Serres Family Genealogy

So I've been working on researching our family tree, both Julie's and my side of the family. In doing so I re-discovered (my Dad had told me a long time ago, but I forgot) that my Grandfather is just buried about 7 miles or so from our house. So one week on the way home from gymnastics I stopped to look at the grave and get the information off of it. After doing research on this information I found out that an eagle scout had done a research project painstakingly photographing and cataloging all of the headstones at several local cemeteries.

I guess I read too much into this project as I thought it said he also did some research on each of the families. I went to the local historical society to look at the project and all it was was a photograph of the headstone. This would have been very helpful if I wasn't anywhere close enough to go and look at it myself, but I had just done this. It wasn't a complete waste of time however as the ladies working there were giving me hints about doing genealogy research.

I have to say that doing this is very rewarding. I have currently discovered 257 relatives as far back as 1700 in Luxembourg. I didn't even know our family was from this country. I knew we were German and French, but not Luxembourgian. I've also discovered that two of my Grandfather's brothers are buried at a national cemetery because of serving in the military. My Grandfather's Dad served in the Marine Corps in WWI. So we have at least two Marines in our family (I would be the other.)

We also have a lot of farmers (some listed as dairy farmers) going back to the 1800's as listed on the census forms. I never knew any of my relatives were farmers prior to starting this research. What I do have to share is that this is very addictive! Once you start you will have difficulty not doing it all the time. It's hard to stop researching and go to bed. You think the next page you look at will have some bit of information that you need. And sometimes one little bit of information can open up an entire can of worms to reveal dozens of relatives you didn't know about.

I'm using dynastree.com for our family tree since it's free and it has a lot of nice features. And so far I've only used ancestry.com for my research. I will be expanding to other services when I feel I've gotten pretty much all I can out of ancestry.com (at least for the time being.) The ladies at the historical society suggested a particular library in the area as it has a genealogy section. I may have to spend a little time there... ;-)

I also got in contact with a relative up in Wisconsin that has done a TON of research on our family and purchased the book he published about our families histories. This is a serious tome at about 400 pages! But it's complete with a LOT of information. I even found newspaper articles in there describing life events for many family members. That's just really cool! It's interesting to know what was going on way back in the 1800's.

So anyway, that's about it for now.