A Little Bit About Me...

I'm Carrie Zeidman and I've been doing genealogy research for over 10 years now. My mother started researching the family when she retired. Soon my sister and I were working with her to search for documents, meet new cousins, and find old newspaper articles about past family members we were just beginning to know. Finding out who my ancestors were, where they came from, and their individual stories, was fascinating to us and we were hooked.

Finding My History...

What we found exceeded our expectations. We found that just about every line of the family had been here several hundred years and had helped to shape this country even before it was America. We had family on the Mayflower and were able to track the family line from the shores of Plymouth Rock in 1625, over the Oregon Trail in the 1860s, to the oil fields of California in the 1940s, and directly to me. Many of them fought in the Revolutionary War, and my 5 times great-grandfather was at Valley Forge with George Washington in 1777.

I found I had Spanish heritage that came from two main lines. One branch came from soldiers on the DeAnza expedition that came into California in 1774. In reading the diary entries from the expedition, I was able to find that they camped one night somewhere near where my house now sits. Their descendants went on to own huge swaths of land in "Alta California" under both Spanish and Mexican rule. Many of them played an integral part in shaping the history of California.

The other Spanish branch left Spain in 1492, fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and settling in "New Spain," now known as Mexico. In 1598, when the Inquisition comes to New Spain, several families move north to found the "Kingdom of New Mexico" and go on to live there until the 1840s when they make their way to California.

Branching Out...

Several years ago I began researching my husband's family. This was a new challenge. The family had come from Poland and Russia in the early 1900s and nobody in the family had much information about the family left behind. Not only was there not much to go on to start with, the documents and information were in a foreign country, in a foreign language, and often in a foreign alphabet as well. Eventually I was able to find resources, find original documents, and find the information I needed to piece together several generations of the Polish branch of the family. I was even able to find a Polish cousin and arranged for her and my husband to meet in person.

How I Can Help You...

After all the years of research and discovery, I have a vast array of resources to find people, events, and history. I love the challenge of the hunt, and the joy of finding that elusive ancestor, or a photo of a great-grandmother that puts a face to a long gone loved one. I want to use my skills to find that joy for others. That's why I do what I do.