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I also have extensive research on my family and my husband's on Ancestry.ca, if anyone is interested.
I have over ten years of experience and have always been dubbed the "family historian" since I was a young child because I had a knack of remembering people, their birth dates, familial connections, etc.
I started an actual family tree in late 1998 and into 1999, mostly from a computer lab sometimes until the late evenings on the campus of the university I was attending. It all started with a mysterious young girl named Sadie Coon, who was born June 1, 1896 in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada. It turns out she was the older half-sister of my maternal great grandmother Rose Bell Coon Newcombe (born 1910). Rose's father Alexander "Sandy" Coon was about 22 years older than her mother Ivanetta "Nettie" Livingston Coon, so I suppose in retrospect it isn't so shocking to learn that he was married prior to having a family with Nettie, especially since most of my great grandmother and her siblings were born out of wedlock, but that's a skeleton I'll leave in the closet for today. ;-)
I found Sadie via census information for 1901. Learned her mother was one Ethel J. McLean who was married to Sadie Coon in 1896. I can't find anything after 1901 on either Ethel or Sadie, but Sandy went on to have another family and died in 1939 when my maternal grandmother was 11 years old. Little Sadie still haunts me and influences me to this day.
It just went from there. Lots and lots of branches of my tree have been researched and discovered. I spent long hours on the Church of Latter Day Saints online archives, jotting down notes, printing things off, compiling family trees. I dated people who were adopted and that became an interest to me as well, helping them find their biological families. I am now married to a man whose own father was adopted in 1953. He was born in Montreal to Jewish parents, and anyone who has done any amount of research on Quebec records and Jewish records knows how time consuming (but equally rewarding) it can be. I have found my father-in-law's biological family, very recently actually, and now it's just a matter of figuring out where he fits in. Some living family are very receptive, some not so much, but they all acknowledge that he is one of theirs, but we still have more doors to unlock.
In the past two weeks, I have discovered my paternal grandmother's long lost family in England, made contact with two cousins, found a photo of my great great grandmother that could be me, learned that my grandmother's father died a month before she was born at the age of 33, found records about her younger half-sister who was given up for adoption in 1929 (she has since asked me to look for her), found out my great grandmother was married AGAIN when they came to Canada, so many old photos and relatives...it boggles the mind!
I've also been in contact with my third cousin (who I met on Ancestry.ca two years ago) who has helped me rework my maternal grandmother's entire paternal line and found new ancestors, old photos and it's just goes on and on.
All of this has been done in the past month.
So this is my passion. I am making a business of it. And I want to share it with you all.
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