I've always loved history and Missouri.  Recently, I visited our state capital and toured the capitol building with a large group of students.  It was so great to be back home.  While visiting the museum space on the ground floor, I was both excited and disappointed.  The exhibits about the military of Missouri helped rekindle some excitement and a desire to add this element to the Cole County Genealogy website.  However, the museum was quite lacking to say the least.  Since I was a child, I have visited the capitol building many times.  I'm not sure who is in charge of this space, but I think it is greatly neglected.  I wish much more was being done to not only preserve but also display the artifacts of Missouri's history.  All Missourians should have a reason to visit their state capital and our capitol, unfortunately, is lacking as a tourist attraction.

Nowadays, you can find much genealogy information online.  Albeit, most of it will cost you a pretty penny.  However, for the avid genealogist, we're willing to pay most anything and go most anywhere for credible information.  Find A Grave allows you to look for almost any grave in any cemetery in the country.  Ancestry as well as state archives online allow you to find census records and death records and land records and most any other record you'd like to lay your eyes upon.  So, what exactly should be the niche of this website?  I'm thinking perhaps a photographic record of Cole County?  What do you think?  Photos of schools....photos of people...photos of places?  But we need to collect these photos at no cost to the audience.  Would you help?

Well, we're starting to make significant progress on the *new* Cole County Genealogy website, and eager to keep adding more information.  We are looking for ways to "beef" up the site, so please consider donating old photos (family...found photos), stories, documents...anything you'd like to share with your fellow genealogy lovers in Cole County, Mo!

So, now that summer vacation is upon us, I decided to upgrade the Cole County Genealogy website.  To be honest, I was simply trying to make some needed additions and improvements, and it has turned into a major overhaul!  The website builder I previously used is no longer supported and everywhere I looked, it said you need a website which can change based on the device the user has.  So, here it is!  This is another *new* Cole County, Missouri, GenWeb site.  Feedback is welcome! 

Becoming a genealogist for me was simple. It began with a desire to learn more about myself.  Why do I think the way I think?  Why do I feel the way I feel?  I know that my life and my character and my personality have all been shaped by my parents.  This means, of course, that they were shaped by their parents who were also shaped by their parents, and so on.  It was important, then, for me to discover as much as I could about those people we call 'ancestors' because only then could I realize how exactly I came to be the person I am today.