My dad was quite interested in family genealogy for the last 35 or so years of his life – maybe longer, but that’s at least the part I’m aware of. He would often share things he had learned. Now, I wish I had paid more attention to it. It’s my understanding that the family has descended from Mayflower passenger Henry Samson. My dad had begun the effort to document that, now, I’d like to figure that out myself. Will I keep it up or lose interest?
Short term, the big question is, “How do I even get started, and where are the resources to do this?”
A quick Google search found lots of links. Here are some to get started:
http://www.kindredtrails.com/free_genealogy_stuff.html
http://www.accessgenealogy.com
http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/beginner/
http://www.familytreesearcher.com
http://www.archives.gov/research/genealogy/index.html
My husband, Thomas B. Morris, Jr., is your third cousin/once removed, and your father and I shared some bits of information about the Morris line several years back via e-mail. I have a huge amount of information about your Morris line (and we’ve visited numerous Morris cousins in both Canada and Wales several times since 1999 — a few month-long visits with Morris cousins in Wales in fact, the most recent being this past July-August.)
I have a large tree at Ancestry.com which is Private and ‘Undiscoverable” and can be viewed by invitation only. With either your Ancestry id (if you have one) or email address, I could have Ancestry officially invite you to see what I have there.
I’ve also been a long-time user of Reunion, although in recent years I’ve been using Family Tree Maker more simply because of the ability to automatically sync my tree with the one at Ancestry.com. I am determined to migrate back to Reunion as I still find it the best software out there!
Your niece, Chelsie Pitts, was briefly in touch with me last spring via Ancestry.com, and I sent her a bit of family tree information, but haven’t heard from her since about April. I am on Facebook, and have been doing a bit of tracking and see she is a busy young mother…so that may explain that.
Would be very interested in sharing information with you! We live in Austin, Texas. Your ancestor Edward Morris of Llansilin, Wales, then Canada, was one of my husband Tom’s great grandfather John Morris’ brothers.