I started to collect the family history in March 1997. At my mom's funeral it was noted that, with her death, a lot of family history had been lost, never to known. Since no one else in my family, or in Sharon's family was known to be working on preserving the family history, I volunteered. At the time I knew it would be a large project, but no idea how large it could get. Since then I have found others that have preserved some of the family history.
The size and scope of this project quickly grew to be many times larger than I had any idea it would. As of October, 1997 there were 416 individuals listed in the database. December, 1997, were 600. March 28,1999 were 900. March 2000 were 1,200. Now growth has slowed. April 2002 1,400. August 2007, 1,700.
The scope of this project has changed a number of times during the first four years as I went through a learning curve. In finding out how this project can mushroom into something much larger than I could handle, I had to set some limits. The first limit was to set a twenty year project time limit. So no matter what, I am done February 2017. I will close the books to be passed on to someone else. Secondly, I set limits to how far back in generations, and how many descendants of each generation, and in-law limits. I found that there were problems with all of my artificial limits. I have not solved this problem yet.
My first publication in January, 1998 was no more than a list of names and dates and tree charts from my software. In trying to publish a book for the second time in March of 1998, I found that it was getting to large and to complex. At this time I decided to divide the project into four books. Each one based on the four grandparents of Lisa and Niki. The Perkins, Barbknecht, Helwig and Driskell. These books were little more than a family tree of names and dates. The last of these were published June 2000.
Now that the last of those four books has been published, the direction is about to change again. I will start putting together more of the real history and stories. In working on this next phase, I have found it to be rather difficult, but rewarding.
Thanks to Mary Curtis who has been a lot of help in getting me focused on what to do. She wrote "Family History of Wilhelmine Drager Wegner Harmel 1833-1902" and is the wife of my second cousin once removed. So now the plan is to do one for each of Niki and Lisa's Great Grand parents. Then expand one generation farther back after that.
Over the last few years I have been able to polish my computer document skills at work. At my job, I was put into the position to put together our maintenance area's documentation of processes and procedures. This was a big help on this project. Then the big thing happened in the summer of 2001. I was asked if I was interested in leaving work on an early retirement. Now I have more time to devote to the project.
Now a few years latter, 2007. The last few years i have not done much. But with the help of moving from Family Tree Maker to a much supperior software of Gramps, things are starting to move again. A lot of this motavation has come from my brother-in-law, Daryl. Daryl has been doing an enormas amount of research which he has been passing on to me. Thank you Daryl.
If you have any comments, problems, questions or suggestions, please send me an e-mail at .
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