It’s time to refocus and rededicate a bit of yourself to future family members.  I had three great aunts and a great uncle that never married or had children. To my siblings and cousins, they were like having extra grandparents since they didn’t have any of their own grandchildren.  They took the time and effort to look into the family history.  It was quite an undertaking since there was no Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, newspapers online or Wikipedia.  But they did have funeral notices, newspaper clippings, family lore, library micro fiche, and Collier’s Encyclopedia.  They are the reason I know that branch of the family came from Dresden, Germany in the mid 1800’s.  I always knew that branch better that the other 3 because of their dedication to passing on the family data.  I have one of the many copies they made of their research and thank them frequently as I try to recreate the rest of the tree. 

So whether you have children or not, you came from someone, somewhere and your efforts will make a difference to and be appreciated by someone, sometime. 

But we all know that life gets busy. We get distracted.  We forget about things that are not pressing and then 10 years later we think, “Why didn’t I do that?”  There will be times when you just get too busy.  Other times you’ll be waiting for a picture from a relative and time seems to grind to a stop. Then you put it aside and forget.  Here are a few ways to keep it going:

1.      Choose a time to work at this each week. Even a half hour will really make a huge difference by the end of a year.

Week 1.  We began our journey by writing down what we knew of our family tree, planning a specific time to dedicate to this project each week, and started the dialogue by asking Mom to share some stories.

Week 2. We took stock of what we had to work with, started organizing it and watched a video on how to preserve any memories we are gathering now on our smartphone.

Week 3. We focused on the military services within the family and remembered a hero.

Week 4. We learned the value of digitizing, made plans on how we were going to scan, and began scanning.  (Remember this one is now something we’ll do each week.)

Week 5. We prepared to begin interviewing, by making a plan to visit someone in the family, looking at the lighting and sound, and downloaded the meeting planner with questions

Week 6. We delved deeper into the interview process with tips and tricks to get the best interview footage, learned about B-roll, and made plans to interview Dad.

Week 7 That brings us to this week with a refocus and recap.  We’ll try to do that every 6-8 weeks or so. Not only will it keep us on track but we’ll be able to go back to specific weeks in case your timing is a bit different than our blog’s.  

It’s time to pause, recap and refocus.  We are in the midst of gathering your family history, the stories and the media that will relate that history and those real life stories to future generations.  Which would move you more, “Our family came from Ireland” or “Your grandfather’s grandfather came from Ireland in 1895.  Here’s a picture of the very boat he came on which landed in Boston. Here’s a picture of the passenger list.  It appears he came without any other family.  He was 28 and single.” Now you want to know more!  Why did he leave his country?  When did he meet and marry my great-great-great grandmother? When did the family leave Boston?  How did our family get to Chicago?  We now want to go beyond facts to stories and get to know him better!

Pictures really are worth a thousand words.  So much more can be gleaned from a picture. Look at the above picture again. Can you now picture yourself on that boat? What would it have been like? Even more can be gleaned from moving pictures!  Watching – with or without sound – the interaction of family members can tell you much more about them than a name on a tree. 

So we are gathering and digitizing as much as we can to compile a family history video and book to pass on to many generations to come.  Why both?  Think about how much technology has changed.  Think about how the printed word has always been our back up.  So in the interest of redundancy, we will make an engaging video but we will back it up with a digitized AND printed book.  Both the video and the book will be catalogued with an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and be available on the cloud.  If you are American, it can also be housed digitally at the Library of Congress.  We are the American history so each of our immigration or family history stories are part of what makes America what it is today. Other countries have national libraries too so no matter where you are from or where you live now, you can probably submit your family history to your national library if you so choose – if it’s digitized.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned while working on my own family history videos it’s that I wish my family had passed on more stories, taken more pictures and videos, drawn the family tree full of facts, dates, and places and passed it down somehow.  Any one of those things would have made this easier and more comprehensive for my future great-great-great grandchildren. 

So the goal this week is to put ourselves into our future family members’ shoes and recognize the significance of what we are working on.  Your efforts today will be greatly appreciated tomorrow!