About

I’m Melanie J. Rice, a genealogy enthusiast, living in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I’ve been interested in genealogy since I was a young child. My maternal grandma, Ruby Faye (VanLue) Smith must have given me the genes. I recall her sharing family history information with me for a school project, and that got me started on a lifelong pursuit.

I’ve had many false starts and several data losses over the years. Today, I’m working to improve the quality of my research, thanks in part to Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy Do-Over. I hope to pull it together in a form that will allow me to share it in a tangible way with my family.

I’ve also gotten into “genetic genealogy,” and would love to connect with DNA cousins. You can find me on Ancestry under user name: DenverDetective. I live in Fort Wayne, I know. But I relocated here from Denver in 2018, and the name is just too good to let go of!