This is a history story of two families; the Grills and the Waldvogels who lived and worked in and around Baltimore, Maryland. Because every life is important and worth our attention no matter how briefly or how long it was lived. In researching this history of our family, we found there are some family members where there is extensive information, facts and interesting insights about their personality and character. Other souls, however, our research found just scant data save for a birth and death date. In other cases, we could use a marriage date plus the dates of births and passing of children to provide a glimpse into what life was like for that ancestor. Another point we used to enhance the stories of these people is to research about what was happening in the world at that time. This background information usually gives a further insight into a person's life. Any scrap of personal information or anticdote expands a life story and gives us a flavor of who that person was and what they were like when they lived.For the sake of privacy, this book does not to provide the detailed stories of any person who is living at the time of this publication. There is always going to be researchers at work and finding new sources of information. Thus, the life stories of our ancestors will never be complete and finished. This publication is but a snapshot of what is known at this point in time. There will always be another document that will be discovered tomorrow, next month or in a succeeding year that may provide more compete information about someone in our past that was just a birth and death date before the discovery. For this reason the reader will find blank pages for notes throughout the volume. It is our hope that anyone having more information will contact the authors and allow that information to be included in the next edition.Because there are many family lines to be discussed and life stories to be told, this book is written starting from the present, or as near the present as possible. The life stories walk the reader back into the past. This is contrary to the way many family genealogies are written. Family history books usually begin with a single ancestor, perhaps the first immigrant, and follow that line down through the generations to the present day. The single ancestor approach is a simple and straightforward way to approach the subject of a single family name. This is assuming that the researcher is concentrating on a single family line. There is, however, one drawback to this approach. If you began with a single ancestor then other lines, or surnames, of the family members will only show up as being related to the main line of the single ancestor. For example, the book Descendants of James Cole, who was born in 1633, lists only those Coles who descended from him or who married into or out of the Cole line. Because it was our intention to trace multiple lines, or surnames, of our family, this book will start with the present and treat two sides of the family unit equally in succeeding chapters.
About the Author: Betty Waldvogel Ross is a poet, an artist, the author of children's books such as "The Dragonfly Queen" and a co-author of "Faerie Yarns". Her co-author is her husband, Charles Worthington Ross who is an engineer, the author of "Computer Systems for Safety & Health Management" and "Making Jigsaw Puzzles".