I remember the day I met my paternal grandfather. I was nine, he was dead. I had flown to Warren, Pennsylvania with my parents and a family friend in a small, four place private airplane. It was then that I learned that my father was adopted and this stranger lying in the funeral home was my "real" grandfather. After the explanations that my father was really a Fisk and not a Howell and that his mother had died shortly after his birth, my curiosity was piqued.
The first inquiries into my ancestry proved to be even more fascinating as I learned that my father had been adopted by his maternal great aunt. To confuse matters further, his grandmother's sister, Della Howell was married to Jim Howell (no relation) and so he would eventually take on a family name that belonged to his mother's mother.
Over the years I have worked off and on to gather all the information I could. I visited some of the old-timers but unfortunately I wasn't real good at it. And I didn't do enough of it. Some of the best sources of my family history passed on before I got around to interview them. Now I have to depend on written documents and census information and contacts over the internet. Fortunately those contacts are proving more and more fruitful as more and more information becomes computerized.
As I continue to gather more information, I'll begin to develop this page in hopes that someone else will find a connection and will be aided by my information. There's also a chance someone might be able to supply me with some new information.