The way that I got started doing genealogy research happened in 1999. I had always been somewhat interested in my ancestors, especially related to my surname, but most people are. My grandfather, Richard Zalewski, had passed away that year of cancer. Around that time, I had also run across some hand-written family trees and also an article in our local newspaper about familysearch.org. It had mentioned that the website was getting hammered by visitors since it went live and that they were working on fixing it.
When I got home I was able to get onto the site and did a general search on “Zalewski” and was amazed at all of the entries I received. From there I collected information from family sources, free resources on the Internet, and other sources. I can say that I would never be as far in my research as I am now without the power of the Internet. It just snowballed from there, as all genealogists know, “Once it hits your lips, it’s so good.”
I seem to be one of the minority of genealogy researchers that is of the “young” variety. I usually get weird looks when I’m scouring local cemeteries for headstone, since I can only be there to vandalize, I guess. Though, with the Internet, I am seeing a lot more younger genealogists and I think that’s great.
How did you get started in your genealogy research?
just begining today my grandmothers name, mary zalefski was married to valentine gronski. iam not sure what town in poland my folks where from.
the area around lomza,poland is the best clue i have. they were from the russian
partition for sure