Finding Family and other thoughts

This has been a pretty good summer so far, personally. Can't complain. The garden is doing well, I am getting a lot of great time with the boys, and a lot of stuff we have meant to do around the house is getting done. We finally got the house re-roofed, and replaced our 20-year-old washer and next week, the ancient non-functioning oven.

My husband has been tracing his family tree for about a year and is making some significant progress. It's very challenging because once they worked their way back to the crossing to America, finding records in rural Poland and Czech and Slovakia is problematic. A few weeks back, he encouraged me to trace mine as well, so I started with my Mom's side, since most of the info on www.familysearch.org is American records. I was surprised to make it back within a day of searching to relatives going back to 1805 in rural Kentucky. They didn't move much, apparently. Now I am to relatives that were born in Bath, but actually, I am not sure if that refers to Bath, England or Bath, Kentucky. The census record didn't say. I may start looking into ship records. So far, I have not found our Native American ancestor. It may go way back. I have only looked at the direct descendants, but I am interested in finding the connections to our supposed famous relatives, Newton D. Baker (Secretary of War under Calvin Coolidge), Robert Montgomery and his daughter, Elizabeth (actors.)

Suddenly, an amazing turn of events! In some sort of serendipity, I was contacted by cousins in Scotland, wanting to know if I would be able to add to their tree and be able to connect to theirs! I was so EXCITED! My grandmother (father's mother) was from Scotland, and my Dad was speaking fondly of his cousins there and wondering if it was possible to find out if they were still in Scotland and still alive. Indeed they are, and they sent me several pictures of my grandparents and my Dad and my uncle that were in their records. It was so thrilling to me! The pictures were scanned in beautifully, and all of them were new to me. I have to connect to Ancestry.com to get to their tree, and that is going to be SO cool. I am looking forward to it.