Friday, March 5, 2010

About Me

I realized that I've had this blog for about nine months and have never introduced myself. So here's a post to ramble about myself.

My name is Christy, of course, that's what I go by. It's not my real name, but I've gone by it my entire life.

I was born in New Hampshire in 1984, but my family moved to Delaware when I was 2 1/2 where I lived until I graduated high school. The family then moved back to New England. I lived in Massachusetts for two years and then went back to New Hampshire for four years before moving here to Texas. I miss New England a lot and hope to move back there someday.

Along with reading, my interests include: genealogy, writing stories, watching period films and old movies, watching football and the Boston Red Sox. I love collecting old photos and looking at art.I have blogs just for those two things: Bygone Years and Edwardian Era.

As for reading, I love historical fiction, of course, but I also love reading about history in general. American history is my prime favorite, along with the history of the women's rights movement and anything concerning gender issues. My other favorite parts of history are the last decade of the Victorian era and the Edwardian era. I also love the classics, like Austen, Wilde, Gaskell, etc.

Like most people, I love music. Queen is my favorite band in the whole world. Freddie Mercury is king, and I won't hear otherwise. I also love to listen to film scores and some obscure artists that you've probably not heard of. The link to my last.fm profile you can find on the left column.

I said earlier that I love genealogy. I am obsessed with tracing my family's roots. According to what I've found, I am half Italian and a fourth Polish. The other fourth contains miscellaneous things like Irish and Canadian. I found my earliest ancestor in America was from Ireland and came in the early 1800s. I've found interesting things so far: like my great-great grandfather, who was an immigrant from Italy and a railway worker, was hit by a train and killed on the day of his retirement. Or that my great grandfather was an orchestra conductor. Exciting stuff. I'm always looking to find out more. If you have any tips, I'd welcome anything.

I'm sure I've forgotten things that I meant to add, so I'm sure I'll come back to edit this.

8 comments:

Jenny said...

That's an adorable picture!

Christy B said...

Thanks. I was cute once upon a time. :)

Julie at Outlandish Dreaming said...

Thanks for posting this! I agree, adorable picture of you!

I'm also a big genealogist, I got so into it about 15 years ago and it was my life for about 6 years! I traced my family and my husband's and found out all sorts of stuff that neither one of us knew about! Turns out he's a Mayflower descendent and didn't even know it! Lots of New England blue bloods in his lines, and much from Nantucket. I'm Irish and German, but traced my Dad's line to pre-revolutionary Virginia, all very fascinating stuff. I'd love to share tips with you, though I know next to nothing about Italy and Poland, but I do remember some from Ireland. LDS helped a lot, I have a center near me and ordered microfilm from them. Since then, the Internet has an enormous wealth of info, the LDS site (though take it with a grain of salt, many errors, but it can point you in the right direction) and Ancestry.com are very good and I highly recommend Family Tree Maker for software. I also like Genforum for queries. It was very addicting, I must admit! I've gotten about as much as I can, have hit a lot of brick walls, but occasionally I get a lead and I'm back in the hunt again! LOL!

Jennifer Oberth said...

Great blog Christy, I'll be back.

I also love genealogy but I was born into a family that, on two of the four sides, family trees already go back to like 1700's and 1600's.

There's just nothing for me to do! On the other side, others have already done a lot of the work.

So I turned to asking questions - perhaps the most famous - WHY? Why did they marry? Why have six kids?

As I know, there aren't any journals to read - how awesome would that be!?

So I created a family project in which family members write a journal, for all of us to read and pass down.

I did this for 2002 and it was a great sucess. I also have to compile 2009 and we're doing 2010.

It's so awesome, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to read about Grandma's year and my aunt's life in another state and so on.

And what a perfect gift to the future.

I figure someone down the line will be like me and devour these journals!

Lisa said...

I love genealogy, too. I've traced my hubby's side back through Barbados to England in the 1600's. My mom is even more obsessed--she's pretty much tracked every branch of both her side and my dad's side of the family back to Europe.

Joanne said...

Awwwww-what an adorable child! I love this post, Christy, getting to "know" a little about the person behind the blog. ;)

My younger brother is the true geneologist in the family -- he has spent years tracing our family's roots (traveling and connecting with research groups) and he has compiled amazing volumes of ship records, census info, certificates, obits, newspaper articles, photos....it's absolutely fascinating and amazing!I'll ask him what software and online resources he uses to see if I can add anything to what's already been suggested.

Thanks for sharing!

Mindy said...

Quite a sweet post! I became all excited when you said you have a bit of Canadian in you lol... have you had the urge to say eh? lol (I'm Canadian btw lol) Geneology is so fascinating... the little bit I know about my family is I had a Great Uncle who won some sort of Medal from World War 2 and my father is named after him.... it's neat to find out where our roots come from and what not

Christy B said...

Actually, since I posted this, I found one of my other ancestors was from Canada - a great-great grandmother. My grandmother told me that she spoke French, so that narrows down to where in Canada she might of been from. So, I've got two great-great grandmothers from Canada. That part of the family lived in Maine, so it makes sense.

And I admit to saying "eh" a few times in my life. :)