Alex Haley came to my high school in 1970 following an interview he’d done in Reader’s Digest prior to the publication of his landmark book, Roots. Though I didn’t attend the assembly that day, my 9th grade Civics teacher, Arthur Hiscox, audio taped the speech and played it for us a few months later. For the two days that we listened to that tape, I sat there simply transfixed, taking in every word, amazed to even imagine it was possible to trace one’s family all the way back to Africa. His adventures haunted me and at the age of 14, with no genealogical training whatsoever, I started interviewing the elders in my family. That was over thirty years ago and I’m still working on my family’s genealogy. I’ve worked as a computer systems administrator for over a decade and embraced the digital age of genealogy long before it was fashionable, and its this experience that has helped me to utilize genealogy on the internet to its fullest degree. Though the digital age has made it easier to find scanned images of archival documents online, the internet will only take you so far in your research. Thorough research requires trips to cemeteries, local museums, libraries, and archives, and a desire to leave no stone unturned in order to find the stories the ancestors left behind.