Ancestor Families in capital letters have sources or documentation, lower case from sources yet to be verified:

ALBAUGH, ANGEL, Austin, Birch-Burch, Bräetscher, Brecht, Breininger, Burkholder, Carter, Carver or Garber?, CARY, Cheldon, CRAMER, Dornin, Ehinger, EIKENBERRY, ESSIG, FOLLIS, FOREMAN, Flockerth, Fuhrman, Groff, Hamilton, HECKMAN, HINSEY, Hirt, Houser, KELKER-KÖLLIKER, KINGERY, KINSEY, LANDIS, Longenfeldt, Matte, Mountz, Meyer, Naas, Parke, POST, BRACH-PROUGH, Ream, Requel, ROYER, Schneer, Schollenberger, SCHNEIDER, Springer, Shook, SWANK, Thaxter, THURSTON, TIMMONS, VAUGHAN, WEBB, Weidman, Winder, Wooley, ZEIGLER, Zimmerman, ZUMBRUN

My mission is to discover, document, preserve, and write the lost stories of my ancestor families in America. Since 1993, I have been doing whatever necessary to learn and use the most practical and economical methods of finding and preserving everything I can. I started this web site in late 1999. Until I started my research, I never knew I was at least the ninth generation FOLLIS in America since 1731 in New Jersey. In three-fourth's of my ancestor families I range from the eleventh to eighth generation from 1637 to the 1750's in Colonial America. The other fourth is my paternal grandmother SCHNEIDER family arrival in 1881, over 125 years years ago, making me a more recent third generation born in America.

Like most genealogist I work in spurts as time permits. This web site, now over 150 web pages, is mainly organized for my own use since it is available anywhere an internet connection exists. Digital data, like web sites, is much easier to update than printed material. It is modified and updated in no particular fashion, often added at random times, incomplete, leaving out important details, perhaps known, perhaps not. Since you are reading this I hope you appreciate the hard work, long hours, and persistence spent traveling Indiana and Ohio counties since 1993 locating documentation, pieces of information, taking photographs, retracing footsteps of ancestors and their families. I hope some day to make it to the east coast. Until then, any information on families outside of Indiana and Ohio will be the work of other researchers found in libraries or on the internet. If I ever publish my complete works, I doubt anyone can afford to compensate my cost in time, effort and money spent. Experience shows, if you want to find the information, or more details, you often have to do it yourself. Occasionally, I find someone already found my "new discovery" years ago, but if they aren't sharing it, then it's new to me.

It would have been so much easier to simply buy my FOLLIS Family History book if only someone had written it. As a methodical detail oriented person I seem to spend more time looking for information than writing about what I've found. My files have hundreds of papers and digital documents waiting to be analyzed and compiled into books. A brief outline of my discoveries appear on this web site.

As a ninth generation FOLLIS descendant living in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, my FOLLIS ancestors have been in the United States of America since before 1731 in New Jersey. They were living among the Quakers and Scots-Irish so that is their assumed heritage and is supported by antecdotal evidence. My genealogy research started in 1993 a few years after my father died when I became curious about our FOLLIS family history. The Allen County, Indiana Public Library, is the largest public genealogy library in the United States. Librarian John Beatty narrates this YouTube video on the library collection and in 2007 FGS held their conference in the Grand Wayne Center next to the ACPL. I photocopy anything and everything I find on my families. I have visited most courthouses, libraries and hundreds of cemeteries in the counties where my ancestors and their siblings lived here in Indiana and Ohio. In April 2009, I became the volunteer County Coordinator for the Allen County INGenWeb site sponsored by the ACGSI - Allen County Genealogiical Society of Indiana..

If you have genealogy material you want to share, do not want to lose, your family does not want, and/or don't know where to store for use by future researchers, the Allen County Public Library will accept all donations of any type of family history material. They make two copies of your information. They keep one copy for library use and return the original materials and the second copy to you to pass along to your family, local library, genealogy society, or whomever. Their July 31, 2004 newsletter Genealogy Gems points out the procedures. They will also keep and catalog your original material if you prefer to give it up to permanently archive your family history documents, photographs, etc. at the library.

One observation, developed from reading old newspapers, histories, and stories from as long as 100 years ago, shows how little people have changed over time. Our interactions with family and friends, church and social activities, attitude towards government and business are mostly the same. The biggest difference is technology and method of communication. 100 years ago information was exchanged in person, or written on paper taking days, weeks, even months and years to distribute throughout the world. Only the written word remains over time chiseled in stone, on paper, in books, periodicals, and newspapers.

