Hello, I’m Sue Marous. Welcome to my family genealogy website. I am truly happy you are here. I know that not everyone takes an interest in their family heritage, and that’s okay. But nothing gives me more joy than when someone does begin to wonder about where they may have come from and who their ancestors were. I’ve been asking myself those questions almost my entire life.
When I was about 16 years old, my mom’s father, my grandpa Scott, gave me a small brown bag full of old photo’s and tintypes. It was nothing more that a paper lunch bag with all of these photo’s just stuck inside. There were photographs of his father who had emigrated from Scotland and the family that were left behind. As my grandfather handed me the bag, I’ll never forget him saying to me, “Sue, you’re the one person in the family that I know will take care of these photo’s.” I took that brown paper sack with those old photo’s from my grandfather and began a lifelong journey of researching my family heritage. That moment that my grandfather handed me those photo’s all those years ago was the spark that ignited my passion for genealogy that still burns brightly today.
That was back in the 1970’s, before the internet and Ancestry.com. I didn’t have many options at the time to research my family heritage. In my 20’s, after college when I had a car, I would often spend a Saturday at the Western Reserve Historical Library in Cleveland trying to find out what I could about my Cleveland-based ancestors. Truthfully, I didn’t find much out except for a few facts here and there. And making an inquiry about an ancestor from a far-away land was almost unthinkable. And life got busy with getting married, having kids, and starting my marketing firm. But over the years, I would steal away an hour or two and chip away at filling in the blanks of my family history.
Now, 45 years after first gazing at the photograph of my great-grandfather from Scotland, I’ve managed to fill in many details, stories and photo’s of the Marous/Ziska and Scott/Strader families. I’m fortunate to be able to combine my artistic and writing skills with my passion for genealogy, and present this website to anyone who may be interested. I’m sure I’ll be working on this website–and our family tree– for the rest of my life and hope that it becomes the conduit of all the generations that came before and after me.