Hi, call me Karan,
I started genealogy research about 1989, in the good (bad/slow) old days of letters, envelopes, stamps, loads of paper, overstuffed filing cabinets, some of you will know what I mean. I have researched in museums, county history centers, libraries, the family history library at the Los Angeles temple, a small one down by San Diego, and my local one that is open one evening and one afternoon a week. I have made my mother chill out in a small town in Nebraska so I could hunt for a death record for a gg-grandfather (that was 1995, last month I found a newspaper clipping about it that's all there has ever been) on our way to a family reunion in Minnesota. I once joined a Genealogy Society in Wood County, Ohio and one in Pike County, Ohio so I could get their publications cheaper. Did I mention I have lived in the Central Valley of California most of my life? So, I have some experience with research.
When I first started I was terrible at keeping track of my sources. I thought the IGI was a boon! And got all that stuff and stuck it in my first trees! Wow, was I naive! Wow what a mess to clean up... I've had a couple of hard drive crashes that wiped out most of my files. I find the internet and computers both a boon and a curse.
I joined wikitree because I didn't want everything I've done for 30 years to be lost when I finally kick the bucket. I don't know how my children (probably just my daughter) would be able to keep up with the expense of Ancestry and they don't have a beneficiary program so how could I pass my account on to her? So I thought this might be a good solution.
I retired last December, and finally got all of the kids out of the house, so now I have time to devote to genealogy. The Biographies are kicking my butt, I learned html sometime in the early 2000's and it's coming back slowly but oh my. What's an old girl like me doing messing around with that... Well it's either this or Candy Crush or cleaning the house, you decide....
I won't bore you with my brick walls which seem legion but might only be a dozen or so. I thought DNA was going to really help with that but the walls are so far back what I actually need is a time-machine.
Well if you got all the way through this, thanks for listening. I can't wait until tomorrow so I can be certified in 1700's, yee haw!
~~~~ Karan Folsom Simons
