“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” – Winston Churchill
I have always had a passion to read and study history. My undergraduate degree is a bachelor of arts in history from the University of Maryland, College Park (Fear the Turtle!). I specialized in early American history but really enjoyed studying Medieval European history as well as nationalism and nation building in both Africa and the Middle East. Studying history isn't merely about memorizing dates or facts, its about understanding the nuances of various societal components from military, economic, scientific, legal, cultural, religious, artistic, sporting and even culinary; and how they all interact.
“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
My love of history led to a growing passion of trying to understand my ancestors. This passion for genealogy was fueled by my wife's aunt and her grandmother who both decades accumulating a vast amount of information on my wife's ancestors. My family came to the US at the turn of the 20th century from Eastern Europe via steam ship into Ellis Island, my wife's family via sailing vessel nearly four hundred years earlier into the Plymouth Colony. We can trace my wife's lineage back to the late 300s in Wales (55 generations) being certified through one branch and early 1200s through another. Unfortunately, due to devastation and destruction caused by World War Two, we can only go back to mid-1800s for my family history. But I am proud to carry on the tradition and continue the research on both sides of our family as the 'official family genealogist'!