{"id":80,"date":"2021-12-01T12:41:04","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T17:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connectingleaves.com\/?page_id=80"},"modified":"2021-12-02T02:41:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T07:41:06","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/connectingleaves.com\/?page_id=80","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"270\" height=\"270\" src=\"https:\/\/connectingleaves.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/KBolesHeadshotFrameShadow-e1638430322538.png\" alt=\"Kelly\" class=\"wp-image-111\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Hi! Thank you for taking an interest in East Tennessee genealogy. My name is Kelly, and I&#8217;m so glad you&#8217;ve found this site. By day, I am a research and data scientist, and by night, I am a hobbyist genealogist, which is not that tremendously different than my day job. However, the ways I entered into these two pursuits are drastically different \u2013 I am pursuing a Ph.D. for my daytime career, but I started learning about genealogy to quiet the incessant rumblings from my mother concerning our at-the-time unproven relation to Valentine Sevier, the father of famous American Revolutionary, John Sevier.<br><br>Growing up in rural Appalachian East Tennessee, I was surrounded by history \u2013 the area is steeped in it. However, it is somewhat more rare for families here to know their familial history, particularly past a couple of generations. It&#8217;s interesting. If you&#8217;ve grown up in Northeast Tennessee and your family has been in the area long enough, at least a line or two of your family likely pre-dates the American Revolution. My mother was convinced this was the case for our family&#8217;s relation to Valentine Sevier. She had a scrap of paper from a great aunt, with first names scratched on it, supposedly tracing our Sevier line. Either out of spite or interest, or a little of both, I set out to prove or disprove this once and for all.<br><br>This was quite an interesting first foray into genealogy. You see, our Sevier line runs smack through a whole bunch of Smiths, and we all know how much work it can be to untangle a big jumble of Smiths. Finally, though, my mother and I did sort everything out, obtaining pretty sound documentation for all generational links. One thing we knew was that we wanted our research to be publicly available and shared. As a trained research scientist, I believe research should be widely available and read \u2013 I feel the same concerning genealogical research. One way we chose to go about this was to send in this Sevier line research to Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and I continue to do this for additional lines of my family history as I research them. The second way in which I am working to make my genealogical research easily accessible is this website. If you have roots in Northeast Tennessee, we&#8217;re probably cousins. I hope in some way, my search to find my family helps you find yours, too.<br><br>If the information you seek doesn&#8217;t appear on this site, my answer to your question will probably be &#8220;I don&#8217;t know&#8221;. I try to keep this site as up-to-date as possible. If you have additions or corrections, I&#8217;d love to make them \u2013 please <a href=\"https:\/\/connectingleaves.com\/?page_id=70\">contact me<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi! Thank you for taking an interest in East Tennessee genealogy. My name is Kelly, and I&#8217;m so glad you&#8217;ve found this site. By day, I am a research and data scientist, and by night, I am a hobbyist genealogist, which is not that tremendously different than my day job. However, the ways I entered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-80","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>About Me - Connecting Leaves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/connectingleaves.com\/?page_id=80\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"About Me - Connecting Leaves\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hi! Thank you for taking an interest in East Tennessee genealogy. My name is Kelly, and I&#8217;m so glad you&#8217;ve found this site. By day, I am a research and data scientist, and by night, I am a hobbyist genealogist, which is not that tremendously different than my day job. 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Thank you for taking an interest in East Tennessee genealogy. My name is Kelly, and I&#8217;m so glad you&#8217;ve found this site. By day, I am a research and data scientist, and by night, I am a hobbyist genealogist, which is not that tremendously different than my day job. 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