Introduction

Here are my family lines, as I have found them so far. One lineage goes back to the Revolutionary War, with Joseph Morton, who was a member of the Safety Committee of Charlotte Co, Virginia. This information is gleaned from the records of the Daughters of the American Revolution. My great-grandmother, Emma Morton Ginsburg, and her sisters were members. I am grateful they did so much of the work for me! Emma's husband, Solomon Louis Ginsburg, began life as a Jew in Suwalki, Poland, expected to become a rabbi like his father. His story of conversion to Christianity and eventual mission work in Brazil reads like an adventure tale. You can find it all in his book, A Wandering Jew in Brazil. I am deeply grateful to Ann Manson, a Gilliam researcher, for sharing her results with me. We are cousins of some sort, and I feel blessed by the connection. Camp Gilliam is another researcher to whom I feel a deep debt of gratitude, for unselfishly sharing much information, and pointing me toward further resources. On my father's side, I have recently discovered cousins related to my great-grandmother Augusta Wardeska. Between us all, we are filling in each others' gaps and getting to know each other. Such fun! The Wardeskas immigrated from Zhytomir, Ukraine, in about 1872; I am looking forward to tracing the line back farther in the Ukraine itself, or to whatever ends it leads. As with any undertaking in genealogy, new information can lead to minor breakthroughs: I have had a recent blessing of information on my Short family lineage, thanks to many volunteers, which gave me one more generation and additional information on existing, known family members. And I recently connected with some Koepke researchers; together we are working to see if we're related or not, or how far back! Of course, each new development leads to more questions, so keep checking to see what answers I find!

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