For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy poses the question: "What event or person inspired you to start your genealogy research?"
My mom was the one who first introduced me to genealogy. She and her sister had taken a class at a local senior citizen center and she filled me in on the details. This would have been back in the early 1990s. She was frustrated that she couldn't make any headway in finding out where in Poland her parents were from.
I sat down and helped her put her "clues" together but I couldn't come up with anything either.
About that time I met a gal who told me she'd been researching her family history for years (Scandinavian). I told her I was thinking about taking a class in genealogy and asked if she knew of one. She laughed and said, "You don't need a class for genealogy. All you have to do is go to the Family History Center. They'll tell you everything you need to know." She made it sound soooo simple, LOL! I had never even heard of a FHC and had no idea where to find one!
I did find an adult-leisure type genealogy class and enrolled in it thinking I could get some answers there. Unfortunately, it was about U.S. records only. The instructor knew nothing about Polish research. I more or less gave up at that point.
And then it happened... I received Family Tree Maker software as a birthday gift. I'm such a geeky girl, LOL! That was all it took and I was hooked on genealogy! To this day one of the things I enjoy doing most is entering new data in my genealogy software program. (I'm currently using Legacy.) I can do it with a smile on my face for hours on end!
So I'd have to say the person who inspired me was my mom and the event that inspired me was receiving Family Tree Maker software as a gift!
