Welcome
Apr 13th, 2008 by Ruth Stephens
Bluebonnet Country Genealogy is a portal into America’s past. This gateway, as documented through the lives and journeys of a hardy group of early American settlers, glimpses adventure and adversity, great fortune and devastating loss and, of course, “simple” daily living.
UPDATE 30 AUGUST 2008
Bluebonnet Country Genealogy has moved to self-hosting, with means the blog is now “powered” by WordPress.org. Also, the database (SURNAMES tab) has been transferred to The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (DATABASE tab). The CEMETERIES tab remains as is.
This site is currently divided into six “pages”: Home contains the blog of my current research activities. Welcome is an introduction to this site and to me. Surnames contains the Bluebonnet Country Genealogy database. Cemeteries is where my documentation of Chatt-Jessie and Graham-Mason cemeteries, the final resting places of many of my ancestors in Hill County, Texas, is found. And Links is a list my favorite research sites, grouped by the states they impact. And just added in the To-do page, a list of records I need to find or identify and tasks I need to complete.
The goal of this endeavor is to combine my genealogy database, currently housed at Rootsweb’s Freepages and my two research blogs, both residing at Blogger, into one location that is easily accessed and updated.
I want to clarify something about the Bluebonnet Country Genealogy database. I am not interested in the competition to see how many names I can collect. I often come across GEDCOM’s with thousand of names in them. Now if all of those names are documented, with verifiable sources, then they certainly belong in that GEDCOM. But my feeling is that most are not documented. Something I learned in nursing also applies to genealogy: “If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen!”
About 98% of the people in the Bluebonnet Country Genealogy database come with sources and documentation. Unless I have a reasonable amount of documentation (at least 2 sources), I try not to add an individual to my database. There are a very few that I have added without sources, but these people have been included because their presence makes logical sense in the dynamics of a particular family group.
Also I usually research only 2-3 generations laterally from my main lines. Again, I am not trying to see how many names I can accumulate in my GEDCOM file. As I am not concentrating on a particular surname or region, I have to set some limits. What I strive to create is a “diorama” of my family history, an examination of the factors and influences that eventually led to the development of me.
About Me
Although born in Colorado, I “got to Texas as fast as I could!” The four generations before me are all Native Texans, having migrated here after the Civil War. My own genealogy journey began five years ago, inspired by stories from my childhood, told by my father, of his “Jewish Grammaw” and his “Cherokee Grammaw”. I wanted to learn more, so I started exploring the web. Mind you, I had no clue what I was looking for or even where to look. One evening my oldest daughter found information about my step-grandmother on a popular subscription site, so I finally had a place to begin.
Other interests include computer graphics and web site design. And, of course, I am wild about the wildflowers of Texas!
