Entries by Jeff Westover

All Family History is Social

My DNA results are in. They came in quite unexpectedly, less than 4 weeks after I had sent off my sample. As expected, they have revealed so far no huge surprises. My heritage is dominantly British with a very healthy representation of Mormon Pioneers. Shocker. But even if I had not known that before I […]

The Harm in Do No Harm

During a presentation at Roots Tech about writing histories my sister-in-law shared some direction the presenter gave about writing history of family members with less-than-sterling details in their lives. The presenter urged family historians to “do no harm” when writing histories. This spurred considerable discussion between us. It is a thought that continues to trouble […]

Never Trust a Web Site

If there is one thing I am profoundly grateful for over the course of the past four years with this website it is the number of Westovers out there who have reached out to me through it. I’ve met so many wonderful people – distant cousins who I likely never would have otherwise known. We […]

Westover Family Tree Back to the Year 985

How does 31 generations sound to you? Awesome, huh? About a year a half ago I was thrilled to visit Family Search one day to see our paternal Westover line magically extended another 500 years and terminate with the name Siegfried De Sponheim, who was born in 985. That name was added by Family Search, […]

Longfellow’s Family Story is Our Family Legend

The “Albert Smith Project”, as I’ve come to call it, has yielded so much interesting information there is just no way to include it all in the upcoming video. Some of it is so compelling that I still feel a need to share it – including this story here. Father Smith, as the citizens of […]