This portal page leads into a family history archive maintained by me, Dave Smeds. If you’ve come here intentionally, chances are you’re a relative of mine, and want to look at the genealogical information I’ve prepared. It is almost as likely that you’re only a relative on one side of my family or another, and your interest is limited to the kin to whom you have the greatest connection. If so, please proceed on to one of the four major sections of the database. These are:
The Branson/Ousley section is devoted to my great-great-grandparents John and Martha Jane, and contains not only a description of their own lives and ancestries, with pictures, but goes on to include a biography, with pictures where available, of each of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
The Martin/Strader section does the same for Nathaniel and Hannah, another pair of my great-great grandparents, with special emphasis on the family of their daughter Nellie, my great-grandmother, and her husband, John Warner.
The Smeds/Mickelsdotter section is similar to the other two, but starts one generation closer to modern day. After Greta’s death, Herman and his children became immigrants to America, which strikes me as a natural beginning place for a genealogy.
The Warner/Alexander site is a little more modest in scope, and in a sense functions as a sub-section of the Martin/Strader area. Not all of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren have become the subjects of full biographies.
I hope you enjoy the site. Please be aware that this is a work in progress. Most of the pages are in place, but a few are not what I could boast of as complete, and improvements are still being made regularly. Also, at any given time, you may come back to find an individual page has been improved in order to keep up with a standard of quality several levels above what I had initially envisioned. If you did not yet encounter the coverage you had hoped for, my apologies. Rest assured I’m getting to it all as fast as I can.
