This is a "notebook" of genealogy information that serves several purposes:

1. It represents my vision of building a database of all families that lived in the olde Orange County area of North Carolina. If we can establish a reliable "foundation" of information, perhaps others will not have to do the same research over again, but can spend their precious time adding "new bricks" to this foundation. I welcome your contributions to this effort.

2. It represents my quest to discover my own ancestors. This quest began in 1995 to satisfy my personal curiosity. As such, you will find a lot of information that is specific to my own family history. A large amount of the information on the Cates family has been contributed by gracious members of the various CATE/CATES research groups.

You are free to use the data you find here in your personal research. I have put forth a "best effort" to verify it's accuracy. However, there is no guarantee of correctness and you should apply your own analysis to the data to satisfy your own standards for accuracy.