The Family Shrub

Adventures in Genealogy

My New Year Resolution

I am a goodreads.com user.  I always have a resolution for how many books I will  read each year and last year I had great intentions.  2015 was 24 books.  I can read two books a month right?  I failed.  I read 17. FAILED.  I wasn't even kind of close so that I could...

The Brick Wall is cracking!

  There are a few brick walls in my tree that drive me a little nuts.  One of them being good old Alexander Brown...where I get my surname. One of the worst is on my husband Andrew's side though, where he gets HIS surname:  James A. Nelson.  I believe the A to...

Scared to Death

One of the interesting things about doing genealogy is discovering "cause of death".  I know it sounds a little morbid, but what's interesting is how much has changed over such a short time in terms of actually assigning a cause.  Science is better.  Medicine is...

A forgotten murder/suicide in Downtown Indy

So, one of my favorite things about doing genealogy is coming upon these wild stories in families that people knew nothing about.  A lot of times horrible things will happen and people don't want to talk about them and they get swept under the rug.  These stories get...