Welcome to the New Trout-Tracks.com Website!
"Hit another brick wall? Maybe it's time for a new approach!"
If your genealogy research includes the surname TROUT, TRAUT, or one of the many variant spellings, I urge you to visit the Trout DNA Research Site, just one of many valuable links provided on the "Research Links" page of Trout-Tracks.com [see the upper right corner of your screen]. At last count over 121 serious researchers were involved in this project utilizing a combination of traditional and scientific research. Many distinct family lines are represented, several of which have been in the U.S. since the 1700s. By working together, helping one another out, and using every tool currently available to genealogists, this group has made great strides in sorting out the many distinct families known today by one variation or another of the surname "Trout."To quote the project coordinator: "The TROUT-DNA Research Project is designed to explore, sort, and document potential relationships between various distinct TROUT-variant surname family lines by using genetic genealogy to provide scientific proofs for TROUT research developed through traditional genealogical research methods. In the alternative, DNA research can also disprove a presumptive relationship so that traditional research can now be confidently redirected to more likely family lines, or in some cases, a DNA-proven family line."
The Goal
To many folks, if not most, who say they are not interested in a list of “begets and begats”, that is all genealogy is to them -- a dry and boring list of names and dates that seem to go on and on and on…guaranteed to put even the most energetic individual soundly to sleep. Genealogy can be so much more…
The research of our heritage is what gives LIFE to the dates and names of people and places. We learn of the struggles faced by our ancestors as newly arrived residents of a land vastly different from their homeland and we wonder if we'd have been equal to the task. Intellectually, we are aware that they came in many cases out of sheer desperation rather than in the spirit of adventure, leaving not only friends and family but everything familiar, and still probably not fully aware of the enormity of their decision until they arrived in America. Then we are touched by the plight of a father whose young wife dies, leaving him to raise their six children alone. We feel his pain at the decision to accept the neighbors' offer to raise the newborn as their own. We remember our own children as toddlers and share his anguish at feeling no choice but to allow yet another family to take his little girl, just beginning to call him "papa" to raise. And we can almost FEEL his determination to keep the rest of his children with him...no matter WHAT it takes.
Later, skimming through a diary kept by his oldest daughter, we discover an entry that says, "Mylbra Baskin died the 10th. Poor Tom, I sure feel sorry for him. I wonder what he is going to do. Those poor little kiddies don't realize what this life is going to be without a mother....." and our hearts break all over again for the children.
Yet THIS is what we are searching for! NOT the tragedy but the bits and pieces that allow us to discover the CHARACTER of the people whose experiences and decisions collectively influenced the family we were born into and the community of beliefs and values that shaped our reality. And yes, when we observe our children as they mature and notice the same courage, fortitude and persistence that saw their great-grandpa through, we are encouraged.
Found In The Attic
When the house that Arthur Trout had built about 1904 in Lake County, Illinois for his wife and family was being readied to sell in 1997, we discovered many treasures had been left behind by the three generations who had lived there.
One priceless find was a legacy from Arthur's wife: the "Floral Album" pictured here was originally a gift from her father, Francis Marion Brown, to her mother, Nancy "Anna" (Saxon). Our online photo album includes photos from this album along with many of the Ratfield extended family (contributed by Gene Aittala, and Shari Duffin) and one branch of the Milledge family (from Gwen Milledge) as well as selections from a box of loose photos of the Trouts.
Please take a few minutes to browse through the items "found in the attic": Photo Album; Scrapbook.
If you recognize members of your family among ours, please Contact me! There is much which you may find of interest that I have not made available online.
Thank You, Contributors!
Content on this site is the result of several years of genealogy research. Though I have relied heavily upon the resources listed on the "Research Links" page of this site, much of what is presented here would not be possible without others’ generosity in sharing the results of their own research.
Many other researchers have played key roles in surmounting those research difficulties that genealogists routinely refer to as “brick walls.” There are too many, in fact, to mention each of these individuals here. Specific sources will be provided upon request. Here, let me offer a simple, yet very sincere, “thank you” to all those who have so kindly and generously shared of their knowledge and their time.
Sheri Trout