Today I started getting back into my family history research and genealogy work by looking at the children of my third great grandparents, Lewis and Susan Rivers, and recording facts about them into my Ancestry family tree and into virtual cemeteries on Find-A-Grave.

Why did I start here?

Lewis and Susan, if I go backwards in generations from myself to my parents, to my paternal grandparents, to my paternal great grandparents, to my paternal second great grandparents, were the first generation to have more than two children for which I don’t already have a good amount of information recorded. I’m an only child of my parents. My dad was one of three children. My grandfather was one of two sons. My great grandfather was one of two sons. But my great great grandfather, Dewitt Oscar Rivers, was one of nine sons!

I started with David Gillum Rivers, the oldest of the children of Lewis and Susan. He was born in 1858 and died in 1937. He married Mary Elizabeth “Lizzie” Hancock and they had seven children. I’ve been looking them up in census, marriage, death, birth, burial, and residential records, and adding data to my family tree on Ancestry.

It’s been a day of uncovering bones in a bulldozed pit using only a toothbrush and a whole lot of patience.