My interest in genealogy began at a family reunion in 1954. There my great aunt spoke of her grandfather being killed in what she called, "the Kansas-Nebraska War". I wrote to the Kansas State Historical Society and learned that Samuel Collins [picture] had been active in the free state movement which opposed making Kansas a slave state. This led to an armed confrontation with pro-slavery supporters in the fall of 1855 in which Samuel was killed.

Fascinated by all this, I began researching my mother's Mabry family. She and I wrote to several of her cousins and soon discovered a dozen others who were also looking for their Mabry ancestors. After thirty years of research, I became "the expert on the Mabrys". The following timeline tells the rest of the story:

• 1954 - My reseach of the Mabry family began.
• 1987 - Publication of my first book on the family of Francis Maybury of Virginia.
• 1997 - Publication of the the first of two soft-cover reprint editions, including 75 pages of new information.
• 1995 - Publication of The Mabry Family newsletter began.
• 1995 - The Mabry Family web page, one of the first famly pages on the internet, began.
• 2002 - Two cousins in England began helping with research on early English Mayburys.
• 2003 - Beginning of the Maybury DNA Project to learn about different branches of the family.
• 2004 - Discovery that John Maybury (c1540-1618) of Sussex was likely our common ancestor.
• 2005 - The newsletter became The Maybury Family to include other branches of the wider family.
• 2010 - Long anticipated publication of The Mayburys will tell the stories of the major branches of the family in England, Ireland, the U.S., Canada and Australia.

Now retired, I devote much of my time to genealogy, a hobby which still fascinates me. Genealogy has taught me much more about history than I ever learned in school. It has been my privilege to help thousands of Mayburys, Mayberrys Mabrys, etc. to learn about their branch of the family and its place in the larger Maybury family. I have also researched many of my other ancestors.

In 2008, after living for ten years in the mountains west of Denver, my wife Edie and I moved to Wind Crest, an Erickson retirement community, located in Highlands Ranch, a suburb south of Denver. At age 95, my Mabry mother lives at Porter Place, a retirement community about 20 minutes away.

Our ancestors can be found on Rootsweb's WorldConnect Project

If you are interested, here are a few of my own favorite websites

May 2009