About me

Those who know me well know that I have a passion for genealogy. For the past 10-15 years, I've spent thousands of hours "hunting down" long-lost ancestors and relatives.
I first became interested in my family history back in 1995 when I attended a family reunion. Some of my cousins had compiled a book with family trees, photos, and stories for the reunion. In the book was a story about my great-great-grandparents, whom I had never heard of.
According to the story, "Female Fox," a Quaker from Philadelphia, had met "Male Hickey," a Catholic from Ireland, on a boat coming to America. They had fallen in love and had run off to Ellicott City to get married, after which the woman was disowned by her parents for marrying a Catholic.
I was intrigued by the story of this anonymous couple and their forbidden love and wanted to know more about them. The challenge was how to find them, especially given that I had no first names and that their last names were both very common.
Through many years of research and lots of detective work, I was able to identify the couple as James Hickey and Sarah Fox. Little by little, the details of their lives and the lives of their 11 children have come to light. As is often the case, I discovered that the story I had read about the Hickeys was a combination of fact and fiction. The true story of their lives, though, was no less fascinating (at least to me).
I think my fascination with genealogy goes back to my lifelong love of history. As a young girl in school, I always enjoyed field trips to places like Gettysburg and Harper's Ferry. In my later years, I enjoyed reading historical novels and watching historical shows on TV.
Another of my lifelong interests has been mystery and detective stories. As a girl I read all the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew stories. Later I read Agatha Christie's mysteries and enjoyed watching Perry Mason and other detective shows on TV.
Genealogy is the perfect blend of these two interests. Looking for lost relatives involves following clues and using a lot of deductive reasoning. It's like being a detective in a mystery story. It also involves history, not so much wars and famous people, but the history of everyday people like you and me. I'm beginning to learn what life was like for them, the challenges they faced, and the sacrifices they made.