Gathering Roots
Sharing the Stories Buried in Our Family Trees
Connecting you to history, one story at a time.
Telling the Story
Building the Tree
We take what information we know from family and build out the ancestral tree, careful to confirm sources and verify any documents with records found online or in local and family archives.
Gathering the roots
We gather family documents and photos, we connect with DNA-relatives, and we cull through census documents, ship manifests, city directories, military records, and more, to compile the most accurate information on our ancestors and the lives that they led.
Putting it together
We research the times and places our ancestors came from and the events that transpired to influence their decisions. We take the trees and everything we have gathered and we tell the story of their lives, as best we can.
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A Voyage Full of Misery: The German New Era
Frederick Simon Fiedler (1835-1901) Frederick Simon FIEDLER was born on the 8 June 1835, in the small town of Eckartsberga, in the province of Saxony, in what is modern-day central Germany. During Frederick ’s childhood this was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. He was the youngest son of Johann Christian and Emilie FIEDLER. In… Read more
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Clinton R. Miller Part 2 – Hunting Down the Hustler
At first I thought that to tell the story of my great-great grandfather would be to tell a story of a man who just couldn’t be a father, someone who was in and out of my great grandmother’s life, someone our family often described as a “ne’er do well.” While there is always some truth… Read more
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Tyler/Paul Mothers: The Family Strength and Stay
Thomas PAUL was raised by a single mother after his father died young – a young Scotch woman who brought her children across the Atlantic on her own, seeking a better life for them. There he met and married a widowed single mother – a woman descended from a long line of New World settlers… Read more
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Stone Roots in Minnesota: The Franklin Shermans
This article tells of how the STONE line connects with the SCOTT line. To read about the history of the STONE family, see our story Homesteaders: The Stone Line in the 19th Century. For the story of the SCOTTs and where they came from, see our story Scottish Canadians in the American Midwest – The Scotts. Franklin… Read more
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Scottish Canadians in the American Midwest – The Scotts
Robert SCOTT was born on September 13, 1861, the eldest child of Thomas and Elizabeth (McCLENAGHAN) SCOTT. He was likely born in Ormstown, Canada, and was baptized Presbyterian in the Episcopal Church of England and Scotland, on November 21, 1861, in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield.[1] Ormstown is in Quebec, near the Ontario border. This part of Canada on… Read more
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Lost Family, Lost History: The Burchard Legacy
This story is for my father and all of his siblings and cousins, who never knew their maternal grandparents. Now they can. Eli Sanford BIRCHARD/BURCHARD (1830-1862) Eli Sanford BIRCHARD was born in August of 1830 in Fairfield County, Connecticut. He was the second son of Uriah and Julia (HYATT) BIRCHARD.[1] Altogether, the BIRCHARDs had 10… Read more
Forefathers by Edmund Blunden
Here they went with smock and crook,
Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade,
Here they mudded out the brook
And here their hatchet cleared the glade:
Harvest-supper woke their wit,
Huntsmen’s moon their wooings lit.
From this church they led their brides,
From this church themselves were led
Shoulder-high; on these waysides
Sat to take their beer and bread.
Names are gone – what men they were
These their cottages declare.
Names are vanished, save the few
In the old brown Bible scrawled;
These were men of pith and thew,
Whom the city never called;
Scarce could read or hold a quill,
Built the barn, the forge, the mill.
On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me;
While the bat and beetle flew
On the warm air webbed with dew.
Unrecorded, unrenowned,
Men from whom my ways begin,
Here I know you by your ground
But I know you not within –
There is silence, there survives
Not a moment of your lives.
Like the bee that now is blown
Honey-heavy on my hand,
From his toppling tansy-throne
In the green tempestuous land –
I’m in clover now, nor know
Who made honey long ago.
Gathering Roots 