Desktop Genealogist

Burned out on research? Treat yourself to a visit with the Desktop Genealogist, Terry Snyder of Fremont (Sandusky County), Ohio, who blogs under the auspices of her hometown newspaper. She tells a good research tale too, but I was struck by the way she captured the genealogical impulse in her answer to the recent genealogy-carnival question, which of your ancestors would you choose to have dinner with?

Pauline Gleffe is Snyder's German great-great grandmother who probably never came to this country at all. But in this imagined time out of time, after dinner, they'd watch as Terry's grandmother and her son arrived for a visit.

"Pauline would be watching intently the granddaughter and great-grandson she had never seen, and I would be watching just as intently a father and grandmother I have known so well. We would look up, she and I, our eyes meeting, and both smile in a way that would need no translation."