Mike Keller

Contact re-established!
In the "My Illinois Roots" page I made reference to a cousin that I "found" on the internet, but with whom I had since lost contact. Please understand that it took me about a week to put this blog together (pathetic, isn't it?!), and I wrote different parts of it at different times. In that week, I again found my cousin's email address, sent him off an email, hoping he still had that address, and he answered me! Yay!  Not only that, but today he sent me some information that I didn't have, so there is more fuel for my trip.

So Mike - this post is to you. Thank you for still being reachable, and for sharing pieces of our family's history. I will share everything I find out on the trip with you when I return. Bless you!

First Post

Now that I have a blog, I have to remember to write something in it so people can read it! This may be a difficult thing for me to do. The remembering part that is, not the writing! As I said in the Illinois roots page, I am taking off on a journey to Illinois to do some long-awaited research. I leave on September 19 and return on October 10. In the meantime, I am going to continue my background work gathering information online and from county offices. I have sent written requests for some documents, and am going to visit the Alameda county and Contra Costa County offices in California to gather others. I am also going to make a trek to some cemeteries in California - Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Francisco and Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Sebastopol - to take pictures of headstones and document the burials of my parents and grandparents. I also have a few online classes to finish - a basic family history skills class, a brief overview of researching in Illinois, and a more in-depth class on cemetery research. So that is my plan for the next few weeks before I head east on Route 66.