My Family Tree
 & its branches

Welcome to my family history site!

Hammond, Massey, Spoor, Coldren and more...

I have created this web site to share the information I have gathered on the various ancestral lines I have researched over the last 30 years. I am starting with my maternal lines for the simple reason that American history has always been an interest of mine (even before I began my genealogical searching) and my mother's line is more varied in that respect. While six of my father's eight great grandparents immigrated to the U.S.between 1830 and 1859, many of my mother's ancestors were here 200 years earlier. Perhaps at some point I will have traced all of my ancestors to the earliest arrivals on these shores. If that ever happens, I will undoubtedly try to learn how to conduct research on English, German, Irish and Scotch ancestry. For now, however, I still have many, many "dead ends" that leave me in places like Vermont, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and I am content to keep trying to dig up those roots.

Famous relatives

Part of the fun of genealogy is discovering the links that connect you to a specific person you may know or know of - whether from the history books, from yesterday's newspaper or from your neighborhood. Some of my "notable" relatives include Mayflower passengers Francis Cooke, John Cooke and Richard Warren; Presidents George Bush (and, of course, "W"), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce; actor/director Orson Welles; and author Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie).

Surname Pages

After more than 30 years with this hobby, putting everything from my files on the Internet at once would be a huge undertaking (probably impossible and certainly it would mean spending all my spare time creating web pages rather than doing more research). Instead, I plan to add surname pages one at a time, beginning with my mother's four grandparents' surnames (Hammond, Massey, Spoor, and Coldren) in no particular order. I have started with the Coldren family because I found very little that had been previously pulled together in one place; therefore, most of the research is a result of my own discoveries. In many of my other family lines, someone else has previously done much of the work and my contribution has been more limited.

The list below includes some of my ancestral surnames. Only the surnames which listed as active links (in blue-underlined text in most browsers) lead to additional web pages. However, all is not lost! If one of the other surnames interests you, please visit my database on Rootsweb WorldConnect and see my information on that surname. Although the information on my Rootsweb WorldConnect pages is similarly constrained by my lack of time to enter all my information into my genealogy database, it will generally be the most up-to-date information I have available.

Note: The information on this web site has been obtained from a variety of sources,
including information from persons who did not identify their sources. Even where the
original source is cited, transcription errors are common. All information should always be
independently verified by the researcher, from primary source materials where possible.

Please feel free to suggest any changes, additions, or corrections.
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