Welcome to this website on my family's genealogy.

Although I asked my first questions and obtained my first document back in the mid-1980s, I really did not begin any of this genealogical research in earnest until after my 1995 trip to visit my grandfather's family in Italy.

What you see here is the result of finally getting my act in gear. Of course, I had waited until all of my grandparents were no longer around to answer my questions, so I owe a great deal of thanks to aunts and uncles, some of whom I have no doubt driven crazy, as well as to Mormon theology, without which the world's greatest single gathering of genealogical sources would never have been around to provide me the joy of spending countless hours at a microfilm reader.

Ah, but look at what I've found. I knew that we had roots in Italy, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, but now I've been to Ariano Irpino where my nonno was born and raised; I've followed the trail of Singerline back to Singerling, jumped back over the Atlantic with Zengerling to eastern Westfalen, and then continued with Zengerly to the Paznaun Valley in the Tyrolean Alps; I've become somewhat conversant with places like Paisley and Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland; and I've been completely unable to do anything with my Irish roots.

OK, so the last isn't as great an accomplishment as the others were, but maybe, someday, it will be different.

I've been as careful as possible in this research. I either have documentation to bear the links out, or I've been unwilling to make a claim. In certain cases, I have noted links as "PROBABLE" or "POSSIBLE" if there were records but they were unclear. Remember that there is still a chance for error, both of the sort inherent in the records themselves (literacy wasn't always widespread, people made guesses, priests didn't keep up the parish registers, and our ancestors occasionally even stretched the truth) or in my reading of them (German official handwriting pretty much bites, and sometimes there are just too many individuals named "John" or "Johannes" in any given generation).