About Me

GENEALOGY - LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

I have my cousin, Judson Mason, to thank for introducing me to the world of genealogy. Jud’s mother Della and my father Ben were brother and sister. Our fathers were also partners in a small engine business in Salem, Missouri where I am from.

Jud, being 19 years my senior, had already spent many years searching for his Mason and our Copeland family ancestors. His wife Judy once told me she didn’t know any other family vacation than visiting cemeteries and courthouses.

When I was a young mother and wife of a military man I asked Jud to share what he had found on our Copeland line. He had all hand written notes and charts back to our great - and even a few great-great grandparents with their children and cousins by the hundreds.

It was love at first site for me – seeing our family spread out on pedigree charts and family group sheets - from locations both local and distant. There were so many more family members I did not know about that had familiar first names so obviously handed down for generations.

Jud then explained to me that he was hoping I would take an interest as he would like to hand over all further research of the Copeland’s  to me while he continued with the Mason family. I eagerly agreed as he handed over notebooks of work on our Missouri ancestors.

That was in the late 1970’s and my husband and I lived in Omaha, Nebraska where he was a new 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force.  On our return from our Missouri vacation, arms full of my new Copeland history stash, I discovered the base library was offering genealogy classes which I immediately signed up for. I’ll never forget dear Alice Clopton and Sylvia Nimmo who alternated between teaching beginning, intermediate and advanced genealogy at the library. Both were military wives with a vast amount of knowledge in the field. I took every course they offered - filling notebooks full of everything they had to teach. I learned everything from reading census returns to migratory trails throughout the eastern U.S. I never expected the vast amount of American history I would take out of these courses and have since become an avid historian, taking many history classes in colleges where my husband happened to be stationed at the time.

By the 1990’s I was myself working in the genealogy room at the Cheyenne, Wyoming library and for the LDS that was housed in the same location. For the 3 years we were stationed in Cheyenne I enjoyed working and helping others with their research while increasing my own working knowledge.

Then it was off to Germany to our next posting where I landed a job at the Ramstein AFB library. In addition to my regular library duties I took on the genealogy duties as well. By this time I had many of my own family lines back to Europe. I remember speaking with a cousin on my mother’s side of the family who had done a great deal of research on his Stagner line. He told me where this branch of our family was from in Germany and my husband and I located the village; a mere 20 minutes from were we lived in the Rhineland Pfaltz.

This was my first experience visiting the European origins of part of our family. What an exciting adventure! I hope everyone interested in their family’s origins gets to experience this particular “Holy Grail” adventure.

Though my cousin Jud is no longer with us I will be forever grateful for his introducing me to something that has enriched my life in such a profound way.

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