Personalizing Your Family Tree

It has been awhile since my last blog post, and for that I apologize to my regular readers. On October 4th, I lost my father and, as you can imagine, writing a blog post was the last thing on my mind.

With the passing of another generation of my family, my thoughts turned back to my family history and I renewed my membership with Ancestry.com. For the past several weeks I have once again been researching my many ancestors and have been making more incredible discoveries.

I had previously thought that I had found as many famous relatives as was humanly possible, but I have managed to discover even more. I have recently been able to add Spencer Tracy as a direct blood relative, and then I was able to add both Lucille Ball and Amelia Earhart as family members, although by marriage only.

I was surprised that Spencer Tracy was a cousin as his best friend, Humphrey Bogart, was also a direct relation of mine. In fact it was Spencer Tracy and Audrey Hepburn who were with Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall, on Bogart's final night on this earth.

Some might question why I would add Lucille Ball and Amelia Earhart to my family tree, especially since they are only related by marriage. However, I think this IS part of my family history and years from now, when I am just a name on a tree, my descendants will know how our family influenced history. It is fine just to have your direct ancestors listed in your family tree if that is what you want, but to me, adding extended family enhances our overall history.

Until next time, keep working on your family history project, and let me know whether or not you include extended family and historical events in your family tree.