Joseph Skerstonas was my great-grandfather and Peter Skerstonas was his brother.   A third cousin of mine, Martha Palapis, had done a significant amount of research on the Skerstonas family while she was alive.   She had typed (on a typewriter - not a computer) all of the information she had gathered and distributed the results to those family members that attended a family reunion in 1992.   Although I did not attend the reunion I managed to get a copy of her work.  It is very extensive and I have been able to put all of the data on-line into Geni.com.   So now I have an on-line version of a family tree.   But I want to see if I can turn this data into a story.   I am hoping to take the information that Martha so diligently put together and see if I can find pictures, stories, source documents, etc to help it become a true family story.   Today I went to Martha's memorial service, which gave me the inspiration to actually sit and start this blog.   I will try to regularly update with bits of information and hope to hear from members of our family so that we can grow our story together. 

I'll start with this great picture that I recently received from my mother.   When they last visited, my aunt, Izzy Schwarze, gave my mom some pictures of my Dad, George.   This one is dated 1937 - could be the year my Dad started school.   He was the youngest of the 5 children - 7 years younger than his closest sibling.  From oldest to youngest, by birth year, they were:   Della (Dee) 1917,  Al & Isabelle (Izzy) (twins) 1920, Mildred (Milly) 1923 and George (1930).   They lived on Walnut Hill in Thomaston, CT.   Through the power of Facebook I was able to identify the two other boys as the neighbor's boys and even the name of the bus driver!   That all the Skerstonas kids are smiling except for George is kind of telling - there would be some family feuds of epic proportions in their future!