About

The site is dedicated to our families, all of the ancestors who came before us, and those who will come after. To all the Wests, Andersons, Farlins, Vaughns, VanFossens, Elwells, Knapps, Primley, and all the names that fill our family tree with the wealth of their lives, their gifts of life, their courage, and their strength. And most of all their stories.

The most rewarding thing is putting it all together. To give somebody a feeling in their gut, you know, something that relates to their own lives. That they can feel. That they can either laugh at or cry at or get moved or understand. That’s what interests me. It’s the entertainment of truth.
Barbara Streisand, With One More Look At You

Our family history is dedicated to the truth, especially the entertainment of truth. While many of us amuse ourselves with the lives of television, movie, and book characters doing odd and audacious things, our own families’ lives have been even more outrageous than most television shows. We’ve had arranged marriages and marriages of passion. Divorce, messy breakups, children born “early” after shotgun weddings, and children born illegitimately and out-of-wedlock. We’ve an entire history of migration, moving from place to place, looking for work, food, education, religion, freedom, and escape from what was left behind. There has been death, murder, destruction, natural disasters and man-made disasters.

Why spend the energy watching these stories on the screen when they are in our own personal history. Your life today might be boring, but just dig into some of your ancestors, even a row or two back from you, and you will find all types of real life stories every bit as fascinating as what you see on the screen.

So we dig into our past to be entertained as well as educated. If we don’t learn from the past, we will repeat ourselves. And if we do repeat ourselves, at least let’s do it with style and class, and more entertainment value than our fore-bearers.

About the Author

Lorelle VanFossen is the editor of this Family History Blog dedicated to her family lines and all ancestors and descendants.

Lorelle VanFossen is one of the top bloggers, and women bloggers, in the world, publishing over 1900 articles a year. She is the host of the , providing WordPress and blogging tips for bloggers of all levels, and a contributor to the popular blogging news source, .

She speaks as a keynote and trainer at many WordCamps, blog and corporate events, and is the author of one of the first books on blogging, “Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging” and Social Media for Crafters: Covering the Basics of the Social Web.

She is also the official Disruptive Thinker, producer, and executive editor for , producers of multimedia online including WordCast and the hosting the popular and Life Plugged In podcast.

She’s been a long time contributor to the , , BlogFlux, Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, , WordPress Podcast, , ,Outdoor and Nature Photography, Shutterbug, Photo Techniques, The Mountaineer, Jerusalem Post, New York Times, CNet, Phenomenal Women of the Web, and . She is a founding member of the Successful Online Business Conference (SOBCon). Lorelle has been blogging and web publishing since 1993 with , one of the oldest websites on the web.

While typically on the road five to seven months a year, Lorelle currently resides just outside of Portland, Oregon, on a small tree farm in the foothills of the Coast Mountain range with her renaissance man, two cats, deer, elk, and a 120 gallon fish tank stuffed with freshwater fish.

Genealogy Blogging Help and Resources

The following are articles by Lorelle on starting and managing a family history genealogy blog.

The following set of articles will help you with your family history blog offering a variety of tips and techniques for blogging genealogy:

The following articles will help you with blogging in general:

Contributors and Authors

The genealogy and family history blog was initially produced, developed, and designed by Lorelle VanFossen. For a list of family surnames represented within our family tree, see our Family Surnames page.

Contributors and authors on this site include:

  • Lorelle VanFossen
  • Ramona Fletcher
  • Sharon Lee
  • Don McAlvey
  • Don VanFossen

This is not a solo project and many have contributed in many ways by sharing their stories, family photographs, and permissions for publication. For a list of credits and contributors, please see our Credits page.

Site Policies

Communication and Contact

If you are part of our family and you would like to contribute or clarify any information, please review our Contacts page for who to direct your communication to, as different people handle different parts of our family tree.

We accept comments on most of our articles and welcome inquires and input into our family’s history, especially clarification and support evidence.

Hold Harmless

All stories, articles, images, and content on this site is used with permission and copyright protected. It is editorial matter and not to be construed as fact or supporting evidence. We do our best to determine accuracy and proof of our family stories and claims, but sometimes conjecture and assumption is the best we can do with a lack of proof.

The contributors, authors, writers, editors, and all participants on this site do not guarantee accuracy or complete information. We do our best with the information we have, and all information is subject to change.

By reading and accessing this website you shall agree to hold the authors, contributors, and participants harmless for any and all claims.

Copyrights and Permissions

The content provided on this site is original content or used with permission when possible. The content is protected under the US Copyright Protection Laws and appropriate international laws.

You may use the material on this site for educational, non-paying, non-commercial use. To use any material on this site, including and not limited to the web page design, photographs, editorial content, stories, poems, and graphics, for any other purpose, you must ask and receive written permission.

Fair Use laws permit excerpts and examples of the content on this site for use, with clearly shown credit, links, and references to the original content. Such excerpts and examples shall not exceed 20% of the published page’s text content or 25% of the visible single web page.

Full content feeds of this site shall not be reproduced on any website without express and written permission. Partial feeds, not to exceed 20% of a single web page’s content, shall be permitted.

Privacy

It is important to us to maintain the privacy of our family members, living and dead, when that information shall expose or put at risk a living family member. Names and information from living family members are used with their explicit permission and all care is taken to protect their privacy.

Contact information on any family members will not be provided without the express permission of those involved. If you have an inquiry, you may contact one of the family representatives on the Contact page and they may forward your request to the family member to use at their discretion. The family representatives will use their best judgment in passing such information on, and will be held harmless for doing so.

Accuracy and Completeness

A family tree is never complete. Nor is this site. We publish what we know at the time, and will work to update and correct the information published as we find new leads and new information. All information is subject to updates, changes, and deletion.