Originally posted: 4/6/2014 – not sure why it re-posted in 2017.
Sooo… I haven’t received the response I hoped for in my family tree search or really any response and it occurred to me, I have a blog. Then another thought occurred to me, search engines index blogs (and well, the whole internet). I know this because I am one of the top spots for people who hate Houston. Again, Houston haters, I don’t actually hate Houston. SPOILER ALERT: the post was really to address a friend who had told another friend, “Beth hates Houston”. Sure you had to read between the lines, but there you have it. Anyway, back to the indexing and my thought pattern. My final thought, a lot of genealogists use the internet to research their families. Since there is a fee associated with Ancestry.com, which to me is 100% worth it, some researchers don’t have the resources or simply haven’t chosen to invest in that particular tool.
I have been lucky on my quest for information, as least on my Dad’s side of the family. I have met two amazing cousins who I never would have known if I hadn’t been doing genealogy research. One on my Dad’s father’s side, whose every email brings a gigantic smile to my face. She is truly the best treasure to have come out of shaking the branches of my family tree. The other cousin is on my Dad’s mother’s side where she is just waiting for me to start working on that branch so she can share all she knows. Through both of them, I’ve received stories I’ve never heard and seen pictures I’ve never seen. It’s amazing! The experience has made me quite giddy.
My mother’s side is a different story until I get back to my great-great-great grandfather and talk to the descendants of my great-great grandmother’s half siblings’ descendants – truly lovely people who are exactly where I am when it comes to the giant gap in their trees between this common ancestor of ours and me. We don’t have stories or photos or in some cases full names.
This brings me back to internet searches. I’m going to go ahead and list the people I’m searching for in the hopes someone will take a chance that I am not an internet stalker or identity thief or whatever nefarious thing they might think when I ask “can you tell me my great-grandmother’s full name?”
I actually want this to stand out, so I am going to put all of this in the post that follows.
UPDATE: Since this post moved, the “post that follows” no longer follows it, so here is a link to that call-out of relatives: Calling All Swinsons
The Big Blue Mess 
Hope maybe you’ll get some responses – the internet is such an ocen and we are all very small particles.
Actually I remembered there was a Swinson family 2 houses down from me when I was little in Bellaire. Grace was the daughter’s name. They moved out west of town (now inside city limits) and raised beautiful appaloosa horses. Then they moved to Denver – and we visited them a couple of times. They had bunk beds and I wanted to stay with them
Smart family to move to mountains.
Sadly, the post I wrote in 2014 that followed this one (but apparently didn’t – who knows what happened), never received any responses. That side of Mom’s family still remains a mystery, but I will say I heard from my great-great grandmother’s half-sister’s daughter (I feel like I’m just making up connections). She forwarded me a note from her mom where she recounted a story about my great-great grandmother – a woman I really didn’t know other than as a name on a headstone. The story was wonderful. It really brought this person to life, and she sounded like quite the character. It was her daughter, my great-grandmother, who married a Swinson.
And wouldn’t living in the mountains be lovely right now? I don’t want to deal with harsh winters, but I’m so game for summer mountain living.
Always good to hear from you!
On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 9:59 AM, The Big Blue Mess wrote:
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