The Family Tree

This is the very beginning of building my family tree on Ancestry.  It's a project I've been avoiding for years, largely because I have so much stuff to read and filter.  I'm both blessed and cursed with a complex and rich family history and it's always been a daunting thought to try and make any sense out of it.  My family was prominent in the American and British theaters in the 1800s and early 20th century.  When the boxes of "stuff" became mine, I determined there were students of the theater who would benefit from access to it and so I donated quite a bit to the theatrical collection at the New York Public Library.  That was a huge task and I'm still left with enough to be frightening.  Recently I've been inspired by my friend Marilyn who is a self-confessed genealogy junkie.  She's promised to keep me on task.  I believe I'm truly committed now because I'm awash in yellowed newspaper clippings (actually painful to read because the print is so tiny) and pictures whose subject will be lost forever if I don't record who's who!  So, here I go -- wish me luck!