Genealogy

 Many moons ago, I say many moons ago because I've forgotten when I first purchased this program, I started populating a genealogy program to have a record of my ancestry and to be able to pass that knowledge on to my offspring and other relatives, should they so desire.   I pursued this endeavor fervently; searching public records for birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, social security records, censuses,  etc..  Asked questions of living relatives reminding myself that I wished I had had the forethought to do that when many of my elders were still here to communicate with. Gathering data, though time consuming, was/is relatively easy, and more so today with the internet.  Of course there was internet when I started, but the enormity of knowledge available today is far beyond what was available back when I started; I relied on old newspaper files and municipal clerks as much or more than the internet.

When I traveled away for my employment, eight years ago, my dedication to finding info and updating the program waned.  Even close family deaths and marriages etc, that appeared in the local newspaper were relegated to a pile of like scraps of paper loosely kept in folders labeled; genealogy.

Then 2 years ago my laptop died, sending up a message; hard drive not found.  By then I had an iPad and my laptop had been relegated to infrequent blog entries and even rarer genealogy entries.  All that to say, my internet needs were being met with a combination of iPad and smart phone and stifling my motivation to repair/replace my laptop.

With the advent of my retirement my inclination to revive  and restore to current times the dormant genealogy program rekindled.  However I was worried that the death of my computer may have wiped out and made irretrievable any and all info I had entered into the program.  Fortunately, also many moons ago, I purchased a program "Carbonite" which regularly backed up my laptop info.

Enter now a extremely intelligent granddaughter who helped me purchase a new laptop and go through the process necessary to have "Carbonite" repopulate my new laptop with the saved content of the old laptop,  Easy-peasy I was back in business.

Now that I'm entering the info from years of collecting info from newspaper obituaries and other sources the program has grown from some 900+ individuals to now 1,152 individual entries.  Of course not all those people are direct relations; spouses, spouses parents, their siblings and other relations are of course entered in an attempt to flesh out a community of relations going back to the 1600's to include not only my own, but also my wife's family as well as the families that our children married into.

Gathering and entering data, while not necessarily easy, is the easy part.  The challenge is to populate these entries with anecdotes and history which brings these people alive, so-to-spesk, making them real; relatable rather than just a list of dates and cursory facts.

My previous two blog entries are an example of what I'm referring to and this is the reason that talking to your older relatives while they are still here is so important to carrying family lore along to future generations.