Every now and again I’ll become obsessed with something: a book and/or TV/movie series such as Harry Potter or Star Trek; organizing the entire house (hormonal nesting?); renaming all my digital photos instead of leaving them DMS50349 (DMS=Doesn’t Mean S**T); digital scrap booking or websites, etc. My current obsession is my family’s genealogy.
Sometime in the nineties, my father’s father told me that he received a letter from a person who started doing some research into our rich family history. He gave me the letter, some books about our family, town, and company history, and asked me to put together a family tree. I in turn purchased a family tree maker for the computer (“hard” floppy discs, remember those?) and got to work during my spare time (whenever I was procrastinating studying). I soon hit a roadblock, however, when I couldn’t figure out any more combinations for ACK and MK. Only so many of them had suffixes. Reflecting back, I should have just added letters or actual numbers for efficiency’s sake. Anyway, I never did finish the tree prior to my grandfather’s passing in 1995, and always regretted that fact. While in college, I received a letter from yet another person requesting information about my family when he stumbled upon some information during research. I told him I had to wait to return home, so now I can’t remember if I ever sent my records to him.
This past December I received a gift card to Shutterfly and decided to put it towards a Christmas gift for my mother’s mother in the form of a photo book. During this process I was attempting to gather lineage facts about her side of the family, so I did a quick search for free family tree programs on the Internet and discovered Geni. This allowed me to not only figure out how people were related, but invite my relatives to provide their vital statistics for my book. I then realized what a wonderful thing I had just begun. My husband’s father’s family published a family tree book (something you can do on Ancestry), and Deanna was born just in time for printing. That means that for all intents and purposes, the family tree stops there, along with jobs, passing relatives, etc. By having a digital tree, every new event and person can be recorded. This is a fabulous legacy that I can now leave not only my offspring, but the rest of my family as well.
Beyond knowing relations (and with the way our ancestors procreated, you need a tree to figure out how everyone’s related), we can include information about people’s education, careers, interests, pictures, videos, causes of death (cancer, heart disease, we’re all doomed), and so much more. Not only can this help all of us learn more about each other (our own little Facebook), but can help us pass on information about those who are no longer with us. This may seem silly, but I discovered that I have several things in common with my father’s father’s father’s father’s father. While sending me some information about her family, one of my aunts asked me why she remembered those little known facts, and I told her that that was one of the great things about this website; we need to collect these little known facts before they disappear with the people who know them, and share them with others. They may not make a difference in anybody’s life, but it’s interesting and shows how much the family and culture has changed over the years, which is a good learning experience for our children.
As I mentioned before, I regret that I didn’t do more work on this tree while my grandfather was alive, and that’s because I let him down, and he would have proved an invaluable source of information. For one thing, a story he used to tell me about his ancestor mentioned above, and the information I learned about him on the Internet conflict, which either means somebody lied or misremembered. I also regret that I took for granted the fact that certain family members would be around forever and never bothered to ask them to tell me more about themselves, stories from their lives, and so forth. Again, there is some knowledge that is forever lost to us, and that makes my heart tear up. That is part of what made this an obsession now, though. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about those family members whom I can, both living and deceased. It’s exciting when I’m able to match up a name to website or finally figure out just exactly how two people are related (is it a common last name or two relatives prior to the marriage?).
I hope that my family continues to add to our family tree (there are about 200 members including deceased) and keep their profiles current. I also hope that together we can fill in the gaps and indeed leave an ever-expanding heritage for our descendants.
Sometime in the nineties, my father’s father told me that he received a letter from a person who started doing some research into our rich family history. He gave me the letter, some books about our family, town, and company history, and asked me to put together a family tree. I in turn purchased a family tree maker for the computer (“hard” floppy discs, remember those?) and got to work during my spare time (whenever I was procrastinating studying). I soon hit a roadblock, however, when I couldn’t figure out any more combinations for ACK and MK. Only so many of them had suffixes. Reflecting back, I should have just added letters or actual numbers for efficiency’s sake. Anyway, I never did finish the tree prior to my grandfather’s passing in 1995, and always regretted that fact. While in college, I received a letter from yet another person requesting information about my family when he stumbled upon some information during research. I told him I had to wait to return home, so now I can’t remember if I ever sent my records to him.
This past December I received a gift card to Shutterfly and decided to put it towards a Christmas gift for my mother’s mother in the form of a photo book. During this process I was attempting to gather lineage facts about her side of the family, so I did a quick search for free family tree programs on the Internet and discovered Geni. This allowed me to not only figure out how people were related, but invite my relatives to provide their vital statistics for my book. I then realized what a wonderful thing I had just begun. My husband’s father’s family published a family tree book (something you can do on Ancestry), and Deanna was born just in time for printing. That means that for all intents and purposes, the family tree stops there, along with jobs, passing relatives, etc. By having a digital tree, every new event and person can be recorded. This is a fabulous legacy that I can now leave not only my offspring, but the rest of my family as well.
Beyond knowing relations (and with the way our ancestors procreated, you need a tree to figure out how everyone’s related), we can include information about people’s education, careers, interests, pictures, videos, causes of death (cancer, heart disease, we’re all doomed), and so much more. Not only can this help all of us learn more about each other (our own little Facebook), but can help us pass on information about those who are no longer with us. This may seem silly, but I discovered that I have several things in common with my father’s father’s father’s father’s father. While sending me some information about her family, one of my aunts asked me why she remembered those little known facts, and I told her that that was one of the great things about this website; we need to collect these little known facts before they disappear with the people who know them, and share them with others. They may not make a difference in anybody’s life, but it’s interesting and shows how much the family and culture has changed over the years, which is a good learning experience for our children.
As I mentioned before, I regret that I didn’t do more work on this tree while my grandfather was alive, and that’s because I let him down, and he would have proved an invaluable source of information. For one thing, a story he used to tell me about his ancestor mentioned above, and the information I learned about him on the Internet conflict, which either means somebody lied or misremembered. I also regret that I took for granted the fact that certain family members would be around forever and never bothered to ask them to tell me more about themselves, stories from their lives, and so forth. Again, there is some knowledge that is forever lost to us, and that makes my heart tear up. That is part of what made this an obsession now, though. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about those family members whom I can, both living and deceased. It’s exciting when I’m able to match up a name to website or finally figure out just exactly how two people are related (is it a common last name or two relatives prior to the marriage?).
I hope that my family continues to add to our family tree (there are about 200 members including deceased) and keep their profiles current. I also hope that together we can fill in the gaps and indeed leave an ever-expanding heritage for our descendants.
Note to family members: If you have not been invited to join the tree and would like to, please email me or another relative if you don't have my contact info, and we can send you an invite to create your login name and password.
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