Esther's Family History Scrapbook

 

“No one is ever truly dead
as long as someone remembers them.”

—African Proverb

     I've been collecting family history for more than fifty years, and it has come to be many things to me. It is a science, yes, and for many, science is the most important part. That is great because research is the foundation, the skeleton on which everything else is built.
     But family history for me is more than that. For me, the story is most important, the bringing to life of those who have gone before. They are not just names on rigid headstones or in dusty archives. They were human beings whose blood flows in my flesh today. Without them, I wouldn't be here nor would I be who I am. I am positive they would be amazed that descendants this many generations and even centuries down the line would be this interested in who they were and what happened to them. And how about the fact that we know much more about their ancestors than they ever did?
     The story is the reason this website is called a “scrapbook,” not a database. Things like names and dates are essential, and they are important to us, of course, but we attempt to go beyond those for the drama and the emotions of the story. That occasionally includes conjectures. 
     Here is the story of our ancestors as best we can tell it. 

Porter Family c. 1906
Welcome
From Esther
Roots and Migrations
Find Us Faithful
Perl Quote
Our Family Links
Compton 
Champlin
Hawkins
Moneysmith
Porter 
Stauffer   Tours and Discoveries (NEW)
Sullivan   Intro  
Tours  
Files of our Younger Ancestors (private) Discoveries  
Cemetery Map for the Grand Rapids area
Some Favorite Links
Eby site Please Sign My Guestbook
FamilySearch.org
Recent Changes 
Email Me Tours 
Discoveries 
The story changes somewhat over the years as older generations of the family tell it to newer ones. But somehow no one ever gets too tired to tell it, or too bored to listen. In the end, it isn't so much that we're in the story, but that the story is in us.

 — popular genealogy quote