My Introduction, me & Roots'n'Leaves

As usual, I have pushed off into the rapids, and not sure quite how to navigate the waters. The rush has subsided and calmness has returned. Take a breath and begin. In the late 1970's, I sat enthralled with Alex Haley's mini series, Roots. The very name, Roots, had a visceral connection to me, so when I self published my first book, a family history and cookbook, nearly a decade ago, I chose to self publish it under the name of Roots'n'Leaves. In my brain, it made perfect sense; Roots of my past combined with the written Leaves of pages, and value added as I began to add leaves to my tree, as well as to books.

I am new to blogging, but I am not new to family history, genealogy and writing. So this seems to be a natural for me and I don't know why I waited so long to blog.

For the past couple of decades, I have been researching my maternal lines, which include Sigford, Duty, Brown, Keyes, Doran, Lowery, Gordon, Ward, and, of course, the elusive Cherokee Elizabeth.

A couple of years ago, I came into possession of a couple of shoeboxes of letters that my Uncle Ralph Jabez McPherson wrote in the early 1980s when he in his mid to late 70's. The stories that he told, the people that he remembered were only vauge names to me. As I transcribed the letters, night after night, my Uncle Ralph began to speak to me through those handwritten pages. The stories and people began to become more real to me. So, I began a serious research of my McPherson heritage. Over the past year, I have been reaching out to McPherson relatives and finding family I did not know existed.

I am never sure which is more important to me, the search for the puzzle pieces of my heritage, or the stories that come to me through the search. Ahh, me thinks it is the Roots'n'Leaves.