My Trek into Genealogy

I am Judith Elaine (Mc Kee) Burns - I started my family genealogy back in 1976 I had been gone from "home for 4 years my children were 3 & 2 at the time - I had intended to put it on the bottom shelf after a decent start for later years.

I never really knew only my fathers - mother & father, his brother & his wife, his sister, husband & son, his Aunt Maggie & Uncle Sam Jeffers, and Huldah Vandeventer. Mother's side was the same - her father, her sister & her brother, his wife & son; and Aunt Emma Hardesty, her son, wife, their son & daughter. Late in 1970's I was privileged to met briefly some of the Edington cousins at a funeral in Christman, Illinois but that was it. In 1974 - I met Minnie Edington - never realizing she was also my grandfather Emery's sister till I started my trek in genealogy - she was at my perents home then and I have a prized picture of her with my son.

When my grandmother Mc Kee came to live with us in 1964 till her death she did mention she had half-siblings and named them of - but I never thought to write the information down.

Mom and dad never really talked of their relatives all the time I was growing up as a kid. I realized waht was known if they would tell me was soon to be lost dad was born in 1908, mom in 1920 and I in 1951 - I call myself the "generational misfit"; after that the lines pretty well follow the 20 generation gap except for Grandfather Mc Kee and his father Grandfather was born in 1880 and Great Grandfather in 1834.

Another treasure I have is that I have ended up with 2 of my Great Grandfather Robert Thomas Mc Kee's civil war diaries.

Through the years I have gained some wonderful friends through correspondence - Claude & Clarice Lynch, Minnie White among a few. Those I mention fondly as Minnie gave me my outline of Hardesty, Edington and Edington lines; Claude and Clarice helped fill in the gaps and were the best supporters and promoters of my Hardesty manuscript and helped with the collecting of information of the updated section on John Emery of Newbury, Massachusetts.

I think the greatest outcome of my trek into genealogy was "finding my father" - tho he lived in Flordia - and we would talk often - and he never ceased to have an abundance of genealogy tidbits for me - or if I was stumped could tell me something that would lead me onward - He kept telling me his "Uncle Joe Mc Kee" had a family - but I could never find a trace of them - his pension papers with the questions of Have you been married, do you have kids etc. did not exist - but his other brothers had filled them out and provided me their family data. Dad died in Nov 1984 still swearing Uncle Joe had a family - and I kept saying no dad hed did not - well one "ill fated wind" of losing the entering Mc Kee manuscript and having to do all the research over again brought forht Great Uncle Joe's family and I could hear dad telling me "I told you so".

The greatest surpise was that I assumed or was under the impression Grandfather Emery was an only child - far from it he had 11 other siblings.

Then when my step-daughter Eunice (Burns) Schrimsher found out I was into family history - genealogy she asked me to clean up her papers that she was given - and do more research - of course this was for free - thus I have her maternal lines and some of her husbands lines that were "brickwalls" that I have included them all on this site since they are a part of my researching over the years. Later friends asked me to do their family lines again for free - thus they too are on here since I done the research. Then my cousin got into the act so his mothers biological and adopted lines are on here also.

Then when came to live with my friends - his mother found out and asked me to start theirs - she had a few papers and handed them to me over a burning candle... you can use your imagineation... yes they ended up scorched but that was it... My comment was "One way to get rid of you ancestors..."

I can not say no to genealogy or hisorty guess that's got me into big trouble since 1976.... and especially since 2004 when i took to putting it on to the internet....