The bulk of the biographies come from four branches of my pedigree that trace back to three 17th century American colonies: New France, New England and New Netherland. These people are fairly well-documented because many colonial records have survived. And since the people lived so long ago, they have a massive amount of descendants, some of whom have done extensive research on them. My New France and New Netherland branches include some of the very first settlers there; my New England branch doesn't go back to the Mayflower, but has many people who sailed with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630. With few exceptions, my blogs don’t venture back into ancestors who never came to America, because unfortunately, most of these people only exist as names with no details.
This blog also includes my ancestors who lived during the 18th century and later. These people have a smaller number of descendants because they're more recent, but at least a few people might benefit from my research. If nothing else, my blogs serve as a way to preserve the memories of these ancestors.
When I began this blog in 2012, I posted only about the people I felt had a story to tell. But after getting my first DNA test done in 2017, my knowledge exploded, so I started adding more biographies. Eventually I decided to not limit myself to people who had interesting anecdotes, but to write about at least the husband or wife of each couple on my pedigree. An amazing amount of new data available online made this possible. This effort expanded the number of biographies from 165 to 592. It made my family feel more complete.
Each blog entry features the biography of one of my ancestors; I have posted them in no particular order. I’ve also made an index to help reference them, plus written blogs describing my pedigree branches as a whole. I hope that readers will get something out of my work.
