Good Evening To You All & Welcome to my first blog publication. I am brand new to this adventure and so eager to learn as you will see. First of all, the reason for the blog happened gradually over the past several years. Genealogy used to be a mass of online communicators located worldwide who came together for one reason and that was to research our family tree. Over the years, this process of researching and communicating began to change. I have personally been researching my family since 1993 and have enjoyed the “chase” of tracking down the documents to prove my theories. During the time when I first started genealogy, there were huge amounts of free forums, free websites for states, county historical records and it was a challenge to locate evidence to support your growing tree. However; during the past several years, things have changed greatly for genealogists and the active free forums that everyone commonly used exist no longer. The old postings are still visible if you know where to look, but no one follows them anymore. With this being said, I have been forced to change with the times and visit social media. This was met with great frustration and even less production with my family tree. It seemed that either all of the “old gang” had moved to Ancestry.com or have just disappeared with time. So, I decided something new was needed, thus the new blog.

Piedmont Trails, just where is that? Hmm, the piedmont is a region just like mountains, sandhills or beaches. North Carolina has all of these regions and my family tree proved to be the most active in the piedmont area. You will find that most of my blogs will be concentrated within this area which consists of the following counties, Rowan, Davidson, Forsyth, Guilford, Alamance, Rockingham, Stokes and Surry. These counties are rich with history and date back to the early 18th century. Most of these individuals traveled from Pennsylvania due to the mass of immigrants arriving in Philadelphia between the years of 1725-1765. They traveled southward to North Carolina due to the availability of land and the quantity of people who were traveling together in small groups in order to prosper. Land lying along the banks of the Yadkin and Dan Rivers were rich and fertile. The climate was more humid versus Pennsylvania, but could be made manageable. The winters were not as harsh with the exceptions of the northern foothills and the mountainous terrain of the Blue Ridge. Water was plentiful with natural springs located all across the state of North Carolina. So, with all this being said, our ancestors found North Carolina to be a desirable choice to settle and raise their families.

My main objective goal with this journey is to be able to share my family history with others who appreciate and respect the efforts that I’ve accomplished during the past 20 years. During my traveling hours of research, I’ve obtained an overwhelming amount of information of settlement histories, their families and exciting events that occurred. I also want to make contact with you during your journey of the genealogy world and possibly guide or assist you with your efforts. I believe that together we will achieve the most important goal of a genealogist and that is to discover the details of our ancestor’s daily lives. The stories of our ancestors and their neighbors are the beginnings of our future and it’s their legacy that will be preserved in this blog.

I want to personally thank you for visiting and hope you stop by again soon.