Back in November 2010, I wrote an article about Continuing Family History and how we often get so caught up in researching all our ancestors from the past that we are neglecting to keep up with documenting current generations and stories and mementos of today. Terri left me a comment which has taken me some time to formulate a good answer. She stated, “It's interesting Kay that you talk about preserving our history now for future generations. It is more difficult today to do that with technology the way it is. I have so many letters from my ancestors but today we just text, email or phone. We don't write things down. We need to think about how to preserve heirlooms and record events for our future children.”
Here are some things that I have been doing for my children and my grandchildren that might also be helpful to you.
First of all, I have set up several family trees using tribal pages.com where I have first a master tree with all the connecting family branches and then trees also set up for each of my children and their spouses and their group tree. This way, they can see how everything connects together on the master tree and then if they want to just concentrate on their own tree along with that of their spouse, they can do that also. The nice thing about tribal pages is that you can enter information about each person in the notes section and you can also include photographs if you have them.
As a security measure, I also have these trees on my computer as well as copied onto discs along with a copy of my family tree maker, which is the program off of the LDS website, so that they can install this program on their own computers if they want to continue to do additional work on the lines. This also ensures that if for some reason the Internet site is no longer available that all of my work will not have been done in vain.
The next thing I have done is created genealogy books for each family so that they can have a hard copy that they can physically hold and read and absorb all the information that it contains. In some cases, there is so much information more than one book is required.
As for heirlooms to pass onto future generations, I began by going through my photographs, labeling as many as I could on the backs and placing them into individual envelopes for each of my children. There are some personal items that I want them to have and I have told them that I would like them to have those right now so that I am sure that they will receive them. If there are certain items that I just have to have, then I will be sure that those things are listed in my will and that their names will be listed on the physical item so that they will assuredly receive them.
I also have heirlooms that once belonged to my grandparents, some of which will also be disturbed the same way. If no one wants those items, then I will have them donate them to a museum, or I will handle it myself before I leave this beautiful world.
At present, there are four boxes in my hall closet, labeled with the name of each of my children. Inside they are going to find a collection of items that we have previously discussed that are to be theirs, along with some other items that I’ve saved over the years that I think they will be pleased to have.
I started a journal of my life for my children and my grandchildren. I want them to know about my growing up years as well as all the marvelous things that I have been privy to in the history of this world and our country. Thank you Terri for your comment to my post because it has reminded me that I really need to be more diligent, working on this on a regular basis.
Like Terri, I also regret that nowadays so much of our communication is handled by the impersonal emails, the twitters and by phone. We no longer often hold a physical letter or greeting card in our hands and see the writing of that person, which by the way, really does tell so much about their personality! But graphoanalysis is another subject and maybe something I will post about at a later date if some interest is shown by my readers.
I personally am probably the worlds worst pack-rat when it comes to saving things from my children and their growing years such as pictures that they created and were lovingly hung on the refrigerator, to handmade birthday cards and Christmas gifts that they have given me over the years. I have their graduation announcements from school and even came across their old vaccination records when I was cleaning out my keepsake drawer. I’ve saved Mother’s Day, birthday and Valentine’s Day cards that they have given me over the years, all stored in a special box.
I do know of one father who was stationed overseas in Iraq for over a year and he kept every single email that his wife and children sent to him. He plans on including that into his genealogy records. I am sure those will be very interesting reading for his grandchildren some day.
So even though communications of today have gotten away from the handwritten word, there are still ways of preserving precious memories and I hope that this will give all of you some new ideas for saving yours.
Showing posts with label Documenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Documenting. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Walking In Their Shoes
I am so pleased to see how much the show Who Do You Think You Are? has spurred interest in so many people to begin, or continue, their quest to find their roots. The show makes it look so simple doesn’t it? Just plug information into Ancestry.com and magically YOUR family appears! In reality it isn’t that easy. There are many features about Ancestry.com that I like but please, please, please ( I can not stress this enough) don’t believe everything you read on there or other sites, such as World Connect.com , RootsWeb.com, Genealogy.com, or Family Search.org and others, as being the gospel truth! Records on those sites are all listed by people just like you and me, amateurs putting together their family history. Those sites do not go through and check each and every piece of information that is submitted to them. We are all prone to making mistakes. Now am I saying not to use these resources? No, by all means use them as reference material , just like you would anything else that you might find elsewhere on the internet. But then research and document it with proof to be sure it is indeed correct material to go with your own family genealogy.
