This is a story of the ancestry of our blended family, a family that is a blend of our many ancestral families. It is like a tree with many roots. Each ancestral family is a root. The story shows how and when they all came together. It tells of each of the many adversities they overcame, each of which helped to make our family the solid, firm oak tree that it now is, with many green branches that are the descendants for whom this book is written. It is a book that weaves our personal family into the social fabric of the times they lived in and how major forces like war, poverty, riches, and adventure all played an important part in forming our society of today and the family of which we are individually a part. It is my prayer that as you read these two volumes you will realize a little more about who you truly are and the family you came from. It has been an exciting adventure and journey to do the digging into the past as this process will preserve it for the future. Without this documentation it would truly be lost forever.