Relics: Genealogy, family stories, history & other curiosities.

Alacrity: brisk and cheerful readiness. I have never given much thought at all to my family's ancestors in context to the Civil War.  I was always a History buff throughout school, but growing up in New York's Hudson Valley, my focus was squarely on finding my Revolutionary War ancestors.  Most of what I know about the Civil War is straight out of Little Women.   I was surprised recently to discover at least four ancestors (I can confirm) are in deed veterans of the Civil War.  And looking over my timelines I am pretty confident there are more.  I finally got around to joining the Orange County Genealogy Society and while perusing their website I discovered the treasure trove of publications they have for sale.  This is very fortunate for me, as I now live in FL and feel so isolated and cut off from the Rockland Room collection at the New City Library.  It is this collection that really got me started in genealogy.   From the OCGS, I order...

October is Family History Month.  My first thought upon learning this is, isn't every month?!   Seriously though, this reminder is the perfect opportunity to reboot my genealogy.  As I said in my very first post here, I have been working on my family tree for ten years. I have notebooks filled with notes scribbles, binders  of yellowed newspaper clippings, and lots of old photos of people and places I don't recognize. It is time to get organized. Lofty Goals- I have to admit its a little overwhelming.  There has been more than one day in the last month that I wanted to stay home from work to just work on my genealogy.   I have been working hard to create my tree on the Ancestry site since I sent off my DNA.  I have 80 pages of matches!  I don't know if I will ever be able to get through it all.  There is so much I want to do. There are classes to take, timelines to create, notes to revisit and most importantly I want to review all the i...