THE GENEALOGY BUG Lucky for all of his ancestors, Wayne caught the genealogy bug early enough in his life that he was able to get some priceless information about his family before some of the older generations passed away. In a book he distributed to his Dad, sisters and children in 1994, he wrote the following forward: Hello family members. Welcome to a collection of facts and photos about those people who helped make us what we are ... our ancestors. While gathering the information contained in these pages, I discovered that many, many people outside of our family have a great interest in genealogy. I certainly have enjoyed the time spent on this project and have felt rewarded with each little discovery. I hope that you share my interest. You may wonder how this whole thing got started ... well, it went something like this. In 1989 I mentioned my interest in a family tree to Dad and he told me that one had already been written. He had found it among his mother’s possessions when she passed away in 1988. The only problem he had was locating the booklet right at that moment in time. When I saw him in early 1990, he presented that treasure to me. I read it, copied it, and returned it. Then in early 1992, Zachariah David Eastman (Wayne’s 1st grandchild) was born and this event really got me going. I started thinking that Zach, his siblings and cousins might someday want family history facts, but if they waited until they were as old as I am now, then some of the information would be lost forever. This is how I began collecting the facts and photos that appear on these pages. Things that I learned in two of my former hobbies; cameras and computers, certainly helped me in this new-found endeavor. The genealogy report that Dad found had been written by Eleanor Hastings, a first cousin of Grandma (Edna) Eastman. It was quite complete for that branch but included only the Sonsmith portion of our family, which was 25% of what I needed. I thought that I should be able to easily get that up to 100% since I had such a good head start. I found out later that things weren’t going to be that easy. Some of the family facts are just plain hard to locate, but I have gathered enough to feel that we now have over 75% of our modern day family history in this book. We certainly all should be thankful that cousin Eleanor and her mother, Lina Sonsmith, took the time to record these pieces of history for us. I also am thankful that one day in 1969, my mother, Lois Eastman, interviewed her mother (Margaret Archangeli) and that Dad was able to locate the tape of that interview. Where did the photos come from? Well I gathered them from various places, but the oldest ones came out of two old photo albums that mysteriously just “showed up” at the right time. These albums are similar in that they both are the same shape and size, both have thick card stock pages, both have metal clasps, and both are from the turn of the century. The first one turned up as Dad and his brothers were closing out Grandma Eastman’s house in 1988. Dad said that he had never seen the photo album before this date. I later learned that Grandpa’s sister Mazie had the book in her possession until her death in 1984. It was then apparently turned over to Grandma, but she did not mention it to Dad. The second antique photo album showed at Grandma Archangeli’s house in July of 1994. Neither Dad nor myself had ever seen this album and so we asked Grandma where it had come from. We were told that Marie Roth had brought it to her several years before because Marie did not know who the people were. Grandma identified all of them for us. These two treasures contain the oldest photos ... those of my great-great grandparents. Eleanor Hastings, in her forward, wrote that family trees which merely listed names and dates would be quite boring. She further suggests that family trees should bear fruit in the form of biographies so that descendants can learn something about the personalities of their predecessors. I agree with this thinking and also feel that photos add a lot of interest and can be considered “fruit.” As you can see, this family tree does include the normal ancestral chart but has an extensive bonus ... those biography pages that were started by cousin Eleanor. Thanks to all that have helped and will help me on this continuing project. This book that Wayne created is a true treasure to all of us in his family line. It has inspired me (his daughter) to continue to collect facts and photos of our ancestors. In fact, it is probably what inspired the creation of this magazine. Hopefully someday we will get up to the 100% Wayne is striving for, but even if we don’t, we all need to thank Wayne for his hard work. The following page shows Wayne’s ancestry to his great-grandparents.