Never knew anything about my family, where we came from, what our history was, or anything. Growing up, it was my mother, my half-sister and myself, and no family to speak of. My mother was adopted by her uncle and his wife after her parents left when she was around four or five. We never knew where they went or what became of them. After an extensive genealogical search, I found out that both of my parents families have been in the United States since the early to mid 1700's, throughout the Pennsylvania and Ohio regions. My mother's father's family has been traced back to Germany in the mid-1500s, and my mom's mother's family traced back to Switzerland in the late 1600's. Both sides of my father's family have been traced to France, going back to the 1600s.
A weird coincidence: I discovered that my grandparents, my mother's real parents, were buried less than ten miles from where I lived in California. They had apparently moved there sometime in the late 20's and died in the late 40's. That was strange. No one in the family ever knew what happened to them, and I found them laid to rest within miles of where I was living, on the other side of the country. Small world.
I know we all come from somewhere, but growing up, and well into adulthood, I felt very isolated, sort of alone in the world, if that makes sense. Finding this information didn't really change who I was, but it wasn't until I discovered it, and studied the family trees and saw all the branches, that I truly felt connected and got a real sense of where I came from. I now know I have cousins and relatives living all over the world. Good stuff.
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/hfMNC7T.jpg)
