User:Rjschoesler

I've been researching my family history for about 15 years now. I got interested when my paternal grandmother told me the name of the village her parents had left to come to the US, and that they were Germans, although the village was in Russia. My maternal grandmother was helping the process indirectly, because she knew that her husband's maternal grandfather had been a Civil War veteran. It took time before that information finally bore fruit and I "got the bug", and since then, I've uncovered a lot more information about both of those areas.

There are several projects that I'm more or less working on: 1-Extending the lines as far back into time as I can find documentation; 2-Trying to see how the inter-relationships actually map out in my home town of Ritzville, Washington; 3-Gathering data to be used as documentation to become a Son of the American Revolution; 4-Learning more about, and finding a greater interest in, history as I find ancestors who actually participated or were affected by the events.

There has been a major learning curve in all of this, especially how to document. I've tried to make sure that every fact that I include has at least 1 source to back up what I say. However, I find myself staring at information about an ancestor or collateral relative with no documentation at all, and have to go back and try to figure out where I got that data. One example of that is the source for the Joscelyn line. There was a book, "The Jocelyn, Joslin, Jaslyn, Josselyn Family", by Edith Marguerite Stanley Wessler, published by Chares E Tuttle in Rutland, VT in 1962, that is in the Dallas Public Library. At the time I saw it (about 10-13 years ago), I took what pertained to me, but didn't document that information. It is only going back recently and accessing the Dallas Public Library's catalog that I now have that source, and will be hopefully citing the data soon, as time permits.