Since making the decision to formalize my genealogy training and jump head-long into that world I’ve been trying to figure out just how long I’ve been working on my family’s history and building my skills. Much to my dismay, I’m unable to pin-point my ‘ah-ha’ moment. There was no school assignment, no medical mystery. Rather, it seems like genealogy is just something I have been doing it for as long as I can remember.

I do have memories of thousands of gradual little things that started me on the journey. The visits from my Mom’s side of the family (all ‘cousins’) and visiting even more ‘cousins’ on road trips with my Grandparents. Mostly though, I think of the summer trips to visit my Great-Grandparents in Kansas. We lived in the mountains of Colorado. They lived WAY over in Kansas. So far into Kansas that I have an Uncle who was born in Arkansas because his parents were out for a drive.

To get there we would leave early in the morning. Like, middle-of-the-night early. We’d drive quickly through Denver (it was cool to see the ‘big city’ if you were still awake). Then we saw the plains of eastern Colorado. Then the plains of western Kansas. Then the plains of central Kansas. Shortly after that you’d turn right (wahoo! a turn!) and after a while you’d turn leftish again. Eventually you would start to notice it wasn’t so flat, but rather rolling hills. And there were trees. We’d drive through towns with brick courthouses in the town square and general stores that really were a five-and-dime.

Finally, the pavement would turn to dirt and we would reach the driveway of our destination, the ‘old homestead’. It was a winding driveway leading to an old white house that had been added onto several times, but somehow it looked like it all belonged. There was a porch off the back bedroom with a swing where, in the evening, you could watch the fireflies dancing out over the corn or wheat, whichever was planted that year. The kitchen, though it seems tiny in my memories, could hold everyone in the family and there the older generations would tell stories to the kids. The best though, as a kid, was the attic. Up the steepest bloomin’ stairs I’ve ever seen, you would be transported to a magical place. And a hot place, but that didn’t matter back then.

No, I can’t tell you when I became The Record Keeper and first became interested in genealogy, but I can tell you where. It was there, on that farm, surrounded by the history of my family. From the stories they would tell, to the house they built, to walking through the orchard they planted.

That is why I’m a genealogist.

That is why I’m my family’s record keeper.