Some years back we became interested in our "roots". It began with the family of Bill's father, the RATHBUNs. Later it branched out to the family of Bill's mother, the BUCHNER line, some of whom came to Iowa in the mid 1800s from Canada then moved on to Kansas about 25 years later. Soon we started following out Dorothy's families, the WOOLEY, MCDONALD, HENDERSON and NEWCOMER lines. Last came the KLINE family, the family of Bill's paternal grandmother.
These pursuit have motivated a great deal of travel adventures for us. We have spent days in Lawrence, Taney, Barry, Washington and Jefferson counties of Missouri. We spent time in Jefferson City Missouri, at the state archives searching for information. We dropped down to Stone County, Arkansas. We have traveled to Chautauqua, Cowley, Rice, Jewel, Sedgwick and Republic counties in Kansas. Some of our greatest enjoyment has come from our travels back east. There we have visited Jay County, Indiana, Norfolk County in Ontario, Canada, Sussex County in New Jersey, Washington County in Ohio, Block Island, off of Rhode Island, and Lancaster, Snyder and York counties in Pennsylvania. We also have spent four days at Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where there is a truly great genealogical library. The summer of 1999 we visted Ohio County, Kentucky, looking for further information on the Levi Wooley family. Piece by piece we have gathered the fragments of our roots.
One of our major resources in our search in recent years has been the internet. As a result Bill has become the County Coordinator for the Jefferson County GenWeb Project. As such, he maintains a web page for our home county here in Iowa. You are welcome to click on the above to visit that site and see what else he does with some of his time.
If you would like to visit one or all of the family lines that we have researched they are listed below. Just click on a name below to see that particular line. We may have listed a few living older persons born in the early 1900s in these lines but this will be minimal. If you would like further information or have information to add on these families feel free to contact us.