Saturday was a day of, “Hello family — meet your family!” It all began with a passing remark made by Mary Garrett that her grandparents, Judson A. and Ida May Smith, were buried in Sterling, Colorado. That remark sparked her daughter, Sherry Cook, to begin a journey that would end with 76 people who were part of a family gathering in Sterling Saturday to meet each other, many for the first time, and to honor the memory of their ancestors. All of them were descendants of Judson and Ida May Smith.
Cook, of Brush, decided to do some research on the Internet and found a name through an ancestry posting that was related to the family. She contacted Marie DeSoto by e-mail to find out how she was related and what she knew about the family history. DeSoto, who is a cousin and lives in Washington State, had taken over the compiling of her family genealogy when her mother passed away and had done some posting on Ancestry.com.
You can read the rest of this interesting story in an article by Judy Debus of the Journal-Advocate at http://www.journal-advocate.com/sterling-local_news/ci_12877046.
