BARROWS | LEINING | LOVE | SMITH | SAALFRANK
Exploring + Documenting My Family Legacy
MY WHY
"To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root." - Chinese Proverb
WELCOME to my effort to turn my 25 years of ancestry work into a timeless resource for future generations.
Anyone who has worked on their own family's ancestry knows how thrilling it can be to connect the dots, solve mysteries and gain a better understand of the complete stories of their ancestors.
Jordan Smith Saalfrank
​Why publish the information I find on the web?
My hope is to publish what I find, so that future generations don't have to put in 25 more years to find out the same information. I'd like to create a space where my lineage can easily access the information and stories I've uncovered so they can marvel at the ancestors the same way I have.
I began looking at the stories of those relatives closest to me, and then began the long road of tracking back. Before me, there was a relative of mine who snail mailed us an ancestry chart in the late 1980's. His name was Edward Fletcher Barrows (1900-1991) and he was my great granduncle. The glimpse I had of that chart showed me that I had lineage to John Alden, who came over on the Mayflower, settled in the colonies and later married Pricilla Alden. As a young child I was able to go to the library and check out a book on the Mayflower and SEE my family in that book.
​
I was also, distantly, related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To a young person, I loved the idea of being
