All in the Family

The loss of both a brother and a sister, and the fact that our remaining family members are so spread out across the country, has reminded me how important it is to share our family stories with each other, and with the next generations. I have those coming generations now as my nieces and nephews are old enough to have children, and some of those are nearing the ages to soon have children of their own.

With the advent of the internet and social networking, I now have contact with the family members of my parent’s generation, my own generation, nieces, nephews, and great-nieces and nephews—many of which I hardly knew or hadn’t seen since they were babies. I’m even in regular contact with cousins, both first and second, who I haven’t seen in years and years.

Many of these people are begging to hear more about the family members who have passed before them. A few years ago, I started a project to collect a one page history for as many of the members of my pedigree chart as I was able to do. I shared those pages with several of my family members via email at that time, but just keeping track was sometimes unwieldy to do.

So I’ve decided to start a new series here on my blog, with it’s automatic feed to Facebook, et al. I now that this series will not be important to all of you who read me regularly. You don’t know these people—well, there will be some you do! Just know I won’t be offended if you don’t read the Thursday posts.

But if there is one hope I would have for all of you who are not my family, it would be this: Know your family. Find out where you came from (you might be surprised, as I know my mother would have been if she only knew.)

For the rest of you, especially the ones who are related to me, I hope you learn something about the wonderful people who came before us and the legacies they gave us. Our pedigree is deep and varied, with one line dating all the way back to just after the life of Christ. Of course, I don’t know stories for all of these people as that would be impossible to do, but I hope to bring you as much insight as I can to those who I do know or were able to discover something about. 

I hope my family will send me additional stories, and feel free to print or save what I have written to pass on to their own future generations. As a great prophet once said, "The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead."

Next week, we’ll get started, so pass along the word.