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I believe the foundation for this curiosity was laid much earlier, specifically back on July 23, 1984, upon the death of my birth mother when I was just 16 months old. For the decade that followed, I had no contact with any of her family members and knew virtually nothing about who she was or where she came from. It was almost taboo to speak of her in the home and while I would go on to reconnect with some of her family in my teens, I quickly learned nobody really knew much beyond a generation or two before. My father never spoke much of his family either. I knew the basics about my paternal side; my great grandparents had come from Sweden in the early 1900’s; my great-grandfather was a masonry supervisor on the construction of the Empire State Building; and my great-grandmother had been held for an unknown time at Ellis Island. I knew my grandfather was born in Brooklyn, NY, grew up in Smithtown and owned a funeral home at the time of his death when my father was just 11 years old. It was, without question, the absence of my birth mother that really stoked the fire within; I was missing half of myself and felt that I would never truly be whole until I understood who she was and where she came from. Essentially, who I was and where I came from. As a blossoming professional living on Long Island and saddled with student loan debt, wasting money on any sort of genealogy research seemed irresponsible. In 2011, I left the island and moved south where I was able to start chipping away at that debt and also found myself with some “spending money”. I treated myself to that first Ancestry.com membership and it was game-on from that point forward.

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Through the course of the last decade, I have found hundreds of relatives. One of my greatest results came with the help of Thom, my 2nd cousin once removed, whom I found through Ancestry.com. Together we were able to find every living relative of my 3x Great-Grandfather on my MATERNAL and we planned a family reunion which took place just a few days before the 170th anniversary of his arrival in America. Cousins from across the country who had never met nor even heard of each other, descended on Dobbs Ferry, New York for a dinner on the banks of the Hudson River, directly below the land where he built his home in the 1870’s. Sadly, the home itself had been torn down just one year prior. Regardless, to stand on the banks of that river knowing my 3x Great-Grandfather had stood there 170 years prior was something that cannot be explained! Since then, I have helped countless friends and family members find their stories. I passionately believe knowing the truths of our past is crucial to understanding ourselves and appreciating what those before endured to give us the opportunities we have today.