What a technological change over the centuries from the days of cutting down trees to build your cabin in the woods. Walking wherever you wanted to go and living off the land. Today we use the information highway with cell phones, email, cable television, FIOS, ipods, PDA's and Blackberry's. Computers and microchips are everywhere; in our cars, homes, toys, and businesses. We fight over the closest parking spot in the mall nearest the door, complain about pot holes in our paved roads, sit bumper to bumper on high speed interstate highways during "rush hour", wait longer in the airport terminal than it takes to fly to our destination in hours rather than the days or weeks it took our ancestors, and most of us couldn't comprehend how to cross a river without a bridge. Our ancestors knew none of these things and if we were to meet someday, they may well consider us as strange creatures from some unknown future world beyond their comprehension.

Today the push of a button moves information electronically using computers, cell phones and portable devices over high speed interconnected worldwide networks. A big problem for family historians is the ease with which it can be copied and changed. Years of research can be taken with the push of a button, no credit or reimbusement given, whether accurate or speculation subject to doubt as to authenticity. On paper it is fixed, more or less permanent. Progress on some levels, ambiguous to negative on other levels.

One area I have been slow to pursue is DNA testing which I suspect will prove quite surprising for some of us. If there are any skeletons in our family closets, DNA may reveal family secrets some may not be happy to discover. Some say, the truth will set us free, that remains to be seen. Nonetheless, DNA testing will become more common in the future and I suspect some day there will be little in our DNA and family tree that will stay secret, so this is an area I will have to pursue as time permits. John FOLLIS' comments September 8, 2007 inspired launching a DNA page I originally started in May 2007.

Thanks to the many family researchers of the last 100 years:

• I have traced all 8 of my great-grandparent families arrivals using compiled genealogies, census, deeds, wills and estate papers, six of the families came to Colonial America before the 1776 Revolutionary War, living in 7 of the 13 colonies, with the last two families coming in 1881 before the opening in 1886 of the Statue of Liberty or the 1892 opening of Ellis Island.
• There are two castles, the FOULIS Castle in Scotland and Tretower Castle home of Roger VAUGHAN of Wales that may be connected with my ancestors. There were other FOWLIS/FOLLIS castles in Scotland and a Thomas FOLLIS, was a Burgess in 1641 Jamestown, Virginia.
• I have traced 10 of my 16 great-great-grandparent families arrivals to Colonial America, 4 others families are identified.
• I have traced 15 of 32 gr-gr-great-grandparent families arrivals to Colonial America, 7 others families are identified
• My maternal THURSTON's were in Massachusetts in 1637 and paternal FOREMAN's on Long Island, New York by 1645.
• A THURSTON may have married a descendant of Myles STANDISH who came over on the ship Mayflower to Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. I have yet to verify this information.
• I now have over 38,000 known relatives in 31 generations which some researchers claim family data back into the 1300's.
• Average age of all relatives is 57 years 6 months, direct ancestors average 68 years which is higher than the predicted lifespan.
• Over 6,500 surnames are in my family tree so far.
• Seven ancestors are Revolutionary War veterans, with family members in every war since.
• Several ministers, deacons, colonial and pioneer family cemeteries, and original land purchasers from the President of the U.S.
• My oldest ancestor is 97 year old maternal fifth great-grandfather Simon ESSIG 1754-1852 a Revolutionary War Veteran of Pennsylvania and Stark County, Ohio. His father Wendell may have been of similar age.
• My third great-grandfather George ROYER could be my oldest ancestor at 99 years 10 months and 8 days dying June 19, 1876 according to two different published obituaries. The problem is someone in the family gave him a modern granite tombstone which gives his age as 90 years 1786-1876. The ROYER book also discusses the conflict over his age. Either someone in the family wanted him to be near 100 years old, or someone wanted to hide his true age, which is true?
• My oldest paternal ancestor is 91 year old fourth great-grandfather Martin KINGERY 1774-1865 of Union County, Indiana.
• A couple of distant relatives have recently lived to over 100 years of age!
• For this work in progress I have photographed several thousand ancestor, sibling and relative tombstones along with finding obituaries back into the mid 1800's, copied and organized with 65,000 photographs and digital document images in Adobe Album with cemetery data hyperlinked to Excel spreadsheets and beginning to insert digital images into Word documents as family, state, county and cemetery books.
• In 2005 I took 12,000 digital images of census records, death records, deeds, obituaries, tombstones, wills and more. I am still analyzing and processing the information. I also discovered and expanded several families including: ANGEL, CARY, CRAMER, ESSIG, HECKMAN, HINSEY, SCHNERR, THURSTON and VAUGHAN.

