How I Got Started in Genealogy

(Originally posted 7/15/2011)

When I was 12 years old my father got a job with Boeing at the Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and our family moved to Merritt Island from Forest Park, a little suburb of Cincinnati.  Being an avid bookworm in a family of readers, one of our first stops was at the Merritt Island Public Library.  In 1967 it was a distinct step down from the small storefront library I had known as a little girl - it was housed in a dilapidated cabin with peeling yellow paint and rickety wooden steps, surrounded by wild morning glories.   It couldn't have been over 900 square feet, and the rows of books flowed from one little room to another.   In the heat of a Florida summer, it was lovely.
     I was standing in front of the row of adult fiction, just exploring the worlds beyond Narnia, Carolyn Haywood and Beverly Cleary.  My mother joined me, picked a book from the shelf and handed it to me, saying, "Here - I think you might like this."  It was Dawn's Early Light, by Elswyth Thane, and was my introduction into the world of historical fiction.   As my years in junior high and high school went by, I read and re-read all the books in the Williamsburg series that began with Dawn's Early Light and continued with Yankee Stranger and Ever After.   The later books had family trees on the endpapers, which fascinated me, but even more important, imparted a sense that who your parents and grandparents were mattered - that those who came before you made a difference in who your are today.  "The Spragues were strong and unruly, enterprising and irresistible...The Murrays were a tough, adventurous, passionate, intensely masculine breed of men with a flair for making money...And the Days were likely to be bookish, thoughtful, homekeeping, loving people."  (Ever After, p.13)
     Not unlike the Reeds.  For me, that's where it all began.