Oscraps

Do you know that at Oscraps we have a forum dedicated to scrapping and chatting about genealogy and heritage scrapbooking?

Susan, one of our CheeryO’s, is very passionate about this topic and over the years has extensively researched her own family tree and found “quite a few” distant ancestors! To our benefit Susan has provided a lot of helpful information and tips on how we can start our own family research or places to use to find more general information about researching techniques.

So if you are interested, then please do drop into the Scrapbook Genealogy/Heritage forum at Oscraps for a closer look! You will certainly find quite a few like-minded people there where you can ask questions, chat about your ancestry or share any layouts you have created for your own family tree.

Here is a recent layout created by Susan, simply love the modern design featuring those wonderful heritage photos!

From time to time, I want to share some of the information that Susan has added to the forum here on the blog, consisting of short articles and other interesting tidbits. The first short article I want to share today is one that Susan wrote recently on how she actually got started in her own genealogy journey. It certainly makes for a quick and interesting read. Hope you enjoy it!

If you would like to join in the conversation please drop into this thread on the forum, Tell Me the Story – How did your Genealogy Journey Begin? Perhaps you can share your own story or even share some helpful tips from your own explorations into your own family. We would love to hear from you.

Tell Me the Story – How did your Genealogy Journey Begin?
by Susan (aka Susan – s3js)

I was recently asked how I caught the genealogy bug and had to give that some real thought.

I’d always been kind of interested in where we came from, but in 1995, we were assigned to command The Salvation Army Corps in Mountain Home, Arkansas, USA. My Aunt Pat and Uncle Joe came to visit and Aunt Pat started telling stories of my grandparents and great grandparents. It turned out that my Wood family (my paternal lines) had some very deep roots in Arkansas. Just 235 miles south west of Mountain Home was the town of Prescott in Nevada County – Nuh VAY duh, not Nuh-VAA-duh like the state. Some of her stories were wonderful and ignited a real passion for family history and genealogy that never took root when I had tried in 1991.

I never made it down to Prescott. I did, however, make it to Paragould in Greene County, Arkansas and to Heber Springs in Cleburne County, Arkansas. That said, I had no clue then that my maternal line had very deep roots in those two places. I didn’t know Great Grandpa Wood, but I did know Great Grandma Jones and saw so many of the places she grew up around without being able to feel her spirit there in happier times of her life. These locations are on my bucket list. Fortunately, both of my sons are interested and maybe some second cousins that live close to Prescott. I hope we get to meet one day.

The rest is history. I now have 10,819 individuals on my family tree program, most of them researched and documented to my satisfaction, 38 GB of disk space in documentation that holds 28,745 files. The picture I have fleshed out as to where I come from and who got me here has broadened my horizons in ways I never could have imagined. I wish I had been into genealogy when I was a much younger woman and stationed in England. I traveled extensively in Lincolnshire where my mothers paternal line originates. I have visited all those little villages and probably met living kin. Another entry on my bucket list!