First Post

I love genealogy.  Every family has its characters, triumphs, and tragedies, and learning about some of the most important people in history—the people who made it possible for me to be born—is one of my favorite things to do.

Though I frequent familysearch.org, ancestry.com, and findagrave.com, researching in libraries and the strolling through cemeteries is just as good for research and maybe better.  Getting out and talking to other researchers and experienced librarians has provided historical context that I could not get elsewhere.  Not everything is available online, and I doubt that it ever will be.

I’m blogging about the libraries and cemeteries I visit because I’ve noticed that there is a lack of information about some places in St. Louis and in other areas around Missouri.  Occasionally I may write posts about out-of-state research trips (to Arkansas and Illinois, and I hope to Pennsylvania in the next couple of years). 

My great-grandmother Minnie Bruegger Luhrsen (1898-1986).

The blog is called Travels with My Foremothers because the search for my female ancestors’ roots is a difficult and rewarding challenge that I find representative of genealogy.