Many of my paternal ancestors are Scots-Irish, Welsh and English. They married into German-Swiss Church of the Brethren families in southern Ohio and Indiana in the early 1800's. My maternal ancestors, except for the early arrivals in the 1600's, were or became German-Swiss Church of the Brethren with several ancestor families originally German Lutheran. All of these German-Swiss families have been in America since around the time of the founding of the Church of the Brethren in the early 1700's. Many left Europe because of religious persecution. Some descendants of these families continued moving west crossing the Mississippi River stopping in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and traveling as far as Oregon and California before 1900. At least two families had descendants participate in the 1849 California gold rush.

The past few years I have concentrated on finding all of my ancestor Indiana and Ohio families so I can then work backwards on all of the east coast ancestor families at the same time. I have most of my Indiana and Ohio families well documented as well as my FOLLIS families to New Jersey. I hope to start working backwards on the rest of the east coast families as time permits.

These web pages highlight family movements after their arrival in America. I am compiling family books as I find the time to wade through documentation on direct ancestors. When practical I will include sibling descendants mainly in surrounding areas of northeast Indiana where I live. I am currently photographing all known family tombstones, ancestor homes and other relevant items. I have photocopied census records, deeds, estates, marriage licenses, obituaries, wills and whatever else can be found. While not practical to post these documents on the web site, when time permits I am willing to share relevant information in exchange for your information when appropriate.

It's been said, "that if you don't know where you've been, then you can't know where you're going". I often think "if only I had known our family history when I was growing up, or if my dad or other deceased relatives had known our family history when they were alive, would it have changed our outlook and choices we made in our lives?" I put some ramblings on my musings page. One definition of rambling states: "to write at length and with many digressions", so read it at your own risk. If you would like to leave comments go to my guest book click the comments button to the left, or guest book link on the bottom of each page. Since early 2008, it has been hit daily by spammers, so f you find errors or have additional information please email me.

The "blue man" in the book "The Five People You Meet In Heaven", states "there are no random acts...we are all connected...you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind." "Strangers, are just family you have yet to come to know" and "no life is a waste, the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone." So it is with our family history. The more I find, the more obvious it becomes how we are connected by blood and marriage, living in the same areas, attending the same schools, churches and organizations, spending our lives and passing through time together.

We Are The Chosen

In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors.
To put flesh on their bones and make them live again,
to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.

Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead,
breathing life into all who have gone before.
We are the storytellers of the tribe. All tribes have one.
We have been called, as it were, by our genes.
Those who have gone before cry out to us,
"Tell our story!" So, we do.

In finding them, we somehow find ourselves.
How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count.
How many times have I told the ancestors,
"You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us."
How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me?
I cannot say.

It goes beyond just documenting facts.
It goes to who am I and why I do the things I do.
It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying,
"I can't let this happen." The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
It goes to doing something about it.
It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish,
how they contributed to what we are today.
It goes to respecting their hardships and losses,
their never giving in or giving up,
their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.

It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a Nation.
It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us.
It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth.
Without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach.
That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do.

With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence,
because we are they and they are the sum of who we are.
So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family.
It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call
and take my place in the long line of family storytellers.

That is why I do my family genealogy,
and that is what calls those young and old to step up
and restore the memory or greet those whom we had never known before.

2003 posting by: Lloyd Ray Timmons, Sr.

...and if sometimes we are lucky,
we will be the one at the Christmas dinner who is asked questions
and who can tell the stories and identify the pictures.
And if we are really lucky -
we can find another younger soul in the family to take up the cause.

2003 addendum by: Leigh C. Smith

The Allen County Lines Quarterly of the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana on page 8 of the September 2008 issue has the same poem credited to Della M. Cummings Wright; rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; edited and reworded by Tom Dunn in 1943. An internet search repeats this source.

What Is A Genealogist?

A full-time detective

A thorough historian

An inveterate snoop

A confirmed diplomat

A keen observer

A hardened skeptic

An apt biographer

A qualified linguist

A part-time lawyer

A studious sociologist

An accurate reporter

An hieroglyphics expert,

AND . . .

A complete nut!

(author unknown)

An interesting look at How Things Used To Be

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