| Coming up to the five year anniversary of our
project and looking back, there were a number of
points that were pivotal moments that greatly
affected the growth of our Family Forest project
of digitally connecting the dots of recorded
history. From some point in the future, others
that may have already occurred will appear
obvious. Some that we now know of were: February
1995, Bethany Beach, DE: We began using Family
Tree Maker 2.0 as the core filing system of our
Delaware real estate research.
May 1995, Georgetown, DE: Local officials
could not decide whether or not to grant
commercial zoning to the property we wanted to
turn into a high-tech learning center, even
though it was in a 20,000 vehicle-per-day
location sitting on an already highly
commercialized four-lane highway. This made us
realize that we needed and wanted a
work-from-anywhere project that did not require
bureaucratic permission, so we decided to develop
our Family Forest project instead.
June 1996, Baltimore, MD: At the Tiber
Bookstore, we found and bought the un-indexed
1911 Register of The Order of Founders and
Patriots of America. This became the starting
point and central hub of our third title, the
Founders & Patriots Family Forest.
August 1996, Kamuela, HI: At the local
library, we discovered the Third Edition of The
Facts About Presidents, and realized we should
start our fourth title, the Presidential Family
Forest.
November 1996, Washington, DC: At the Library
of Congress gift shop we bought the poster
showing "The Descent of George Washington
from King John and Nine of the Twenty-Five Barons
Sureties of the Magna Carta". This became
our beginning framework for lineage-linking
Americans to their European ancestors.
January 1997, I-95, South GA: Almost at the
Florida line, we made a sudden decision to swerve
onto the exit to spend a few hours exploring a
place neither of us had been, Jekyll Island. We
stayed for a week, and two important events
happened. First, we bought many boxes of
genealogical and historical books from a small
book store in the historical section there.
Second, we found a wealth of valuable connecting
material at the St. Simon's Public Library.
January 1997, Plano, TX: At GENTECH'97 we met
Bob Thomas and Pierre Cloutier, the amazingly
creative and talented folks of Progeny Software.
Today, their Family Explorer software brings our
Family Forest databases alive in a way that no
other software can yet match.
February 1997, Scottsdale, AZ: A very helpful
bookstore owner directed Kristine to
"Heraldry of the Royal Families of
Europe".
March 1997, Salt Lake City, UT: We bought many
boxes of key genealogical and historical books
from the Sam Weller Bookstore.
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