March 29, 2024

Old Hippie Roots

Welcome to Old Hippie’s Roots Ancestry Project

The above is George M. Schultz and his wife Martha — my father’s grandparents.

When I was a kid, my Grandma Castillo would play her ukulele on the front porch of the house my Grandfather built, while we kids sang “Ain’t Gonna Rain No More” all night long. Then we’d listen attentively while she’d tell us stories of her childhood, and of her family. However, she never documented her life, the life of any of her parents, brother, aunts, uncle, etc — so all of that went to the grave with her — except for what might be able to accurately reconstructed from the memory of a ten-year-old. Worst yet, she was really the only of my relatives tell these stories, and so while we know a little about her parents — we know very little about our other ancestors.

In 1999, in an attempt to get everyone pumped up for a family reunion, I put together a little ancestry web site and asked a couple of our elders to fill us in on our ancestors that they anything about. Since then we’ve lost a few of our seniors, and none of the rest of us are getting any younger. Basically we are at our last opportunity to learn about some of our ancestors — before their memories will be forever lost. It is true that right now most of my generation’s kids (we currently refer to them as Generation three) at the moment could care less about their ancestors, and are “too busy” to go visit and sit with their grandparents and ask. However, someday they’re going to regret not taking the time if there is no other record they can learn from to pass along to their children and grandchildren. I know that I seriously regret not getting with my grandparents before they died to learn of the ancestors whose memories went to the grave with them.

I have put together this web site in a last ditch effort for the Generation 1 (the generation of my parents) family member who are still with us, to take the time to document their memories of family members no longer with us to be posted immediately, and other Generation 1s still with us — which I will hold in confidence for as long as they’re still with us.

The absolute best way to do this is to prepare your memory in a single Word document per person you are writing about — and use the contact forum to attach the Word document. Word is best as it has great spelling and grammar tools to help you proof your memory — but if you don’t have Word or know how to use it — please contact me and we’ll figure out and optional way to do this through email.

Bookmark this site — as I’ll be posting regular updates on the News Page.

Thank you,

Dave