The Paulson family is the beginning of a new line, in that our surname was changed in 2003. To find out where we came from, I began a search in 2010 and have discovered some wonderful information and stories about our family. It is an interesting journey and I love researching. You just never know what new thing you will uncover.

The purpose of my research is to provide a link with history for my children, thus although I am  doing the searching my goal is to find ancestors of my kids so that they can have a sense of who  their ancestors were. I anticipate that I will extend this to the history of my grandchildren when  the time comes.

I began a journey and like all amateur genealogists, I did not understand about the importance of  records and sources. I added a great deal of information and then found that some of the information  I was drawing from had not being checked properly.

So I am in the process of rechecking information and attempting to further my sources as I become  more aware of what is necessary. I have also redefined my goals. Initially I was grabbing all the  information that I could find but as the tree has grown it is becoming impossible to know what I  have. So I am now limiting my tree to blood relatives and their spouses, of myself, my husband and  our kids and potential grandkids. This way I may not have as large a family tree as some I have  found, but it will all be relevent to our direct family and will become part of where the Paulson's  came from and who we are connected with.

I have been playing around with different genealogy sites and programmes also, so my information is  all over the place. I am attempting to rectify that. Some of my photos are not attached to names and  that will be fixed when I am able to do that also.

I have been fortunate in that I have found some published works that have highlighted early life for  some of my early ancestors. I have included the information in the story section of my website. It  is particularly relevant to German heritage and may be of some value to other researchers.