Be sure that you start with what you know about your own family and work backwards. I so hope that people are taking time to truly document their findings and making sure that they are indeed finding their own family! Now with that being said, I am going to tell you that sometimes rules are meant to be broken. I know, big contradiction to what I just told you isn’t it? Perhaps you know that your great great great grandfather was someone famous…. lets say like Daniel Boone, Walt Disney or Frank Lloyd Wright, these are all hypothetical by the way, but what if you know there is a connection, your family has told you that you are related. You have several generations in-between where you have a big gap. Since they are famous, you could take their descendant chart and work from them back through to where it meets up with yours. Just be sure that you are indeed correct by getting supporting documentation! Maybe you are not a direct descendant but a cousin several times removed, or a cousin by marriage, etc.
Let me give an example by telling you about what has happened in some lines of searching for my own family history. I have come across mix-ups in posting entire generations as being part of a family group when they were not part of the family at all, but because so many of the “names matched up” someone along the way decided they were indeed all of the same family. If they had really and truly paid attention and done their research, they would have found yes, indeed members of the families all seemed to name their children identical, but they were from two separate areas of New Jersey and Connecticut! I have one ancestor where we truly are not 100% about his wife or wives, but now there are several listings for him on Ancestry.com and World Connect with each wife entered separately as his spouse!
I have come across women married to a man who were listed as his child and not his wife! Because someone didn’t take time to truly research and document, now it is out there on the internet and others continue to copy this information as if it is true when in reality it is not.
Because a father and a son both have the same name, and there is no JR after the son’s name, someone took it upon themselves to enter a tree where they combined them as one person, where as if they had paid attention to where they lived, who their wives were and their dates of birth and death, the error would never have been made. Now those of us who are true direct descendants of these men, have to go in and try and straighten out this mess so that records at D.A.R., S.A.R. and other organizations can be corrected and taken off of dispute!
So in your zest to locate your family’s ancestors and truly enjoy the adventure of finding them, be sure to:
1. Document your sources be it birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, copies of land documents or gravestones (by the way I’ve seen some of these be spelled wrong and have incorrect dates) or if you are using family owned documents. Leave a good paper trail so others can follow in your footsteps and carry on when you have passed away.
2. Take time to find some books about the era and area where your ancestors lived and read up on what was going on in that time frame. Pay attention to the nationalities of the people who lived in the area, their religious affiliations, were there epidemics of illness which would wipe out families or communities. Were there Indian disputes which would cause people to migrate out of the area. Was there major crop failures, or perhaps they were in the middle of a battlefield area and had to evacuate.
3. Find maps from that time period, boundaries of cities, counties, states, and even countries have not always been as they are today. How do I know? Well, I found out the hard way that there were parts of Switzerland that were actually part of Germany at one point in time!
4. I know that there were census reports back to the 1790 period but be careful trying to understand them. The handwriting is often horrible, there are various spellings of names and instead of listing all the members of a family by name they are recorded by an age bracket. Also remember back in that time, there was a different calendar, many still used the Julian calendar, compared to the Gregorian calendar that we use today, which is going to throw your dates off.
5.Collaborate with other family members to try and find your ancestors. Reach out in your attempts to locate other branches of your family because they might have information to share that you don’t have and between all your efforts you can put together the puzzle of your family. Look for the ancestors of siblings of your relatives. They may be looking for you as well. For instance, go post on message boards, join Surname or Ethnic groups over at Yahoo and get acquainted. There is also a group called Brickwall at Yahoo that has some wonderfully talented researchers who are willing to give you assistance. If you are of Native American Indian descent, join one of the tribal groups on yahoo. The Cherokee board is very helpful, even if you are not Cherokee.
6. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I don’t care if it is from another researcher on a website, maybe they don’t even happen to have the same surnames in their family but would be able to give you some good tips and advice. Ask a librarian at your local library because many of them are knowledgeable. Go to the local genealogy library in your town because many of the people who work in there have been doing research for years and years. Also you are always welcome at the local LDS Church library in your city. They certainly are not as large as the facility in Salt Lake City, but they do have resources there as well as they are able to order films from other locations for you to view. Again, the people who work in this library are also very knowledgeable.
7. “If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well” and doing it correctly. Even if you do publish information on any site or even on your own site and you have it open for public viewing, please be sure to let others know that “to the best of your ability you know this information is correct, but we are all open to human error, if you see something that you dispute, please contact me.” Or write something to that effect. Also if you do not include information about where your sources of information have been gathered from, indicate you do have documents on file if they are interested or if you don’t have any, advise that also.
8. Now get started. Gather together some pedigree charts or get a genealogy program installed on your computer (there are some good ones that you pay for as well as some free ones), get a notebook or set up a section on your computer so that you can be ready to add some great stories about the different people in your family so that your ancestors come to life for others. There is nothing exciting about just seeing a family tree with lots of names and dates written down!
Happy Hunting!
