Where I'm From

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking into my genealogy, playing around on a site called Geni which is an on-line family-tree tool. I've looked into family past before, of course, but now that I've started working on the family tree I've found a great deal of material on-line.

As part of this, I've put together a map of the birth-places of my direct ancestors; at least those whose birthplaces I could determine.

The earliest Mahaffies I could find -- they were Mahaffeys back in the 1700s-- were from northern Ireland. There were Beckers, from my Mother's side of the family, born in Germany in the 1800s.

In the US, there was a steady progression west by my branch of the Mahaffie family. They were in Pennsylvania, then Ohio, then Indiana. My Great-Great Grandfather JB Mahaffie started his family in Indiana and then settled in Olathe Kansas in 1857. He was one of the original settlers.

My Great Grandfather George Mahaffie had been born in Indiana. He started his family in Olathe, where my grandfather Charles was born. George took his family west to Oklahoma as homesteaders.

My grandfather was a Rhodes Scholar, studying at Oxford for a time. He became a lawyer and lived and practiced in Oregon before going to Washington DC, where my Father was born. My Grandmother had been born in Washington State, but raised in New York City, where many of her forbears were born.

On my Mother's side, Farrars, Beckers, Bartletts, and Redmonds were mostly around New York. I also had forbears in upstate New York and in Vermont.

If any of these names and dates match names and dates in your family tree (and you are not already part of my family tree), let me know. I'm always eager to expand the tree.