All the LEAVES on our family tree

The leaves keep growing as if the tree knows it is Springtime! In the past week, I have received documents and pictures from every direction and from various family trees! The Silvan, Gonzales, Hubbard, Chubb, Steele, Williams, Ruiz and Arterburn lines. Wow. With my major focus on the Silvan and Ruiz families over the past couple of years, my genealogical key has been activated to such a degree that I now have 'grown' about 20 family leaves that I didn't know existed.

With the help and hard work of my cousin, Tess, we have managed to dig into our shared family links (through our mother's bloodlines) and found some very interesting stories and new family members as well as generating more questions! My mother is the last of her generation and she has a folder filled with fabulous old letters, pictures, poems, stories and diaries that have us rattled trying to gather, ponder and fill in the blanks.

Yes, sometimes it is an addiction as we try to put all the puzzle pieces together in our family lines but I truly feel our descendants will thank us one day for putting it all together and telling our story from the beginnings in England, Holland, Germany and Spain to where we are today and beyond.

It is gift day each time I receive valuable emails from anyone that are filled with stories and/or attachments..... the most recent being a newspaper obituary for the youngest Gonzales boy, Eusebio, Jr., that was sent to me a couple of days ago by his great niece (Jerilynn). A wonderful surprise and so much information in an obituary!!! Three days earlier, I received a bundle of information from a Gonzales niece (Alicia) and great granddaughter (Julie). When I publish my book, Manuela's Petals, it will be just the beginning of so many petals in the SILVAN LEAVES to follow my book. And the RUIZ book after that..... If anyone has any documents, pictures or stories to share with me about any of our family lines, please, please, please reach out to me and email to me through my web site, www.patriciabbsteele.com --- or ancestry.com or Facebook or email. I appreciate every tidbit and thank you so very much. PS