About Christine Sievers

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio with the first wave of baby boomers. Most of my direct line ancestors left their point of entry in New York within a generation and moved to the Cleveland area. They were mainly German city folk, who immigrated in the mid-18th century. From Cleveland, I moved with my family to San Diego, California in 1955. I now live in Santa Barbara, California where I balance my work as a fundraiser with my genealogy research and writing.

Genealogy first came to my attention when an uncle sent my father a family tree. I was a teenager at the time, and my research consisted of family stories. I was always a natural archivist, putting together scrapbooks, and digging in the drawer of family photographs to make albums- which I have now had to carefully re-do with archival quality material.

College, marriage, children and work as an elementery school teacher put on hold my interest in genealogy. In the mid-1990's, with my children grown, I got my first computer and discovered a growing community of genealogists. Finding a cousin online, who had done extensive research on my maternal line, got me hooked on genealogy again.

So, I am one of the generation of Internet genealogists. But, with scores of helpful Internet articles and a few good genealogy books, I have learned about the pre-Internet methods of researching that are still important. Fortunately, I live within 2 hours of a National Archives, and have developed a network of cousins, many living where our ancestors first settled, which has grown into collaborative research.

As a genealogy writer, I have written articles for Suite.101.com and am currently working on a novel that weaves genealogy into the story.

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