Genealogy

I was extremely fortunate to have genealogists on both sides of my family. On my father's side, it was his Aunt Keith — Ann Keith Frazier (1887–1978) — who drew beautiful, elaborate family trees for two of our lines, with stories written all around the edges. On my mother's side, it was her first cousin, Allen Jones (1916–2005), who documented our lineage back to the Mayflower, one careful page at a time, on a manual typewriter.

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Dad told us the family stories all through my childhood — even the ones that turned out not to be true — and Mom shared a few of hers, too. So the interest was always there, waiting. When I discovered Family Tree Maker in the 1990s, I took on the task of carrying that work into the digital age.

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Today, my combined family tree has grown to more than 4,500 people, most of them at least somewhat substantiated, with nearly 7,000 supporting records. It's become a lifelong project — one I hope someone else in the family will catch the bug for, too, and keep digging!

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This page isn't meant to replace that full tree — think of it instead as the stories behind the names. The complete, searchable version lives on my Ancestry tree, and I'll add to the stories here as I go, starting with the very beginning: our Mayflower roots.