Thoughtful Thursday

Genealogy

I have always been a sentimental person. I have some jewelry that belonged to my great aunt and my great grandmother and I cherish it. One particular broach is a beautiful cameo and it's just awesome. The other pieces aren't something I would ever wear, but they mean something to me and I'll pass them down to my grand daughter if I ever have one. But, I was never really into digging into the past.




My mother-in-law had that drive. While I worked for her at her dress shop, she would have stacks of correspondence and paperwork that she had painstakingly obtained through what was then the only way to get it. Snail mail. She spent hours and hours writing and requesting certificates and documents proving who her ancestors were, where they lived and died and who their parents were.




In my late 30's when I began working at the county library, I caught the genealogy bug. There was one whole room dedicated to ancestral research and I stayed in that room as much as possible. Most folks try to work on one lineage at a time, but I couldn't stick to just one. I searched and dug for every scrap of information I could find on every line I had. I would stay on the microfilm machine for hours.




I now have notebooks full of documentation and information. I desperately need to organize them for future generations. I haven't been able to go very far with some of my lines, but for others I've found someone else who has done so online. It's amazing what the internet has done for genealogical research. One day, maybe my children and their children will be blessed by my research and what I've found.