Ancestry Magazine

As family historians, we have a deeper-than-average sense of history. More than names and dates on a sterile pedigree backdrop, the human experiences of our ancestors have a unique power to teach us, guide us, and inspire us.

Willa Cather wrote: “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as though they had never happened before.” As we send this magazine to press, the dark clouds of war are hovering over us and the world is perhaps entering one of its most dramatic stories. Hard times tend to bring out the best and the worst of mankind and there is much to learn from it all.

A history professor taught me long ago that though we study events—when and where they happened, and what went right and wrong—we don’t really learn from the past. Was he right?

As family historians, I believe we have a deeper-than-average sense of history. What’s even better is the fact that we have an extraordinarily personal way of learning from it. More than names and dates on a sterile pedigree backdrop, the human experiences of our ancestors have a unique power to teach us, guide us, and inspire us.

Since scarcely any generation has gone untouched by war, military themes and the effects of war tend to play a large role in our family lives. We are most fortunate to live in an age when various technologies allow us to locate, access, digitize, preserve, and share more and more details of our predecessors’ stories in peacetime and in war.

One of the most intriguing tales I heard about my family was that of my ancestor who was said to have been a Frenchman who came to America with LaFayette. While I’ve yet to prove the tragic story my aunt told me about this sailor who lost his life at sea, I’d have to say that he was most responsible for sparking my interest in family history. Hearing of another ancestor’s experience in the Civil War and reading my uncle’s poignant letters from World War I battlefields in France were strong doses of the reality of war and its far-reaching effects on our family. Perhaps the hardest-hitting was my grandfather’s grief-filled thoughts as he wrote of losing “Edwin B. Dyer, my only son” as a result of being gassed in France. I’m also old enough to have seen firsthand the stress my family went through when my older brothers fought in World War II and then in the Korean War. Fortunately, all of my brothers came home safely, but their lives and the lives of our family were forever altered by their experiences.

In our lifetime, we have seen death and destruction on horrific levels. We’ve also seen striking technological progress, wonderful scientific and medical advances, the widespread growth of educational opportunities, the spread of democracy, and for most of us a lifestyle improvement that our ancestors only dreamed of. We have taken courage and hope from the stories of our ancestors and living family members.

As my daughter, Juliana Smith, recently wrote in the Ancestry Daily News: “We live in scary times, but as I look back at the challenges and dangers that my ancestors faced, I still feel quite fortunate. And as I learn more about them and the lives they led, the dangers they conquered and the brave steps they took to earn a better life for their families, I feel a great love and respect for them.”

The big question is: Are we teaching the current generation and saving the stories so that future generations can benefit from them? The pages of this issue of Ancestry are filled with ideas to discover and preserve these priceless treasures. Valerie Holladay’s article, “The Story of My Life,” is designed to give you a sense of the importance of writing personal history, and the critical strategy and details for following through. Just possibly our children and our children’s children can learn from these stories. If they do, they might not have to repeat the bad parts that happened before.