You've seen the ads for Ancestry.com but yet to take the plunge. You've heard family stories but yet to dive deeper into them. Feeling a little intimidated let me give a good starting point for a tree.

For 3 1/2 years I've actively pursued my own genealogy. It started as an attempt to validate a story my great grandfather said about our ancestors being horse thieves banished from France and settling in Richmond, Virginia area and eventually winding up in Portsmouth, Ohio.

Sadly no documented proof of family banished from France has been discovered but no immigration record have been found either. Whether folklore is true and they changed names upon arrival or not I may never know.

With building your tree I'll give a chance to view a timeliness of your ancestors lives. You'll learn names of ancestors you never you had, where they lived, what their occupation was, some records might even have their penmanship.

Everything will be saved to a tree on ancestry.com to a free account. After viewing your tree if you want to pursue it further on your own I can give you some pointers even show you free places to get information if an ancestry subscription is not in your budget.

As long as you can provide names of people born before 1940 I can start a tree. In the event that 1 of the people can't be found on a record from I'll work exclusively on the other line. It's rare but it does happen. My own grandfather went undocumented from his birth in 1919 until 1940. It turned out he was adopted and he never mentioned it to my grandma.