back to your roots

On Friday, I caught Who Do You Think You Are on NBC with Sarah Jessica Parker. If you haven't seen the show, basically, these celebrities (one per show) work with genealogists and ancestry experts to explore their family history and to find out more about themselves. They travel to different locales and visit the places where their family lived.

I was glued to the TV! I find ancestry fascinating. When I was little, my dad's side of the family had a family member that moved to a town where there was a large genealogy library. She put together a huge index of research back to the 1700s! It has photos, copies of articles, and even interviews. I remember flipping through the book and reading it line by line.

Of course, Ancestry.com was a huge sponsor of the show, and it motivated me to sign up. It was probably the incessant brainwashing at every commercial break. My dad's birthday is coming up soon and I think I'm going to make him a family tree book or poster, since he's interested in this stuff too. The site is really neat - they even have scanned copies of census data and records! Especially interesting for a geek like me.