My Family History Notebook

When I first started my genealogy searching, I had a notebook with all my adoption records in it. Everything was on notebook paper or official documents from my adoption or things I had ordered online. It was a useful thing, but not terribly pretty.

Once I got in touch with my birthfamily, I was sent some notebook paper sheets with all the last couple of generations of family members laid out. One side of the family even sent me birthdates for all my 1st cousins, which was overwhelmingly nice given that there are 27 on just one side of the family. I filed it all away in the adoption binder and then forgot about it for several years.

One day my Cub Scout had to do work on a family tree for some badge or other. We sat down and worked one out based on my adoptive family tree and my husband's mother's adoptive family tree. It was pretty good, but on a huge posterboard that was hard to keep up with.

Three years later another of my little Cub Scouts had to do the same project, but this one had spent a lot of hours watching a TV program with  Ancestry.com commercials, so he had the lofty goal of putting together a family tree on the computer...

...and so we started our online family tree research.