In the early 1980’s my Great-Grandmother, Mary Mae Campbell, wrote three volumes of family history titled “A Sense of Place”. These three books documented her research into eight family lines: the four grandparents of Mary Mae and the four grandparents of her husband, my Great-Grandfather, Lisle Eugene Campbell.
Growing up I was fortunate to know both Mary Mae and Lisle as Mary Mae passed away when I was 20 and Lisle passed away when I was 23. I still remember the last time I saw Grandpa Lisle, less than two weeks before he died: he still had a full head of amazing silver hair and he was completely cognizant of everything around him. Grandpa Lisle was sitting in his chair telling me stories about trucks he had sold 50 years prior. He could remember the buyer’s name, the truck sold, and the sale price of the truck down to the last penny. A few weeks earlier at Christmas dinner, I found Grandpa Lisle talking to my girlfriend (at the time) and watching them interact for a few minutes I realized he was flirting with her. I caught her eye and realized she was eating it up. The old man still had game at 100 years old.
Leading up to the the 2008 Campbell family reunion in Pandora, OH I was talking with Scott Campbell, my mother’s brother, and got on the topic of Grandma Mary Mae’s books and family genealogy. That conversation led to some research of available digital tools for documenting genealogy and I found the PhpGedView software. Already having web server space I was able to launch a basic site with the domain “campbellsofohio.com”. At the family reunion we were able to collect most of the data on the descendants of Lisle and his seven siblings which I then was able to add to the web site. All in all it was a good start.
From that point my plan was to take the data collected by Mary Mae in the late 1980’s and start working the family tree backwards. But as life would have it, things got busy and not much happened with the web site since the summer of 2008.
Recently, I decided to switch web hosting providers and had to transfer all of my domain names, including campbellsofohio.com, to my new provider. That combined with my return from overseas and finding Grandma Mary Mae’s books while unpacking has been the kick that I needed to get back on this project.
So here goes… The digitization of “A Sense of Place”.
Hopefully I can make Grandma Mary Mae proud. R.I.P.