Joe began his collection of family genealogical material while he was in Junior High School with a single sheet of paper he kept in a cigar box that showed his immediate family. Over the years, different family members were added to his box.

With his interest in his family growing with the years, Joe started clipping out obituaries, birth announcements, wedding announcements and any type of articles pertaining to relatives. Over the years, two shoeboxes were added to the collection.

In 1987 Joe purchased an IBM Jr. computer and a Family Roots genealogical program The boxes went into the computer and the collection grew. By 2020 there were over 2,000 names in the collection.

COVID-19 came along and with it a quarantine. Martha Jane had died recently, and Joe was home alone in the house the two of them built in 1969. His son suggested that he use the solitude and the information he already had to write a book about his ancestors.

Joe accepted the challenge and started to work immediately writing his first book for publication - a book about two brothers who came to Madison County, Tennessee in the early 1830s and their Exum descendants who had lived in the county over the decades.