Welcome!

First of all, I would like to welcome you to my blog. My goal at Kindred Roots is to share genealogy tips that I have used in my own family history research. I would also like to share stories on some of my favorite ancestors. Hopefully, this will become a bit of a community where we can all share tips, tricks, and stories. And who knows, maybe discover some lost kin!

Since this is my first post, I would like to start by sharing a bit of information about myself. Trust me, I am not that interesting to write about. I have more interesting ancestors that I can't wait to share with you, but... I feel like you should get to know me on a more personal level. 

I have always been a history nut. I guess it began with my interest in dinosaurs when I was a small child. As I grew older and studied history in school, I became fascinated with the stories. To me, this was much more interesting than fiction because these people actually lived and the stories really happened! 

Fast forward a few more years... (just a few...OK, like over a decade) to the day I saw an interesting show on TV called Who Do You Think You Are. I'm sure many of you have heard of it, or better yet, seen it. This show sparked my interest in genealogy, and tales of family lore; which has become a full blown addiction. After watching every episode of WDYTYA, I started watching Genealogy Roadshow on public broadcasting, and a show called Finding Your Roots. Watching these shows appeased my addiction to an extent, but never fully satisfied me. I had to research on my own. How I started will be covered in a future post, but I will say that I already had some issues from the start.

You see, I knew researching my dad's line would be fairly easy. After all, he was born in Florida, and so was his father and mother. Mind you, I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE EASY... I was so wrong. What I thought would be hard was my mother's side of the family. See, she was born in Costa Rica to a deeply rooted Costa Rican family. Unfortunately, I never became proficient in Spanish, so researching that side of my family would have to wait, at least, until I got the hang of researching and knowing how to build a tree, and how to use documents to further along my research.

OK, so I have blabbed enough about myself for now. No need to bore you with my story. After all, that's not what you are here for. Again, welcome! And thanks for reading! I promise there will be more interesting stuff to come in the near future.