I have been using Ancestry.com for about a decade to search for members of my family’s tree. It has become my primary resource for searching and finding information. I supplement it with information on GenWeb and RootsWeb and Google and Bing.

I have been able to assemble over 4,000 members in my tree back into the 1700’s. Fascinating.

I got started and interested in my family’s tree as I grew older and wondered why did my father, who during my childhood worked in the oil fields of Oklahoma, always had a cow, some pigs and chickens at every oil lease we lived on. He rarely talked about his past and I, regretfully, never asked him. Now, I have children and grand children and not too far in the future will have great grand children. Someday they will encounter the same questions I had. What was their grand mother and grand father like? How did they live? What did they do and why?

Compiling our family’s tree will provide them a great starting point in answering those questions. I hope each one of them join together to continue the quest for answers. After all when Lillie and I are gone the story of the Wood family will continue, just as my father’s story continues through me, our kids, our grand kids and their grand kids.

I have learned a great deal about my family’s recorded beginnings in Virginia, the move of one branch to Kentucky, then into Missouri at the time of the Civil War, then on into Kansas and finally Oklahoma, on to California and currently in Nevada. Each move has been by twigs of branches of the family tree’s body, each twig in turn giving to other branches of the tree’s limbs.

It is a fascinating journey from Virginia to Nevada. And continues.