   Probably back in 2008 I was bored one day and I think I seen either a commercial or an ad on TV for Ancestry.com.  I was bored and sitting at home by myself and thought I will do the free trial ( I think it was for 2 weeks) and then I would cancel it if I didn't like it.   Needless to say, I never canceled it, and have renewed it several times over.   I remember first starting looking on ancestry.com and finding trees that others had done on my family and thinking WOW, this is the greatest thing.  Then the bug struck!!!   I had been doing it on and off til
sometime last year when I started doing it all of the time.  
I remember when I first started calling my family with each new thing no matter how significant I would be
on the phone with my mother or father one talking to them about it.   Luckily, I live in a small town, so even though all of my grandparents have already passed there is still quite a few around that remember them and those before them, plus I still have aunts and one uncles on my paternal grandmother's side that I have asked
quite a few questions to and that haved helped me a lot.  
My first child was born in 2010 and my second in 2011.  It was somewhere between those births that I
really wanted to know where I had come from in order to leave it for my children and their children.   I have
to admit its been hard and I have hit and am still hitting roadblocks but it is still completely worth it to me.

Getting rid of a little paper

Thanks to the following group on facebook
organizedgenealogist
I am trying to get my research that I have done so far a  little more organized.   I have been entering all the info that I have on paper into FTM2012 so that it can sync with the online tree.  I have hopes of getting it all in there once and for all so that I can pack up all the paper and store it somewhere else instead of having it laying around everywhere.
I have also been trying to sort through my matches on the ancestry.com DNA page.  I uploaded the raw DNA data to gedmatch.com and I have been trying to contact people from those matches also.   With the matches on ancestry.com I have been downloading the matches onto the computer so that I can look at them later.

Yarnell Hill Fire , AZ

June 30th of this year, will be a date that many in AZ will never forget.   On this day, 19 firefighters lost their lives at the Yarnell Hill wildfire.   This has affected the nation greatly.   One of the 19, his father lives in the same county I do.  With me, it affects me on a different level.  Did I know any of the 19, no I did not.  However, i connect with them in the way of knowing what it is like to see your father or grandfather go off to a fire, knowing what could happen to them.   My father, My grandfather, and My great-grandfather were all members of the Tn Div of Forestry.

My heart goes out to the families of these men.  I pray for them daily and hope that they find peace in their grief.  I watched the memorial service yesterday live on an abc station from Phoenix.  Here is the link, if anyone wants to watch it.
Yarnell Hill 19 Memorial Service
It is heart wrenching.  I cried the whole way through it.  It brought up so many memories for me, of my own grandfather's funeral and the support from the fire departments and rescue and community we had, and remembering Papa going to CA and other states to fight wild land fires.  I was so little when he would go and I don't think I knew the danger he was in but was so happy when he would come home.
Please take the time to remember of the families of these men in your prayers and to know that as these men and women go out to protect us and our homes from fire, that they might make the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives to save ours.