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Hi, Im new to this tribe, but not new to genealogical research. I've got my tree on the wall behind my computer...
I spend a lot of time thinking about my ancestors. I now know what a lot of them went through and have some details. And in someways it makes me feel sort of melancholy for the loss of history and details. The fact that life comes and goes and is soon forgotten. Does anyone else feel this way?
I spend a lot of time thinking about my ancestors. I now know what a lot of them went through and have some details. And in someways it makes me feel sort of melancholy for the loss of history and details. The fact that life comes and goes and is soon forgotten. Does anyone else feel this way?
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Re: Ancestry
Wed, May 11, 2005 - 1:18 PMDefinitely, Marcia. So much life and place and history, once thriving, now dust. The tiniest details of people's lives often reveal far more than their vital statistics do, and not having those details can sometimes drain the color from our picture of the past.
I do recommend that you try to not dwell on it, though. It's one of those things that you can't really go back and change. You can do your part to preserve the details *now*, though. Keeping a diary, taking lots of pictures, filming interviews with your family members -- and finding a way to preserve them and pass them on -- will spare your descendants. :)
Also, in this way, your energy is devoted towards something constructive and positive instead of feeding your melancholy.
I should take my own advice. :) -
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Re: Ancestry
Sun, February 19, 2006 - 1:54 AMI think about this same thing all of the time. This is why my ex-husband said my epitaph should read"Here lies Rebecca...she lived in the past". And yet the present slips away undocumented because it's "now", it's "just today", "the present". Like the past is more important because it is gone. As if the present is going to be the present forever. Wierd. -
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Re: Ancestry
Wed, April 5, 2006 - 9:25 AMI have been working on my family genealogy for about seven years. I try to track each branch back to the original immigrant. It gives me a real sense of ‘roots’ that I did not have before. So far, I have found 35 immigrants and all of them were here before the Revolutionary War. I tell my family that I want my headstone to read
Steven,
Son of Ronald,
Son of Edgar,
Son of Allen,
Son of Jacob,
Son of John,
Son of Johannes,
Son of Jacob,
Son of Melchior.
Melchior was a 1709 immigrant to Pennsylvania. I have sons and grandsons so this shows me that I am just one link in a long chain. -
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Re: Ancestry
Wed, April 5, 2006 - 12:53 PMI put a lot of (probably WAY TOO MUCH) trust in our current technology, especially when so much of it is based on the ability to codify our findings/thoughts/facts/feelings, even, and pass them on to others in a structured format.
If you (we all) are not using some form of geneology software that "lets you" (forces you) to categorize your information, you should start using something that does.
It's still obviously true that all passes from "dust to dust." But, if you can codify some of what you know and feel, this will help those "in the future."
For instance, I have an older cousin who asked me if I'd be interested in the information she had gathered over the years. Info. on 660+ people!! Of course I said I would, but dreaded the shaky ole' scratchings of what Shirley was going to send me... She sent me a diskette! She had been using the Mac version of the free software from the Church. I had to: get a copy of that, load up this file on a Mac, export the data, change it to... But still, I had all her thoughts, all in dedicated fields. Medical information. Rumors. Thoughts. Things like: a GGGfather had some light-skinned children, and some dark-skinned children, and he wouldn't sit with them all on the bus! He made the darker kids sit farther back, by themselves!
Certainly not verified fact, but I think this is the sort of thing you mean.How melancholy. What a sad commentary about one of my own ancestors and his feelings about his OWN CHILDREN! On the other hand, how wonderful that myrelative, a generation before me, captured this information and was able to transfer it to me without troulbe, and I now have it in other more current formats, ready to transfer to others in the "future"!
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