Post #1 - Boring Introduction

For intro purposes, I am Claudia Ann (DeHart) Shover, daughter of Doug and Lois (Alcott) DeHart, and a granddaughter of Charles and Miriam (Clark) DeHart.  Though I have always had a passion for family history, recently questions about our ancestry from my grandgirls in Utah resparked my interest in the heavy-duty research - their school projects inspired me to think about gathering up in one place all the info and photos I can find -- and what better medium for sharing than a blog, accessible to everyone whenever and wherever.

So much information is available these days at the click of a mouse.  While sites like Genealogy.com or Ancestry.com offer easy access to census and military records, I am by no means relying on the entries of others for our data -- there is much inaccuracy floating around out there, and I understand the importance of primary source documents.  I'll take any tidbit of information that anyone has to share.  As I mentioned in the sidebar, photos are so easily shared electronically -- I recently took pictures with my cell phone of old photos in an album owned by Ann (DeHart) Hamel, photos I'd never seen before, and here, nice and clear, is Great Great Aunt Julia DeHart (more about her later): 

 

and puppy -- sorry, we don't know its name - we'll call him/her Cuddles. 

Anyway, I promise I won't be quite so wordy from now on.  My posts will probably be photo-driven and not in any particular order and I may skip from family to family.  As soon as I can verify certain dates, I will place a simplified family tree in the sidebar under Documents, Links & Stuff.  Apologies in advance, but I will likely sprinkle in historical context and references here and there because old history majors never die -- they just take to the internet and bore the heck out of the younger generation.  --cds