I wish I'd paid better attention to talk about family when I had more of it. I still can't keep strait who Aunt Mildred married to become kin, or why some cousins are mine. To be honest, I'm interested in where we all came from - who was on the Pinta and who fought in the Civil War - but I'm just as interested in who's with us today. I would like to see when Adam and Eve's progeny first posted my surname on the roster, but I need to keep better track of contemporaries' birthdays and anniversaries.

So, for any like-minded tree-mates, I offer Our Family Tree - a blend of our history and our present, an attempt to service the breadth of our family bush, and a work in process. Rather than beating the bushes for every individual that's ever been in any part of the family, this site will focus on depicting our current families and the direct ancestral lineage of as many of us as we can find.

There are many resources out there that specialize in arduous research aimed at accurately establishing names, dates, and lineage. The Middlebrook(s) Family Association, for example, is working hard to correct and expand the record that traces my wing of the family all the way back to England - in the 1600's. Click here to read an interesting, brief history of the Middlebrooks name. Below are a few web sites that you may want to visit if you are interested exploring your own genealogy beyond what this tree depicts:

• Middlebrook(s) Family Association: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~midregerrata/
• LDS Family Search: http://www.familysearch.org
• WorldConnect on Roots Web: http://www.rootsweb.com
• Family Tree Maker's website: http://www.genealogy.com/index_r.html
• Geneology Gateway: http://www.gengateway.com/index.cfm?GID=20

An impressive list of genealogy-related tools and web sites exists at Cindy's List ( http://www.cyndislist.com/gedcom.htm ).

Content: Who's in this Family Tree?

I hope that this tree will grow in all directions as time passes - as you share what you know and as our families expand. Today the tree captures (most of) the living family of Louis L Middlebrooks, including the marriage-related families of Charles E Garner, Michael L Holland, and David A McCalman. It also reflects several generations of ancestors for the families of LL Middlebrooks, Bertie Davis (my paternal grandmother), George Stroud (my in-laws), James T McCalman, and Danny Dumas.
I look forward to broadening its content to include more of our extended family's ancestry - and its progeny.

A word about ACCURACY

Our Family Tree presents itself as fact, but it is really a best-effort accumulation of information - some of it pretty cloudy - collected by a number of researchers over the years. Some is well documented, and some is not. Even modern birth and death records often conflict with what we think we know about dates and locations - even about people's names.

So, how can you tell what's known and what's not really known? Take a look at each item's Sources and Notes and draw your own conclusions. If there are no Sources or Notes offered, consider what you see as an informed assumption. Genealogy strives to be, but is not, an exact science.

Audience: Who should be looking here?

Anyone who stumbles into this site is welcome to browse its contents. For security reasons, only registered users are allowed to see any of the details associated with living individuals, and only a subset of registered users is able to offer changes to the data.

If you are a member of my (extended) family, I would love to give you access to birthdays, anniversaries, and other details you might find interesting - maybe even useful; just click on "Login", then "Request a new user account". After your account is set up, be sure to Login when you want to see the detail.

If you are what I'll loosely call a "genealogist", interested in researching or amending this tree or others, please contact the administrator, shown at the bottom of each page, to be set up with editing capability.

Corrections and Additions - I need your HELP!

The information depicted in this tree is incomplete and, undoubtedly, not without errors. If you can provide any information to make Our Family Tree more complete, more accurate, or more interesting, please contact me.

In addition to the obvious data - dates, locations, marriages, etc. - I'm especially interested in adding photos, documents, and stories that may help give both our ancestors and ourselves better perspective.

How to use Our Family Tree

The program presenting all this information to you is "WebTrees" - a powerful and feature-rich application, offering a wide variety of ways to look at the data it manages. To begin working with the data, choose one of the charts from the charts menu, go to the individual list, or search for a name or place. You are encouraged to "play" with it; click buttons and select from pull-downs and roll-overs to your heart's delight. Click on the Help button, or on the little question marks placed strategically around the displays for help on specific items. If you still need help figuring out how to do something contact me, or visit the wiki, at http://wiki.webtrees.net/en/.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you'll come again.

- David Middlebrooks