Family History- leaving a Legacy

photo by L. Moss *

I have been into searching for lost dead family for about 14 years now! It's really not that morbid.  It involves using your computer.  Back in the 'old' days before digitizing- you could order a microfiche of old newspapers or birth records and spend hours looking for 1 name.  Lately things are getting easier at rocket speeds!  There's so many websites to help do your search, and there's an army of geneologists and volunteers out there entering records from castle, church, and government basements never before seen.  It's the making of Indiana Jones excitement!

Recently I came upon 2 articles that have added a boost to my search.  The first article talks about leaving a legacy with your children by talking about your family history- a lot! I can't say they we do it a lot, but we have occasionally.  So, to test if my husband and I had done a good job, we asked our kids if they remembered about several different great grandparent stories from both our sides.  We witnessed a lot of head scratching and only a few "Oh, yeah, I remember that story!"  Clearly we need to regroup on this issue, since the article states it improves your childs' well-being and belonging to a group- I think we'll be spending some dinner time chats on our family history.

I needed some help with organizing the family names I had collected.  I've gone back to about the early 1700's on my side and my husband's side- but my paper work is a mess.  This article had some great websites to visit. When I get a chance I really want to visit Family Village- that sounds like a kick.  Maybe my kids will get into it.

My next idea is to gather any photos, stories, and family trees and put them into a binder.  One night a week, as a family, we'll tell the story of one family member.  Then we'll talk about how our family is connected (sometimes when you go WAY back, the connection of how you are related can get confusing).  Hopefully, if we know enough about that person, hopefully we can connect how we can learn from that relative's life- good or bad.

I'll let you know how our experiment went.  It should be fun!

* this guitar is from 1900. Evan's great-grandmother brought it on the boat from Sweden.  Because of this guitar, Evan learned to love music at a young age.  Another Legacy!