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FAMILY HISTORY TIDBITS
The Case for Documenting Yourself
(The following article by Jeff
Scism in 2000 presents a good case for writing a personal history on
yourself. Now is the time to start! --Wally Gray)
This article did not appear in the
newsletter
THE COMING DAY OF GENEALOGY
by Jeff Scism
Knowing where we are from is the first step on the road to where we will be. The
search for personal history and its relationship to our personal lives makes
history come alive. The lesson of genealogy isn't simply a knowledge of what
happened in the past, but also what we know about our present. Now and in the
future the history documented and saved for future reference will be the known
events of our contemporary past. Our views from the end of the 20th century will
be classical perspective at the end of the 21st century.
To put the concept in perspective, think about your family research and the
documentation you find about your 19th century ancestors. How does that
information impact on the data you are saving about the lives of the members of
your current family? To research the past and store that information for easy
future retrieval will be the legacy of today's genealogist/historian. A greater
legacy will be the way we store information about ourselves. Making the research
of our family's past a priority now but failing to document our own involvement
in current history is shortchanging the future.
Think about your ancestors of the year 1900, or 1800, or any year in the past.
How many of us can say we "know" these ancestors? How many of us have "living"
documents of these ancestors? Wills, marriage certificates, and short newspaper
notes are a poor "story" of a life spent. How many diary and journal writers
were there in our collective past? What was our ancestor's view of events of
his/her day? Knowing the regional history of an ancestor, and "milestone"
events, can give an indication of where and why, but to have the story in his or
her own words is a priceless insight into the person's life. Now, how many of us
have an ancestor's actual autobiography written in his or her own hand?
Right now you are a family historian studying the lives of all who came before
you. Are you documenting your own life in a "hard" form for the genealogists of
the future, so that in the year 2100 your great-great-grandchildren will be able
to say they know you? Documenting your life the way you would want your
ancestors to be documented is the first step to being the person your
descendants will know from the past, and a journal of your thoughts on current
events will be a marker and a reference valuable to many, not just your
descendants.
Make the year 2000 the year that genealogy unites past and present for the
future. Document yourself.
(Written by Jeff Scism,
scismgenie@juno.com, Flockmaster
International BlackSheep Society of Genealogists
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~blksheep "Really BAAAAD ancestors make
great genealogies"
Previously published by RootsWeb.com, Inc., RootsWeb Review:
RootsWeb's Genealogy News, Vol. 2, No. 34, 25 August 1999.
RootsWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/)