Welcome to the online home for Kensinger genealogy.

When I began researching my family's genealogy in 2010, I turned, as so many new genealogists do, immediately to Google.  Perhaps hoping to come across a website labeled "Kensinger Genealogy", I was quickly and predictably disappointed.

Nothing there.  Should have seen that coming.

Being the devoted member of Generation Now that I am, I accepted that a little research might be required to get the task done.  Not everything I want is just going to fall into my lap.

So I opened a free account on Ancestry.com.

Shocker.  Not much there.

Most of my colleagues would, and have, quit at that point.  If it's harder than an internet search and a surname search on the most heavily advertised genealogical research website ever, then we're just not going to waste the time.  Family history is interesting and all, but we've got things to do, shows to watch.

I'm all for tv watching, sure, but I'm also a fan of the library.  And I happen to reside in a city with one of the best genealogical research facilities in the world.  And, yes, I am a bit of a nerd, so I began vising the Allen County Public Library weekly, using the electronic search tools and bound records to piece together a family tree.

It took me two years to get to the point I am now, with a registry of names of Kensingers descended from the first Kensinger to travel to America.  Abraham left Bavaria, boarded the  Mortonhouse in Dutch Rotterdam, and landed in Philadelphia on August 17, 1729.  Within eleven generations, he had spread the Kensinger name across the North American continent, and, interestingly enough, right back to Germany.

Not bad for a twenty-six year old.

I hope this blog provides guidance to those genealogists who are just starting their research, as well as those veterans who are either working through their own Kensinger line or connecting their trees to a distant relative.  My intention is to begin with Agent 0, Abraham Kensinger (b. 1703, d. 1749), or, as I call him, Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Abe, and follow down the generations.  For many of these relatives, I have been lucky enough to learn a great deal about their backgrounds, residences, and occupations, and even a few humorous stories.  Feel free to contact me with any information you may have, so that I might supplement or, if necessary, amend, my own work.  Please enjoy, and happy genealogy-ing.