I got to thinking about the comment my friend made on my last entry about hobbies and the first thing that came to mind was puzzle video games. That passed quickly, thankfully, and was replaced by one of the things that has been consuming a lot of my time (other than my kids), namely Family History.
Many people are familiar with the fact that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a large hand in helping people to research and preserve their family's histories. As a member who was born into an LDS family this has been in my background for years. It has, however, been in all of my family's background and when I found a desire to do research it was met with years and years of information that has already been found at least twice (if not more). It was then that I turned to my husband's family and found that I could help with the small projects here and there that have already been started and help to expand and suppliment what has already been found. While I cannot claim great success, the few small things that I have been able to dig up have had a profound effect on my understanding of my research.
Names and dates are important. This cannot be argued, because armed with this information you are able to track down and expand what you have. This pales in comparison with finding the stories. True, I haven't found many of the stories, but some of the names and dates I've found have made me want to know them. Siblings who have married siblings. Siblings who have married people with the same last name who aren't even related. A possible marriage between one man's grandson and his great-granddaughter. A census record that lists a step-daughter for an individual who happens to have the same name and age of that individual's possible granddaughter. Another set of cousins who married, had two (possibly three) children and then a definate separation when the wife returns to her parents and the man moves across the country to follow his religion. And these are the recent records. What about the Gmyr name which is relatively rare even in the original country of Poland (also known as Austria and Galicia depending on the time period). How many of these people are related to my husband? Are they willing to share their stories?
Oh how I wish I had those stories. Oh how I wish those who had them were willing to share.
10 months ago
You're lucky. There's one (distant) member of my family that's been keeping a record of the family tree, and he doesn't have any of the stories either. Thing is, we can only trace our roots to the late 1800's, when one ancestor pops up unexplained in Minnesota. The family name is very common in Germany, and we don't have specific records linking to anyone in particular to say why they left Europe.
ReplyDeleteSo, collect the stories you have now and record them as they happen - it'll make life easier for the next round of Gymrs.
I think that recording them as they happen may be the hardest part. It's one of the reasons I've started this blog, but I'm still terrible about it.
ReplyDeleteUnless you have concrete family records (such as a bible, or journal) going back further is hard. I'm hitting a wall around the same period of time because early census records were more interested in numbers than individuals and vital records can be sketchy.