My Genealogy Homepage

One of my varied interests lies in the origin of the roots of my family history.
After the death of my Grandmother, and while going through her collection
of a lifetime, the family found out Grandma was a PACKRAT!

This was fortunate for this budding genealogist; for she had saved amongst other things the
Family Bible, and many pictures (including tin-types). In numerous shoe -boxes, we found
invitations and even newspaper clippings that offered days of reading to figure out why she had
saved them. In some cases, it took many re-readings to find out that a related person was
mentioned which gave further clues to our heritage on my mothers side of the family. Early on in
our trip into history, we have been frustrated by the confusion and overall lack of knowledge that
we could glean. OH WHY had we not started this project many years ago when our fore-fathers
were alive and could answer so many of the questions?? One thing learned very quickly is to be
very wary as we did find one scrap of paper written by one of my GG Grandfathers about 1800 in
which one persons Surname was spelled THREE different ways. Now that makes it difficult to
research even with the vast knowledge of the inter-net.

This side of the family is reported to come mainly from the British Isles with some of the documentation
indicating it was pre-revolution with one possibility of some connection to the Mayflower, however at this
time this cannot be proven. One person was reported to be "An Englishman born in Connecticut" and
from paper found, we have recorded birth dates as far back as 1799 with some information on their
parents. From Connecticut, they found their way to Western New York and settled there with some
branches finding there way to California. Part of the frustration is finding people of the same Surname
living within 30-40 miles of each other (were talking the early 1800's here) and not being able to prove a
relationship between them. If you are interested in this side of the family, there is a link above to what I
have as well as persons that I believe are related, but no luck so far; the other link is to those names that
I have but would like to hook up! This is a zip file of the Gedcom information available to me at this time.

The links above are for my family history as I presently have it. This are zipped up Gedcom files and if you
are interested and can find any connections to your family, please contact me.

As for the Eckstein / Phillippi line of the family, it has been learned they arrived in this country in
1849-1860 era from Germany through the Port of New York and stayed in that area for about 1 year before
settling in the Western New York area. Any help will be appreciated.

ART