I began my research in the mid 1980’s after someone gave me a simple little blank genealogy software program on a floppy disc
Welcome to My Family Tree
I began my research in the mid 1980’s after someone gave mea simple little blank genealogy software program on an old 5 ¼ inch floppydisc. I thought it would be fun to fillit out with a bunch of relatives and then add my children to it so they couldsee who their cousins and aunts and uncles were. One Sunday I sat down with my mother, mybrother and my sister and we began to talk about our family tree. We discovered that we had trouble rememberingour grandparents’ given names. We knewnext to nothing of our great grandparents, and we knew absolutely nothing ofany older ancestors. My mother was inher 80’s then and her memory was beginning to fail. She could not even remember her owngrandparents’ names. At that point Ibecame very much concerned that the information I was looking for was slippingaway and before long would be lost forever. The Internet was in its infancy. Genealogy on the world wide web was almostnon-existent.
I have spent over 20 years now, poring through countyhistories, Census indexes, microfilms, microfiches, visiting cemeteries, havingconversations with relatives, going to family reunions, and discoveringgenealogy on the internet. The information on this website includes a vastamount of research done by relatives who started keeping records long before Idid. My research has been educational, addictive and rewarding. It has given mea sense of belonging to and being a part of history. The more I discover, themore I want to discover. It has been like reading a great novel that is hard toput down. Add to that the unbounded joy of reconnecting with long forgottenfamilies and one may get a hint of the experience I have had during theseyears.
I now know that my branch of the Riddle Family Tree stemsfrom
At this time I have listed 2334 individuals spanning 15generations in my Family Tree Maker database going back almost 400 years. They include almost 600 different familysurnames. Most of them are included in the Genealogy Reports on this web site.
At the time that my database begins, about the year 1618:
The Thirty Years War was justbeginning in
Rembrandt van Rijn was a twelveyear old Dutch kid just learning to draw.
The King James Bible was beingpublished for the very first time.
The Pilgrims were preparing fortheir trip to the
They wouldn’t make the trip foranother two years.
The first Africans had already beenbrought to the
It was still the only Englishspeaking town in
The Ming Dynasty still ruled
William Shakespeare died just twoyears ago.
James TheFirst was king of
The American Revolution would notbe fought for another 158 years.