Ancestry.com

Yes! I wanted to preserve all the information I was finding and ended up making a website for my family.  I have pictures of the gravestones, death certificates, our tree and other interesting things. My goal is to have stories about the people and their lives that I am collecting from my few remaining relatives.

The fun part is that I am corresponding with people all over the world and finding things I never knew.  It's like preserving my little part of history.

The census are great. Our family name is misspelled all over the place. What I like is finding a small piece of a puzzle. You hit a brick wall and then a little clue opens up everything.

Many curious things pop-up. After writing down dates, I noticed that several family members died on the same day but not the same year. Also that a great-great-grandfather married his sister-in-law after his wife died young. Another relative had a heart attack at his brother's funeral and died a few days later.

I get excited finding these things! My mother never talked about her family. I found a death certificate of 2 of her siblings and put the dates together. She had a brother who died at 9 months old, she was born 8 days later!

Finding these things just makes me want to know more. I have tons of good sites if you want me to post them. It's much easier if your name is unusual. Is your's Smith? Ouch! Don't post it here if it isn't. You have to be very careful about privacy.

What's funny is that getting BRCA testing is what got me started on genealogy. Now I'm hooked!

yes, i spent about 8 months working on my family tree; so very fun and interesting. my greatgrandfather changed his last name from Stein to Steen...after arriving in the late 1800's from Germany.  i also fouind that i had a little sister that died at birth...she was 2 years younger then me.,  i highly recomment the searching; the records from the early days are actually quite good. haven't found anyone who died from breast cancer tho. * all of my great grandparents came over from Germany, Norway, Englad. hmmm

i plan to return to working on it later on..i found myself obsessed with it. hah

I'm almost as obsessed with genealogy as I used to be with these boards.  Even though I'm BRCA- I found tons of relatives with breast, ovarian cancer and "women's cancer".  My oncologist says that was probably ovarian.  What is encouraging is that my dad's mother had breast cancer at 50 and lived to be almost 100. 

We traced our family to Scotland which was a surprise.  I didn't have a clue. The naming convention is a hoot.  This is what I found:

Scottish naming convention:
* first son for the father
* first daughter for the mother's mother
* second son for the mother's father
* second daughter for the father's mother 

 My father had 2 brothers named William, both living at the same time.

Diana - did your family talk about your sister that died or did you find it from records?  My oldest brother and sister believe my mother had a baby boy that died young.  We were told that she miscarried.  If the baby lived full term, would there have to be a death certificate? 

Linda - Here are a few sites that may keep you up all night besides your 168 hints!  It used to be all the sites were free.  Pretty crummy that most of many of my links are now for pay only.

http://genforum.genealogy.com/
http://www.veromi.net/processor.asp
http://www.cyndislist.com/
http://www.ayrshireroots.com/

This is top reasons why names changed spellings from what I've read:

1. Illiteracy
2. Simplification
3. Necessity
4. Mispronunciation
5. Desire to Fit In
6. Desire to Break with the Past
7. Dislike of Surname
8. Fear of Discrimination

You mention a family bible.  That is another reason I got hooked on this.  One family member had the family bible and my cousin made copies of it for everyone.  I mean - just tons of hand-written notes and pictures that were going to be forgotten.  I scanned everything in my computer and started putting it in an on-line photo album.  Then I started the website and shared with my relatives. I thought it would keep everything in order and easy to find.  Just last night when I was trying to find some good sites, I noticed that many of my links are already out of date.

You mention all the spellings of your grandmother and her birth certificate not matching her marriage license.  Same thing with my mother.  Her birth certificate is misspelled.  In school she was called something close and later, kept a shortened version to where no one ever even heard of her real name.  We have a couple of Mary Janes in the family and you find them with all sorts of variations of both.  Now for the last name, if you have a plural version of the name, I read that likely that was the original spelling.  

If you are going back to 1600 and 1700's, you are doing fantastic!  I'm still amazed that you would have 4 sets of twins in a family.  Going to Ayrshire birth records, a relative has about 20 kids spanning 30 years.  I cannot figure it out!  I write the dates and think, no way is that possible although many of the women in my family had children in their 40's.  It's not twins since the birth dates are different.  Maybe many didn't live long?  And yes, they used the same name over again.  It's almost like a litter.  I know infant mortality was very low but it makes you wonder...

It's nice to talk to others who share this fascination.  When I find a puzzle piece, I'm going to tell you guys!