Introduction

OK. So, back in November of 2009, I decided to sign up for a free two week trial at ancestry.com. My great-grandmother on my Mother's side was Jennie Hooker, a direct descendant of Thomas Hooker, the "founder" of Hartford and Thomas Willett, the first English mayor of New York City, but that was all I knew. My uncle, Jim Buggie, had been doing some research on that side of the family, so I was especially interested in researching the Munson side. As far as I knew, nobody that I knew had ever taken on that task. What I discovered in those two weeks has opened my eyes to a whole new world of investigation and discovery and has kept me an addicted subscriber to ancestry.com.

I decided that I wanted to share some of what I was discovering with family members around the country, and hopefully tap into some of their collective memory and wisdom. At first I was thinking of publishing some sort of newsletter which I could mail or email to family quarterly. How old fashioned! I had been throwing that idea around for several months before it occured to me I could much more easily create a blog to post pictures, articles and stories as I discover them. So here we go.

I have been researching both sides of my family tree using an ancestral approach rather than a descendant approach. I have information on all of my Great Grandparent's names: Munson, Hotchkiss, Koerner, Von Deck, Dahlquist, Hooker, Bowman and Crogent. I hope to present profiles of ancestors in such a way that they are more than just a name and dates, but are connected to the events of the world around them. So far I have found immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. There are original puritan settlers of New England, key members of the Salem Witch Trials and other witch trials and a well-known King. Yes, a King!

I will try to indicate how each post is connected to me so that you will be able to figure out how it is connected to you. Hopefully you will enjoy what you read and maybe be sparked to do some research of your own. Be sure to add any comments you want to the post and make any corrections which need to be made.

I dedicate this blog to my Grandparents: Gram, Gramp, Nana and Grampa John (George, Ruth, Florence and John).