Oh, Sandi, How sad for that little girl. They should have rescheduled it. Luckygal, You just described how it was in my little town. No school the day of the festivities. There were many Maypoles. The ladies in the community baked lots of yummy things to eat and the music was provided by local volunteer musicians. Some of the songs were well known, so the whole community joined in the singing. It was very mild climate there too, so we wore spring dresses and the boys shorts and short-sleeved shirts (girls had to wear dresses to school in those days). The closing song for EVERY community event was: "Good night Ladies; so long Gentlemen; farewell Everyone, We're going to leave you now." ...and everyone waved goodbye in the air

FREE Web sites for genealogy research: rootsweb.ancestry.com--forums organized by surname, locality, and other topics such as royal ancestry, etc., originally not affiliated with ancestry, but it is STILL free, and has archived posts going back to the 1990s. usgenweb.org subdivides by states and counties, also message boards where inquiries can be posted. genealogy.com has free surname and locality forums. familysearch.org contains the LDS church's International Genealogy Index, formerly only available on microfiche at branch Family History Libraries. cyndislist.com has a wealth of websites/links on many, many genealogy subjects. Treasure Maps website: google the name to get the right address, because it's one of those sub-sub-sub-divided ones that I'll probably screw up. Also, google the surname, and/or an entire name, alone or combined with terms like "family" and genealogy. If it's a name other than Smith or Jones, misspell it in creative ways. My great-grandfather's surname (Braman) was misspelled on the census as late as the 1930s! As far as Ancestry goes, I subscribe to the United States option, almost solely because of access to scanned images of the US Census. Looking at microfilm using a viewer left me dizzy and nauseated:b. You can search or browse the records, and enlarge the image to decipher handwriting. To me, it is worth the price, but that's a personal decision. Other than that, I have found some useful info in the paid databases, but not a whole lot. All Censuses are available at the regional branches of the National Archives, on microfilm. Sorry this is so lengthy, but this IS the heavily edited version, LOL.

Loved the pictures. I still haven't figured out how to post. I did everything you told me to but it didn't work for me. I guess I'll just have to find someone to show me. Trouble is, I don't have grandkids....I'll have to borrow someone else's.

I have been working on my husband's father side of the family for over 2 years now. I have made some breakthroughs but also had some set backs. I was sure his GGGGGrandfather's line came from the infamous Henry Boston on the Eastern Shore of MD/VA. I even went so far as tracking down a living male proven descendant of Henry's (who, btw, still lives on the Eastern Shore) and he agreed to do Ydna testing,along with my husband. Results - not even closely related! And hubs isn't related to any of the other male Boston lines that have been tested, albeit only a few have been tested. But, I did find two 4th cousins of his that are also GGGGrandsons of James Boston 1767. One lives in NC and the other in GA. All three, hubs and the other 2, are on the same generation but from different sons of James. Interestingly enough, the other two are in a similiar situation as you Alisande. Camilla, the daughter of John (son of James) married her first cousin, John Wesley (son of Ira). One of the 4th cousins is from the line of Camilla and John Wesley and the other is from the brother of Camilla, John C. After I made contact with the fellow who is from John C.'s line, I was able to introduce him to his 4th cousin, who he didn't know about. How cool is that! So now hubs and I are planning a trip to Savannah to meet the cousin who lives in that area, where Ira, John, James and hubs line, George all lived. Turns out Ira and John owned thousands of acres along the Savannah River. (Our ancestor, George owned a little compared to them. Later on, we want to go to NC to meet the other cousin. Age wise the oldest is 77 in NC, so we need to make it a priority. He has sent me photos of relatives but we need to get better ones. Plus, he was the one who had hand written pages from James, father of Ira,. John and George that he donated to North Carolina Archives. How I would love to actually see those!