Ancestry Magazine

As I read the wonderful author contributions in this magazine, I was reminded of the richness and diversity of the historical materials that are increasingly available for us to mine for family history. The technological revolution that is taking place right before our eyes is making it possible to locate ancestors and living relatives faster than most of us would have dreamed possible just a couple of years ago.

Though it’s possible to trace pedigrees across centuries and continents quicker than ever, I worry that we aren’t doing enough to save the history that’s around us every day. Our children’s children may well inherit a perfectly documented pedigree chart, complete with census and other public record images to prove how they are related to our ancestors, but will they also inherit the stories of the events that are molding the personalities of the present generation?

We may have generated a timeline that will show where and when our ancestors lived and what historical events were going on in their lifetimes, but have we created timelines for our own lives?

Recently, I found a photograph of the back of the house where I grew up. The unmarked picture would mean nothing at all to my grandchildren, but so much of my forgotten past came back to me as I studied it. The milk bottles were by the back door, the wooden lawn chair and the gate my grandfather had ma de looked brand new, the clothesline where my mom had spent a good part of her life pinning up freshly washed clothes was visible, and I could almost smell again the fragrance of her favorite oleander bushes that were in full bloom when the picture was taken.

If I had taken some time to write when I found the photograph, I could have filled pages with the memories the snapshot evoked. The picture is of a place, but the memories triggered by it are all about the people who lived there—the family who adopted me, and especially the mother who sacrificed so much so I could have a better life.

My daughter Laura recently told me how much her little girls love to see the house where their daddy grew up and the nearby high school where his mother taught for many years. Since my son-in-law’s father died when he was only four years old, and his mother died the year before he married my daughter, these places are especially meaningful connections to the grandparents these little girls never knew.

Memories of the homes and communities where we lived as children continue to exert vivid emotional power on us as adults, even though we may be far removed from them by time or geography.

In our haste to document the intervals between birth and death of our ancestors, I’m hoping that we are not neglecting to save our own stories and those of the people and places we know and remember right now.

The stories of lives have the power to bind one generation to another more than any public records of our ancestors. And no one can tell about the present time better than we can. It’s time to start writing.