How Can You Do Family History?

I included a quote in an earlier post "How I wished I had realized that family history is a perishable commodity. It disappears with time, as memories fade, and as loved ones pass on. I wish I had known that the most important aspect of family history is preserving a record of the present for the future."

I was talking to my mama about this blog and how I just want the stories documented.  I don't have tons, but as I find more I'll add them.  I have lists and lists of names and their children and their dates of birth and death.  But I wanted to know about them.  Sometimes that history may not be pretty, as I recently found with some of our family stories.  I'm going to include the dirty and ugly stuff too, to not include it makes it more of a fairy tale than history.  I love these imperfect people, maybe even more.  It can be tough, we disagree with family members at times, but our direct ancestors are "perfect."  I remind myself they were part of their times.  Why do I keep expecting them to think like I do, to think women were equal, that all races were equal, or that people could build machines that fly, right?  My mama said wouldn't you love to have a book of stories like you are putting together from 60 years ago?  Man, I would love that. 

So, what can we do to be sure our future families get that book of stories from 60 years ago?

• Capture stories - record grandmas, grandpas and older relatives telling stories about their lives.  
• Gather and take photos.  Photos are an important part of family history.  They need to be preserved and shared.
• Record your own life.  Telling your own story is part of doing family history work.  Keeping that record of your life is important.  There are tons of ways:  traditional journals, scrapbooks, blogs, videos, whatever it is you like to do.

I very rarely kept a journal and when I did, I got embarrassed and threw them all away.  I have nothing written from when I was younger.  Keep in mind when writing you are writing to your kids, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren.  You probs don't wanna get into that time you had a major make- out session with so-n-so, or that time you snuck out of your house with your cousin and met boys at the playhouse at the end of the driveway.  What? 

Trying to go back and write all your life down can be daunting, and difficult.  If you think you'd like to try, I have a great list of questions you can use.  You just pick a question each time you want to write and write about what is asked.  Either type up on the computer or write on notebook paper in a three ring binder.  Including dates the best you can - that way the pages can be reorganized in order as you add them.  Things like "write about 1st grade today, what school did you attend, who was your teacher, who was your best friend, what is your favorite memory about 1st grade, what other things happened during that year?"  or "Write about your wedding day."   "Write about {{child's name}} birth."   I think there are over 300 questions on the list.  This is also a great gift to put together for relatives for mother or father's day.  Give them a list of questions, a nice note book, a nice pen and make them work!  It occupies their old minds (that was for you mama).

Being in the records profession, I've learned a couple things that I had never thought of before:

• CDs - the average life time of a CD we burn ourselves is 5 to 10 years.  If you are keeping photos on CD's you need to move them to a new CD every 5 years.  Those dang things could end up last eleventy years, but you just never know.
• Digital photos - back up, back up, back up.  I can't express this enough.  My hard drive crashed about 8 years ago and I lost almost everything on that computer.  I have 3 external hard drives I back up to. {{obsess much}} but these photos are some of my most prized possessions.
• Digital photos, more - as technology changes make sure you move your pictures or convert them to whatever the new technology is.  Migrating them years and years later would be tough, or you think you have them on your hard drive, but your children 40 years later can't access them because the photo viewer is different than what we currently use.  Hope that makes sense.
• Jump drives - similar to CDs in terms of how long they might last.
• Photo Albums - those old "sticky page" photo albums are not acid and lignin free, which has to do with the structural integrity of the paper.  Already some of the ones I have are turning the photos yellow and making them sticky.  My recommendation would be to remove them all, scan them and put them in new acid free photo albums.  Holla if you want more info on this.
• Walgreen's or Wal-mart, use them (I can't believe I just said use Wal-mart).  We are basically digital photo peeps now.  Once a year send all those photos through Walgreen's (they always have coupons) and title the book "Family Photos from 2016." It would super awesome if you label each picture with who is in it, what's going on, etc.  But even just having the year is awesome.  This isn't a fancy scrapbook - just multiple photos on a page, I put mine in date order.  Having a printed copy helps if you lose your computer, but you still have digital copy for ease of use.

Well, was that way more information than you ever cared to read?  Or did you even get this far?  As a reward if you did I plan on posting a story next week about another murder!

I think you know I have a daughter serving an LDS mission.  As she's been out I've went through photos of her dad's side of her family and send her pictures of different relatives while serving LDS missions.  Emma has loved this and says it has made her feel apart of those relatives lives. Many of them died before she was even born.  This can apply to anything - college days, wedding days, first new homes, etc.

Family history can be done in so many ways.  Catch the bug a bit.  Love you all.

Final note:  I worry that everyone thinks this is a religious thing.  I hope you know family history is just that - a history of your family, of your roots.  You don't have to be religious to want to know your roots.  I say this because it's interesting that the minute a distant relative I connect with finds out I'm from Utah the typical questions come up.  "Are you Mormon?  Are you gunna baptize my family?"

Let me be open with you.  I am not doing this research to baptize your family into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Unless you specifically say "Please make sure to baptize {{insert name}}" I will not submit their names to the church or request any baptisms be performed for them.  If I ask for your information it's for preservation, because your my family.  If you have concerns, please feel free to reach out, I'm happy to talk to you about it.