Gathering Leaves as a project, began as a labor of love over ten years ago, but the work that it represents actually started nearly thirty years ago...
Chapter Contents
- Introduction
- When I first started researching my family's history, virtually everything I knew of my family history was purely anecdotal. I had no records; neither primary, nor secondary. Everything that I knew came from what either my father had told me of his parent's families or what my mother and maternal grandmother had told me concerning my grandmother's family and mother's father's family. Over the course of more than twenty-five years, I have learned a considerable amount regarding my family's history.
- It's All About Me
- In the back pages of many books there is usually found a one-page section titled "About the Author" that presents some biographical information on the book's author. I thought it best that I provide these details up front because in one sense this is "all about me".
- Myths & Legends
- It seems that every family has some legendary or mythic story about their ancestors; some story that has been handed down through the generations...
- Putting The Pieces Together
- When I first started recording my family's history, I did everything on paper. If anything, this served well to illustrate how little that I knew of my family history...
- It's Raining Cousins!
- After I first published my data on the internet in 1994, it took over a year before I was contacted by anyone. In 1996, a first cousin of my father contacted me from Wichita, Kansas. Her father was my grandfather's youngest brother. She had a wealth of information on the DeBacker family and had managed to trace the family back to their home city in Belgium...
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