My maternal grandmother was Gabriella Harriet WISE, who m. William Joseph GROAT. I am also retired (as is just about everyone here), and live near Pittsburgh, PA. My grandparents lived in Pittsburgh for awhile, from appx 1891 - 1909, and my mother was born here. The fact that I landed here more than 70 years after they left was purely coincidence. I have my WISE lineage traced to 17th century Germany, although I am not a bit confident about the documentation that far back in time. ________________________________ From: Billie Erin Walsh <[email protected]> To: WISE <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 11:20:59 AM Subject: [WISE] Greetings, Felicitations, and just plain HOWDY A short time back I noticed that the list was up for adoption. SO, I'm the new list administrator. Not that it's such a tough job or anything. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello. Fell free to e-mail me with any list oriented issues you might have. I see there are 155 of us on the list. My name is Billie Walsh. I'm 62 years old and {re}tired. I firmly believe that genealogy is about a lot more than just names and dates. Family stories are just as important. It's the stories that make our ancestors live again for us. I was a mechanic for a number of years and when good ol' Uncle Arthur got to me I made a career change into retail. Spent seventeen years in a Big Box Store. I thought it was fun [ for the most part ]. My foray into genealogy began when one of my daughters asked me, well basically, "Where do we come from?" At that point I didn't have an answer so I started digging to get her one. It's been an interesting journey. Sometimes fun and some times frustrating. Every time I find one answer I get two more questions. *<]:oD As long as things don't get to far afield I see no problem with posts related to just about anything WISE. [ family stories, old family recipes, etc. ] For some that might not know, typing in ALL CAPS is allowed for surnames on genealogy lists and is preferred [ see above ]. [ In some other areas typing in all caps will get you blasted. It's considered shouting ] It helps those reading messages to pick out related family names quickly. It's not a hard and fast rule but I would ask that anyone posting please use all caps for surnames. I promise not to be a dictator and hard to get along with. I want to see sharing be fun. As for myself, I can definitely trace my WISE line back to Indiana/Ohio and tentatively back to Pennsylvania. I'll get around to posting something more later. Lets see if anyone reads down this far. How about everyone introduce yourself. Just hit reply and tell us a bit about yourself [ we'll get around to trees later ]. -- Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message