Back in Business --

Well, friends, remember me?  It's been a while.  Remember when I was in Italy and trying to blog while I was there?  Ha! It worked for a couple of posts, but we were just too busy for me to keep it up.  So I've been home now for about six weeks and have yet to post -- what's up with that?!  Various life and health things have intervened.  But genealogy is now calling me back, so I have to answer the call.  I can't stay away for long.


The house I stayed in at the painting workshop in Tuscany

Italy drew me away, but now things are drawing me back:
  • I've heard from someone from the German Genealogy Group who shares some surnames with me
  • I'm in contact with someone who Ancestry says has a high probability of being a DNA-related cousin
  • MyHeritage, which I rarely visit any more, sent a notice that they had connections for me, and boy, did they -- 
I'm very excited about the MyHeritage connection -- it's to a woman whose mother was a first cousin of my grandfather.  So are she and my father second cousins?  I have trouble figuring those kinds of things out. Anyone know of a good chart I could download and save?

Anyway, my great-grandmother, Annie Schwietering Ortmann, is her great-aunt, I think.  I am hoping against all hope that she might have a picture of Annie and/or (be still my heart) Annie and Joseph, my great-grandparents.   That would be the Holy Grail to me -- I long so much to see what they looked like.  I've messaged her and am dying to hear back from her soon.

So, I'll be back on a regular basis now, I'm sure.  Christmas is busy, but not so busy that I can't saddle up and ride off into the Halls of the Past again.  How is everyone else doing? 

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