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Archiver > BLACK > 1998-10 > 0909086222


From: Warren Houck <>
Subject: [BLACK-L] How I got started( or why didn't I start sooner)
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 19:57:02 +0000


I was fifty nine yrs old when the bug bit me,having retired and had moved
back to my birth State. (while quite young we moved to southern WV during
the depression years. When age permitted I enlisted in the military making
a career of it, sometime after retirement I got the urge to go back to my
birth county.)Almost daily I would meet someone on the street who was some
kind of cousin and to determine the exact relation I would query them as to
parents or grandparents, soon I was dismayed at the numbers I spoke to who
did not know who their grandparents were,so I started a note pad and
entered information as I came upon it. An opportunity arose for a position
as pre-list enumerator for the Census Bureau for the 1990 census. This gave
me the ideal chance to query anyone who I thought was related while doing
my pre-list work, well one note pad grew into several and got to the point
that,with no index, I could not find a person to add new information to his
or her line, so I aquired an antique computer and self taught myself, now
at 69 and ten yrs later with a file of almost 15,000 individules I am still
going strong. My only regret was not starting much sooner, while my parents
and grandparents were still living, who would have had a lot of information
that I will never know about.
Have a nice evening. Warren

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