I write Family Stories

I write family stories of my ancestors.  As I do that I have to study history.  I need to know the conditions that they lived with, and how they coped with these things, if I can, and how it affected their families.  I search the Internet for pictures of the time, or transportation, household items (until I found Google images I had a hard time finding a picture of a wringer washing machine), old toys, etc.  I do this because I want them to know about what life was about at that time and how they coped.  I try to find tidbits about these people in newspaper articles, old letters, old pictures, in old books and magazines.  In other words I try to make them live again for my children. I love the insight it gives into their personalities. And in so doing I have come to love them and look forward to meeting them in the eternities.

In the Beginning.......

Old Remington Wide Carraige

When I started genealogy there were no computer, no word processors, and no Internet.  We used a pencil and paper.  We could buy Family Group Sheets and Pedigree charts and we filled them in by hand.  If you had the money you might be able to purchase a typewriter but if you made a mistake it was either do it over or white it out.  The only genealogy magazine that I knew about was "the Genealogical Helper" published by Everton Publishers, and I poured over every issue again and again.  I started to gather information by writing letters to everyone I could get an address for, then I waited and watched the mail for  a letter that would bring any little bit of information on the family.  Sometimes it was one piece of information per letter (one date or place), then I would send another letter.  How far we have come from the "good old days".