Throughout my life I've heard vague reference to various family members that passed long before I came into this world. As a child, you generally accept things such as this without inquiry. Only later, when you try to piece such tidbits into a large picture do questions arise.
When my own children were tasked with providing a family tree as a project for school, I found myself scrambling to find scraps of information I knew I had somewhere! Over time these things gradually surfaced - poor photocopies of already poor photocopies of my grandmother's work to uncover our roots, or copies of book pages without reference as to the book title/author. I tried to keep these bundled up to work on at a later date.
Each time I looked at this motley collection of information, I struggled to comprehend what it represented. On paper, and eventually on computer, I tried myself to sort it all out. By now, the internet had come into being and I became aware that people were already putting their genealogies onto the web. Services such as Ancestry.com came into being. These resources helped me find information, though some of it was suspect.
Being unfamiliar with the standard ways genealogical information is presented (and finding it somewhat challenging to understand due to my slightly dyslexic mind), I started to consider graphic approaches that would make sense to me. I also wanted to share the information with other family members who did not have access to Ancestry or other web applications.
Eventually I built my own web site to house the data I was collecting. Using a page hierarchy to represent the actual familial relationships (son, father, grandfather), I started a file structure I could continue to build back into the past as I found new information. This was all done in a fairly manual manner, which was cumbersome, but being well versed in OCD computer tasks, I found it easy enough.
Since placing my lineage on the web, I had a great number of contacts from other genealogical researchers who share my ancestors! (far more than was the case on Ancestry). Sharing information has been interesting and has helped me correct my own data. I've also learned more about citing my source information. I am no expert, but it has been a lot of fun over time.
Most recently, I was contacted as a male descendant of the first O'Hara in my family to come to the United States to submit samples for Family Tree DNA testing. As of the beginning of December 2016, my sample was sent off - I look forward to learning more about my Irish roots when my test results provide data to the researchers working on this project!
