Preface#

By Aaron Henderson

Sometime in the mid-2000s, my father asked me to come look at something. He had built a website — by himself, from scratch. It wasn’t berrytree.org yet. That would come later. It was a basic Web 1.0 site, plain and simple, but the idea and the heart were there from the very beginning. He wanted to share what he’d found with as many relatives as possible. It was a true passion project for him, and I could see it the moment he showed me.

I’m a little disappointed in myself that I wasn’t more aware of how this all started. He came home from a trip to Texas in 1997 completely lit up by genealogy, and I was busy raising a young family. I didn’t see the spark at first. But the more I visited him, the more I saw his progress — and the more I understood what was driving him. He was building something.

If you could have asked my father what his favorite part of the whole genealogy journey was, he would have said the people he met along the way. He made lifelong connections with cousins he never knew he had, scattered across the country. Those relationships helped him move forward faster than anything else, and they brought him real joy.

Over time, I became his partner on the project. I went out and obtained the berrytree.org domain name. I set up the WordPress site and even self-hosted a Debian server on the internet — that’s where the site lived from around 2012 on. I played all the roles — webdev, designer, admin, tech support. We had our creative differences, as any team will, but we saw each other’s vision. It was fun teaching him how to post using the WordPress dashboard, and he was tech-savvy enough that it came easily.

Working on berrytree.org together strengthened our relationship in ways I didn’t expect. We went to reunions together — in 2002, when David Berry’s descendants came back to Orange County, North Carolina, for the first time since 1825, and again around 2007 in Hillsborough, where over a hundred cousins came to the old homestead and visited the sites my dad had written about and researched for years. Standing there with him, surrounded by family, at the places he’d brought back to life through his work — those are memories I’ll carry forever.

My father, Benjamin Berry Henderson Sr., passed away on June 6, 2020. He was ninety years old.

Honestly, not having my dad around to work with left me a bit empty and sad. I kept the site running — did the regular maintenance, kept it going — but something had changed. The site went quiet for too long.

But recently, I’ve gotten a renewed interest. I’m excited about getting this website rebuilt and ready for the next generation. That’s what this is — not just a website, and not just a book. It’s a gift for every Berry descendant who comes after us. Maybe someone who hasn’t been born yet. Someone who types their family name into a search engine and lands here for the first time.

I want them to feel the love my father and I have put into this work. I want them to feel connected to the ancestors they will never meet, but might get to know a little through his research. I want them to see their ancestors for what they were — people making a life and surviving in a difficult and raw land, making something of themselves, and persevering through war, depression, and the good times too.

If my dad could see what we’re building now, I know exactly what he’d say:

“I don’t like it… I love it! You have worked so hard to bring my research alive!”

This one’s for you, Dad.

— Aaron Henderson, 2026