I Need to do More With My Ancestry Blog

I see it has fallen by the wayside. Mostly because I'm a scatterbrain and I don't have a good way to trace anything that has a lot of tree work. Paper just isn't going to cut it. I could make a database, but I loathe spaghetti code. I wish I could just retire and take on this adventure, but that is impossible.

Right now everything I find out will be through links and history books I suppose. I want pictures. I can find very few pictures of the Ruckers and the McClanahans. I know, we didn't have cameras then, but at least paintings? I'm getting old, but one day after my kids are all out of school I want to get in a car and just drive across the country to find these roots of mine. I want to visit museums and find gravesites. I should be saving money, but in this obama economy it has been very difficult to do so.

Perhaps the next President and Congress coming in January 2017 will make a world of difference. ANYWAY, I'm not going to get political on this board except knowing that we were a part of the Revolutionary War and on both sides of the Civil War. And to those who think I need to pay reparations, bite me. Half of my family died fighting for your freedom and the other half didn't fight to keep you enslaved, they fought to become separate from the North. In fact, it is rumored that I'm related to someone who freed all of his slaves and they fought for the South and that another one of my relatives gave his land to a slave in his will. Before you think that all "slave owners" were terrible people understand that many of them were actually just doing what everyone else was doing and they just didn't treat them like slaves. Had they gone to others then maybe they would have been mistreated. Our family supposedly comes from a long line of Baptists who treated people decently because that is what God would have wanted them to do.

I supposed I will just link to different parts of this blog where it is appropriate. I will link names and eras to other pages. If you have any information to offer about the people in these pages please feel free to comment. Thanks!