The Journey Begins

 Hello my name is Xzanthia ( pronounced: X-zan-thia.)  The X and Z are both pronounced.

My family research began in 2001 when I attended a Genealogy class one weekend.

It's always been fascinating to me digging into family history, stories, looking at family photos.  Growing up I use to ask a lot of questions about the different family members.  I didn't always get as much answered as I would have liked.

So the genealogy class started me on a quest to learn more about my ancestors.  My plan was to start out with what I already knew, so I started a family tree and went to work filling in all the information, photos and documents that I could find.

I did all the research on the Internet and after that just trying to find anything new.  Even though I would go on the family tree, and try to find something new, there didn't seem to ever be any  new hints. This slow time lasted about 7 years, after a while I was beginning to feel that my ancestors didn't leave any paper trails.  Then one day I decided to post a query on Rootsweb, I posted my gr grandfather's name, where he was born and all the necessary information with hopes that someone would reply. Still nothing happened. Then on November 12, 2009 I get a reply it says:

Dated: Nov. 12, 2009  2:16 pm.

Hello Xzanthia, I am the great grandson of Daniel Trigg Edinburg.  We are trying to obtain information so that we don't loose our family heritage.  We live in Illinois, which is where my great grandfather passed away.

The next message I received from him:
Dated: Nov 13, 2009 6:41 pm

My name is Preston, My great grandmother was Jenny Edinburg.  She and my Great grandfather from what I understand migrated from TN. to IL.  My email address is: xxxxxx, lets keep chating.

As it turned out, not only did I find my cousin Preston, but a whole tribe of family all living in Chicago, Illinois.  My new found cousins shared a phone number with me and that same night, I talked to my new cousin Carla for about 3 hours on the phone.  I remember it was 3 am before we stopped, and that was because my voice was going away.
The next day we started sharing photos through email, and to my astonishment Carla had a baby picture of me, and a picture of my father in military uniform.  Carla said that she and the rest of the family would once a year around the holidays, take out the family album and she and her son Todd would look at all the picture, when they got to the photo of me, they would always wonder who that baby was, and then they would look at my dad's photo and wonder who Zuber was ( that's my last name).  They always thought my dad looked Asian so they would always say " I wonder who that Asian man is"
They ended up having two picture of me after we finished sharing photos and one of the photos of me I had never seen before.
As we went through all the family history, Carla said that her uncle remembered an XYZ ( my initials), but didn't quite remember what family, where they lived or anything about them.  Just somehow they had a photo of us.
With all the sharing of information and photos, I found out that with just Preston and Carla's families alone, there were so many people it was hard to keep the names straight. I had a tribe to learn about as I would say.