Finding Our Roots

Since 2008, about a year after Luis and I were married, I started to get serious about keeping good records of our history for our future children.  It has been such a joy hearing old stories from relatives and finding documentation on my family's past.  My father had 15 brothers and sisters so gathering information for that side of the family has been quite a challenge.  Luckily, his family meets every year for a family reunion so a majority of the work has already been done and I've been able to locate tons of additional info from these events.  I still have a lot of missing pieces but it takes a long time to research genealogy records. 

Howard Family Reunion 2009

Even thought my side of the family tree is mostly completed for the past six generations or so, Luis father's side of the family was empty.  A blank slate that needed to be filled in.  Through lots of harassing of family members and a little help from Facebook we were able to finally locate Luis' Aunt in New Jersey.  This was the next best thing to finding his father, who unfortunately died when he was about 8 years old.  Just a month after they talked on the phone we all met in Florida for the first time.  It was a great feeling to find the missing part of our completed family tree.

Luis seeing his father's picture for the first time

Luis' Dad's Family - The Pagan Family

The Pagan Family in Spring Hill, FL

I think it is important for us as parents to share our family history with our children.  Knowing where you came from helps you to know where you are going in my opinion.  In the past three years I have been able to complete our family tree and I can not wait to display it proudly in our next home.  I am still gathering official certificates to confirm dates and other specifics but it's a great feeling to have a name for every relative.

If you're interested in viewing our family tree, or would like to start your own family search I highly recommend Tribal Pages.  They offer a free site that is very user-friendly.  I also have gathered information from Ancestry, but I choose not to pay for the service since I can not spend a lot of time all the time on my research.  Happy hunting friends!