---

“History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children.” 
― Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Shoots, Roots, and Leaves is a genealogical Bar-B-Que. I’ve served up family stories with a side of social history for over a decade now. Future posts will reconsider my early work and also explore new questions posed by the current shouting match between present and past.

I hope you will get curious with me and linger to tell your families’ tales.  Let’s share what we know, naming rivers and mountains, and who birthed who. Let’s call on the ancestors, all of them.  

And together we can tell a story of our past, of our ancestors, of ourselves, that catalyzes an interconnected history of how we in the United States have confronted and adapted to change. 

---

My shoots, roots, and leaves

• DODSON, GREEN, ROWLETT families of Mecklenburg County, Virginia
• SAYLES, WHITE families of Allegany County, New York/Mecklenburg County, Virginia
• STRICKLAND family of Wake/Nash Counties, North Carolina
• MINOR family of Greene County, Pennsylvania
• BRADFORD family of Coshocton/Muskingum County, Ohio
• CORRIGAN, DELEHANTY families of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania