Beyond Fiction

Welcome to “Beyond Fiction”! What is Beyond Fiction? Beyond Fiction is where you will find my writings about my genealogy research, web site and family. It was started around March of 2007 and, due to my bad judgement, was lost around May of 2010. What you see now is the rebirth of what I had built for almost 3 years!

How did I come up with this title for my blog? Well, it’s not my idea. I have to give the credit to my son. Way back when, probably around 1995 or 1996, I asked my son to help me come up with an email address for my fantasy football. He looked at me and said “Beyond Fiction” without any hesitation. Not bad for a 6 or 7 year old! I’ve used it for many things throughout the years but when I decided to write a genealogy blog I thought it would be a great title. Sometimes in genealogy, there is a thin line between truth and fiction and sometimes the truth is even stranger than fiction. So, I decided to use “Beyond Fiction” as my blog title.

Who am I? My name is Kenneth Wayne Spangler and I am the youngest son of David Isaac Spangler and Patricia Ann Forbes. I’ve been interested in genealogy since just before my dad passed away but never took it seriously until after my dad’s death. I guess you can say that my main reason for doing genealogy is to find my roots but to also pass on to my children and grandchildren all the knowledge that I can so that they can know where they come from!

I started a website in 1997 called “Forbes-Stevenson.com”. I enlisted the help of many of my family on my mother’s side to start the site and it was to share my maternal research with everyone. About a year into the venture, I discovered that my choice of URLs was bad because it limited me to just my maternal research. Rather than start a second site for my paternal research, I decided I would just start a site with my name as the URL. Fortunately, kenspangler.com was available and I soon had my site up and running.

In May of 2010 I lost track of time while I was making my move to North Carolina and forgot to renew my hosting for my site. When I finally thought about it, it was too late to save all my information. I could have gotten it back but I didn’t have the $150 dollars they wanted for restoring it. I thought I had a backup on my computer but I was wrong. So, now I am starting over again!

The good thing about starting over is that I can now look at things with fresh eyes! I hope to share many new things with you all and I will try to restore some of my old blog posts if possible. Until then, please enjoy what I have to offer on my blog and be sure to check out my website.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ken