My name is Jennifer Witt Hayes and this is a blog about my father’s family history. I began researching my family history in the 1990's, just as the internet was becoming a standard presence in homes across the country, and I was fortunate enough to find a wealth of information posted on the web.
I found a line of Witt family descendants starting with a French Huguenot named Guillame who arrived in Virginia in the early part of the 17th Century. His line spanned across nearly 400 hundred years to my great grandfather Robert Paine Witt II. At the time, I thought that it was a monumental discovery, but looking back, I realize that it was only a small part of what a family history really is.
I have always been a lover of history, getting good grades in those classes and reading as many historical novels as I could get my hands on. When I looked at my genealogy, consisting of a few pages of names, dates and places, I knew that there was something more there than I was seeing. A human’s life is more than just the information on a tombstone or a placement in a family tree. I began to wonder more and more, who were these people, what did they do, and most importantly, how did they live?
Soon, I realized that my genealogy was more than just a list of names; it was an example of the history of this country. Members of the Witt family have lived and died in this country from before America was the United States all the way up to the present day, with each of their lives contributing to the shaping of the nation.
After this realization, I knew that I had to keep digging, because I knew that there was much more to learn. I have spent countless hours on the internet, collecting pages of data, including census reports and military records of not just the Witt family but also the family information of the women who married Witt men.
My hope for this project is that it will be both a tool to help organize what I have found and to share this knowledge with the younger generations of my family and any others who might be interested in Witt family history. This site will be for adding profiles about various ancestors and the towns and counties in which they lived, as well as links to useful research resources. I also encourage distant relatives to contribute their own knowledge and photographs. Thanks!
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