As I stated at the beginning of this book, genealogy is a never-ending project. Even as this history book is being completed I continue to search for and chase down new leads. My family tree as recorded on my Family Tree Maker software now totals over 4000 people. This includes the family tree of my daughter through her mother’s side of the family, which traces back through to some of the same Virginia and Pennsylvania countryside that my side does, but which is not covered in this book.
        While doing research on this book it has been my pleasure to correspond with and in many cases to meet with some of my distant relatives who I had never known about before, and to visit some fascinating places where they have lived. As I continue to pursue the genealogy hobby I look forward to meeting more interesting relatives and to visiting more places.
        It has been established by some who do research on the emotions of those who are approaching death that it is not so much the act of dying that people fear, but rather it is the fear that after they are gone they will be forgotten. It was with this in mind that I began this project, and I began it with the purpose of recording and preserving my family history. I wanted to preserve a remembrance of those who came before me who would otherwise be forgotten. It grew beyond those pyramiders because of my own love of history, because I wanted to place my ancestors more precisely in their historical perspective, and because I wanted to satisfy my own curiosity and find out why they did what they did. At times I felt an urgency to get this down on paper because just in the course of my lifetime I have witnessed the destruction of much priceless family history material, and once destroyed it is forever forgotten. It is my fond hope that this material will serve the purposes of preserving the memories of these ancestors, and providing a resource for those who want to delve further.