Liesel's Family History Finds

Hello again! I owe a lot to my grandparents, including my fascination with family history. Here's how I got started. Thanks for reading! I was first drawn to family history in elementary school when we created a framed family tree in class, but I think more than anything, my grandparents' stories are what have inspired my interest most. My elementary school family tree, with living person's names removed for privacy. My mother's line is on the left, my father's on the right. My Grandpa, Edwin Delmer Pirl (1928 - 2017), was interested in genealogy and did quite a bit of research to try to confirm or refute the long-standing oral history that the Pirls were descended from Scottish immigrants and once spelled their surname "Burl." (I have found no evidence of either claim so far, and I now know that his direct-line ancestors on the Pirl/Perl line were here in the U.S. from at least the late 1700s). More than that, he loved to tell long, winding stories, espec