When I was in early grade school, I was given a school assignment to fill out the first few generations of a family tree and find out the ethnic origins of my ancestors. I was told my last name was of Prussian origin, and it fascinated me. I had never heard of Prussia. Was it like Russia?

At about the same time, my great-grandmother had been corresponding with a man in Minnesota about the Macdonald family history in Canada. She had shown me a copy of a large family tree that he had compiled. It was several pages of descendants pasted on black photo album paper. My grandfather had a hard-bound genealogy of the Mattoon family in North America. My grandmother had a stapled together compilation of french-Canadian families of Huron County, Ontario. My interest in genealogy grew, and these sources became the basis of my research.