Too Many Branches: An Exploration of Genealogy

While much of genealogy is a slog of searching endlessly through records, it is important to remember there are bits of your family history that aren't tied to official records.  One of my favorite things to do when I have a little spare time is to search the newspapers for mentions of my family.  I particularly enjoy the newspapers from the mid-1900s, their social sections were the equivalent of today's facebook.  They listed events that were held, times when people left town to visit other people, and were generally nosy and in everyone's business.  You can find some truly interesting facts about your family from that time period that may not have ever been mentioned to you. Today, I wanted to share one such gem that I found one day while searching my Brenneman side of the family on the newspapers in Iowa. OK, seriously, I could not stop laughing forever after finding this.  It is still a story that I tell everyone when I speak of our genealogy and some of the unique find

 Hello and welcome to Too Many Branches, a journal of sorts, for me to document my exploration into my family genealogy.   A bit about me: I was not always into genealogy, but about a year and a half ago, I decided to start looking into my roots.  I went on an insane spiral down into the rabbit hole, much like Alice, and have been obsessed ever since.  I now have 1099 people in my family tree and add new members all the time.  I've tested my DNA, and that of a range of family members, and found some surprises along the way. I have started to build connections all over the world! A bit about this blog: I am currently researching both my history as well as that of my husband.  I plan on documenting both families here, so it might get jumbled up from time to time, but I will always document what line I am writing about.  I plan on creating a page to list surnames as I write about them, so if you are here for research, you will be able to see if I have written about someone from your t