For most of a year now, I have been researching my ancestry, and doing the majority of the work on Ancestry.com. At first it was a rush. I discovered that my 10th great grandfather is William Brewster of Scrooby, the spiritual leader of the Mayflower Pilgrims. This means that I am some type of cousins with Ashley Judd, Seth McFarlane, and Sarah Palin, among others. And while I do get a kick out of knowing that I have this very interesting connection to American history, I also know that I am like the 10% of all Americans who are descendants of Mayflower voyagers.


What has quickly taken over as a source of interest is discovering the details of my nearer ancestors, great grandmothers, and a particular great-grandfather whom I never knew. There have been questions asked about a great grandmother who may have been an Irish-born orphan and perhaps came to Indiana on an orphan train from New York City.  There was another great grandmother who was a concert pianist and reportedly committed suicide by shooting herself. That is her on the right hand side of the main photo--her name was Jennie Gifford Armstrong Pearce.


I am fortunate that my family has a respectable number of papers and photographs that give me insight to the lives of  many of these nearer relatives. And I am having a blast piecing their lives back together, rebuilding their stories from fragments.


The Ohio River does loom large in many of my ancestors' stories. Many came from north to south to live along the Ohio's northern bank. Others crossed from south to north, from Virginia into Ohio and back and forth along a very porous border that in the mid-1800s "separated" the Yankees from the Rebels.  It seems like life was hard and every day hard won for almost all of them. And their stories are an inspiration to me, over and over again.


I will share some stories soon about my Down Ohio family. And I hope that if I ever attract any readers, they (or you) will share your stories with me too.