Be sure that you start with what you know about your own family and work backwards. I so hope that people are taking time to truly document their findings and making sure that they are indeed finding their own family! Now with that being said, I am going to tell you that sometimes rules are meant to be broken. I know, big contradiction to what I just told you isn’t it? Perhaps you know that your great great great grandfather was someone famous…. lets say like Daniel Boone, Walt Disney or Frank Lloyd Wright, these are all hypothetical by the way, but what if you know there is a connection, your family has told you that you are related. You have several generations in-between where you have a big gap. Since they are famous, you could take their descendant chart and work from them back through to where it meets up with yours. Just be sure that you are indeed correct by getting supporting documentation! Maybe you are not a direct descendant but a cousin several times removed, or a cousin by marriage, etc.
Let me give an example by telling you about what has happened in some lines of searching for my own family history. I have come across mix-ups in posting entire generations as being part of a family group when they were not part of the family at all, but because so many of the “names matched up” someone along the way decided they were indeed all of the same family. If they had really and truly paid attention and done their research, they would have found yes, indeed members of the families all seemed to name their children identical, but they were from two separate areas of New Jersey and Connecticut! I have one ancestor where we truly are not 100% about his wife or wives, but now there are several listings for him on Ancestry.com and World Connect with each wife entered separately as his spouse!
I have come across women married to a man who were listed as his child and not his wife! Because someone didn’t take time to truly research and document, now it is out there on the internet and others continue to copy this information as if it is true when in reality it is not.
Because a father and a son both have the same name, and there is no JR after the son’s name, someone took it upon themselves to enter a tree where they combined them as one person, where as if they had paid attention to where they lived, who their wives were and their dates of birth and death, the error would never have been made. Now those of us who are true direct descendants of these men, have to go in and try and straighten out this mess so that records at D.A.R., S.A.R. and other organizations can be corrected and taken off of dispute!
So in your zest to locate your family’s ancestors and truly enjoy the adventure of finding them, be sure to:
1. Document your sources be it birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, copies of land documents or gravestones (by the way I’ve seen some of these be spelled wrong and have incorrect dates) or if you are using family owned documents. Leave a good paper trail so others can follow in your footsteps and carry on when you have passed away.
2. Take time to find some books about the era and area where your ancestors lived and read up on what was going on in that time frame. Pay attention to the nationalities of the people who lived in the area, their religious affiliations, were there epidemics of illness which would wipe out families or communities. Were there Indian disputes which would cause people to migrate out of the area. Was there major crop failures, or perhaps they were in the middle of a battlefield area and had to evacuate.
3. Find maps from that time period, boundaries of cities, counties, states, and even countries have not always been as they are today. How do I know? Well, I found out the hard way that there were parts of Switzerland that were actually part of Germany at one point in time!
4. I know that there were census reports back to the 1790 period but be careful trying to understand them. The handwriting is often horrible, there are various spellings of names and instead of listing all the members of a family by name they are recorded by an age bracket. Also remember back in that time, there was a different calendar, many still used the Julian calendar, compared to the Gregorian calendar that we use today, which is going to throw your dates off.
5.Collaborate with other family members to try and find your ancestors. Reach out in your attempts to locate other branches of your family because they might have information to share that you don’t have and between all your efforts you can put together the puzzle of your family. Look for the ancestors of siblings of your relatives. They may be looking for you as well. For instance, go post on message boards, join Surname or Ethnic groups over at Yahoo and get acquainted. There is also a group called Brickwall at Yahoo that has some wonderfully talented researchers who are willing to give you assistance. If you are of Native American Indian descent, join one of the tribal groups on yahoo. The Cherokee board is very helpful, even if you are not Cherokee.
6. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I don’t care if it is from another researcher on a website, maybe they don’t even happen to have the same surnames in their family but would be able to give you some good tips and advice. Ask a librarian at your local library because many of them are knowledgeable. Go to the local genealogy library in your town because many of the people who work in there have been doing research for years and years. Also you are always welcome at the local LDS Church library in your city. They certainly are not as large as the facility in Salt Lake City, but they do have resources there as well as they are able to order films from other locations for you to view. Again, the people who work in this library are also very knowledgeable.
7. “If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well” and doing it correctly. Even if you do publish information on any site or even on your own site and you have it open for public viewing, please be sure to let others know that “to the best of your ability you know this information is correct, but we are all open to human error, if you see something that you dispute, please contact me.” Or write something to that effect. Also if you do not include information about where your sources of information have been gathered from, indicate you do have documents on file if they are interested or if you don’t have any, advise that also.
8. Now get started. Gather together some pedigree charts or get a genealogy program installed on your computer (there are some good ones that you pay for as well as some free ones), get a notebook or set up a section on your computer so that you can be ready to add some great stories about the different people in your family so that your ancestors come to life for others. There is nothing exciting about just seeing a family tree with lots of names and dates written down!
Happy Hunting!
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