Great Aunt Ima

This is a picture of Ima S. Culley from the 1935 Austin High School Yearbook, she was a teacher.  She was the sister of my Great Grandfather, Allen Charles Culley I.  She was born December 8, 1880 and died June 23, 1960, she never married.  She is buried in Austin, Texas in the same cemetery as her brother, nephew Milton and Milton's wife.

 Had to add a second picture when I found it because I think it is so fabulous that her signature is on this one!

Fifth Cousin and Paw Paw Had No Name

I find myself sitting here carrying on a conversation via Ancestry's messaging system with my fifth cousin David who happens to live about an hour away from me.  Kind of surreal.  It is definitely a nice surprise after a frustrating couple of hours taking a stab at the other side of my tree!  I wish he was from one of the branches that I don't have much info on so he could help me, but he is from the one branch I already know the most about.  But it is cool to suddenly be in contact with another blood relative seemingly out of nowhere!

And in other news...I discovered today that my grandfather Erwin left the hospital without a name!  I am likely the only person that finds that interesting, but still!

Framework Set

I have managed to develop an extensive framework using ancestry.com and the Family Trees other people have assembled.  Now I am starting from the beginning and researching records and confirming or disproving those tree listings.  I know some will turn out wrong since there are a few instances where people's birth dates are later than those of their children, or where their death dates are before the birth of a child.  I have definitely found some interesting things so far, including possible connections to: a Queen of France, a man famously executed for his religious beliefs, an ancestor from Africa, and an indirect connection to a former Vice President of the U.S. (descended from the same person, rather than me being descended from him).  I will be more than happy to disprove this last person as a relation since they have connections to slavery I would prefer to not have to acknowledge as those of a family member!

Anyway, I am finding this to be fascinating and just wish my ancestors had passed down more records and such to work with.  I am working on reading Genealogy Online For Dummies in hopes that I can discover some tricks to getting around some of the expenses involved, among other things...

Getting Started

I have wanted to research my family tree for a very long time.  I was first inspired decades ago when a distant cousin of my mom's distributed her research on one branch of my mom's side of the family.  Then when my paternal grandma died we found some details about her and my grandpa (who died before I was born) in documents she had amongst her belongings.  After many years of occasional searches and posts on a few family history sites I finally feel ready to tackle the task of tracing my ancestry.  I thought it would be nice to have a place to post my progress, some of my findings, "ah-ha" moments and such, so here I am...