whoa, okay Liese beats me when it comes to lack of genealogy records.

If this keeps up, we're going to need a genealogy thread (and somewhere ita twitches without really knowing why).

My folks are in southwestern Pennsylvania, Revolutionary era New Jersey, and Colonial New York and New England. From there it's various spots in England, Scotland, Wales, Germany. And, of course, Netherlands and Morocco, when the Jansens are sailing with the Sallee Rovers and sacking towns in Ireland.

Cash, if you've found anyone in Kent, holy CRAP, those people are thorough. I got back to the 12th century with that branch.

LOTS of people in Kent. Mom's side is strictly Welsh and English. Dad's I've found some Scots and some unexpected French back to the 16th Century.

Liese, that sucks.

Burrell, my husband's grandfather was adopted under the table so they're not really sure about anything. I'm going to see what I can find on his paternal grandmother's side, though--she seems to have kept some really good records.

Liese, if you're willing to go to the local LDS family center near you, you can do a lot of that research for free. I wish I could afford Ancestry's rates, but I can't. As far as the records being destroyed, it's true there are sometimes off-site caches just due to weird things humans do sometimes.

My mom's mom was adopted so for that side of things we're hoping for a little genealogical DNA luck. We've tested at both FamilyDNA and 23andme. It's sparse right now but as DNA testing becomes more affordable, there will be more people to match against. And hopefully the good matches will have some names to give that can send us to regular genealogical research.

The cake I'm baking. Only I'm using Valrhona instead of Scharffenberger. [link]

Liese, I suspect I'll have the same problem with Paul's great-Aunt. I can find her, and her parents (who were born in Japan) in the available records from Hawai'i, but nothing before then. It's sobering and depressing how much history has been lost to war, a loss of memory that adds insult to the injury of lost lives.

LOTS of people in Kent. Mom's side is strictly Welsh and English. Dad's I've found some Scots and some unexpected French back to the 16th Century.

What surnames? I'm still hoping we're related!

Feels like chopped liver after geeking out over ancestry.com over the weekend.

I went through some files of my mom's tonight and found the source documents for the trees she had. I should scan and upload to ancestry.com.

Also found a ton of stuff from my Grandpa's military days in the 40's. Orders, military airfare coupons, gas rations, and more. I know some WWII buff would probably love a bunch of it.

That's really cool, SuziQ.

Gah. I hated the hot weather we were having but one advantage was I was going to bake this cake in the solar oven - impossible to overcook. It's been overcast so I used the inside oven. And the damned timer didn't work so now it's not burned but it's definitely not moist. Dammit.

Oh, oh. I also found some 40's era Telegrams. CJ was fascinated by them. I have sent and received some Telegrams when KCD was in the Navy and that was the only way to communicate faster than a letter. And they looked nothing like these. Really neat.