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Archiver > BLACK > 1998-10 > 0909095472


From: Peggy Nichoson< >
Subject: Re: [BLACK-L] How I got started( or why didn't I start sooner)
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 22:31:12 +0000


Hi Warren,

I know what you mean about not getting information from family while they were
still alive.
I could kick myself for not asking more questions of my grandparents.
I started the quest at about 50. And now I am addicted to it! I just yesterday
made the decision to start putting all the info into my family tree program and
put it into book form so that the few relatives that are still with us can
appreciate it. I will never be done anyway so I will have incomplete books on
every line but it is a start.
Peggy

Warren Houck wrote:

> 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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