Category: Tips

Creating a Family History Wall

11/16/2013

Way back in April, I wrote a blog post detailing a 'vision' I had for decorating one large wall in our home. I wanted to use maps, books, postcards, and other small pieces of artwork to tell the visual and geographic story of my and my husband's families, from their origins in Europe all the way up to the places where I and my husband grew up. It took several months, but my vision is more or less complete, and I'm so happy with the results that I wanted to share it with everyone, in the hopes that you may be inspired to do something similar in your home.

As I mentioned in my April post, I started buying maps and postcards off of websites like as eBay and Etsy. I also found a couple of books and small pieces of artwork that help to tell our family's story. (Tip: Don't limit yourself to U.S. sellers only; I found many unique postcards and maps through international sellers.) Once I felt that I had a good representation of the various branches of our family tree, I looked into ways in which I could frame these items. I visited a local custom framing shop in town. Let's just say that their prices were WAY out of my budget. My heart sank; I thought my project was over. I started looking around online and found an Ohio-based company called American Frame. Their easy-to-use website takes you step-by-step through the process of measuring and ordering custom mats and frames. Oh, and did I mention that their frames and mats were affordable? My project was back on track!

Here are some of the custom frames I ordered from American Frame. The photos do not do them justice, and there is some glare from the camera and nearby window. When choosing frames for each individual piece, I decided to go with a frame/mat that matched that ONE piece of artwork. In other words, I didn't try to "match" frames with each other, which the 'designer' at the custom framing shop was pushing me to do. I love the variety that resulted, and, as you'll see later, I think it gives the display as a whole a lot of personality. (Click on image for larger view.)

German map of the Balkan states in brown wood carved frame.

19th c. map of Polish Galicia in silver wood frame with blue mat.

Map of Italy in blue wood frame.

Map of Alsace-Lorraine in black carved wood frame and red mat.

Map of NYC harbor in a smooth charcoal black wood frame.

Map of immigrant ship routes in green wood frame.

Not all of my frames were custom-ordered at American Frame; I bought a lot of the postcard frames at Wal-mart. I used self-adhesive photo corners to mount the postcards on scrapbook paper.

Two vintage Cleveland postcards in 8x10 Wal-Mart frame.

Postcard of husband's home church in 5x7 Wal-Mart frame.

I knew that I wanted to display the framed maps and artwork on ledges, instead of hanging each frame individually. I wanted 4-6 larger shelves which I would arrange in two rows. The ledges HAD to have a forward 'lip' on them so that I could rest the frames on the shelf and not worry about them sliding off. I started looking around in some of the major home decorating chain stores and again I found that these shelves could possibly break my budget. And again, I took to the Internet and found a website called Exposures. The have a great selection of wooden and metal shelves and ledges in popular colors/finishes, and, if you sign up for their email list, they send you lots of coupons. Because I didn't want the shelves to be the focal point of the display, I purchased them in the white finish, which would blend in with our neutral walls and white molding. In hindsight, I probably should have purchased their 'extra-deep' shelves, because that would have given me a little more room on which to rest the frames - luckily, I didn't order any frames that were too deep, so the normal depth shelves ended up working fine for me.

Here is a photo of the entire display. Many thanks to my husband for hanging the shelves. I did not originally intend for the old sewing machine to become part of the display, but it works, especially since two of my great-grandmothers were pretty good seamstresses. I actually think it would be cool to add a few smaller items to represent some of the occupations of some of our ancestors - maybe a plumbing pipe/valve for my grandpa, and a small blacksmith tool and toy tractor for my husband's ancestors.

View of entire family history wall.

Here are a few close-ups of some of the other items on the ledges:

Postcard of hospital, book about my hometown, and vintage letterpress 'B' representing my Grandpa Bellan, who worked in printing.

Immigration ledge with books and vintage postcard of steamship in NYC harbor.

Map of my mother-in-law's home county and authentic 1949 Ohio license plate (year of birth for my husband's parents, both born in Ohio.)

German book about Lauterecken, Germany, one of my husband's ancestral villages.

Originally, I had thought that I might like to paint the words 'Our Family's Journey' on the wall somewhere at the top of the display. Now, I'm not sure if I still want to try that, or if I will just leave it alone and let the maps speak for themselves. Either way, the whole thing makes me smile when I pass it by, and I can't wait until my kids are old enough to wonder "Why is that map there?" or "What is that book about?" And now I can show friends and family members what I've learned through my genealogy research WITHOUT pulling out a binder full of death certificates and census records, which would undoubtedly put most of them to sleep.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the process of creating a genealogy history wall. I'd be happy to talk about it!

©2013, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Wedding Wednesday: Family Photos at Weddings

7/2/2013

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Today is my and my husband's ninth wedding anniversary. I thought about just posting some wedding photos from that day, but recently I've been trying to write more family history blog posts that attempt to help other family historians and give them tips about researching and archiving. So, today I'm going to share some photos that (I think) should be mandatory at every wedding. My husband and I didn't realize it during the reception, but our photographer went to every table and took a photo of the guests seated there. I remember getting the proofs back, seeing these photos, and saying to myself, "What a great idea!" Now, almost a decade later, I look back at these photos and I am extremely grateful that our photographer did this for us. A few of these family members have passed away and it's great just to see smiles on their faces. Some are family members who we didn't get to see very often, so it's great to have photos and be able to show my kids, "That's your great-great aunt." or "Those are Grandma K's godparents." The kids in the photos - oh my goodness, the kids have grown up SO much!. So, if you or someone you know is getting married anytime soon, suggest that they ask their photographer to do this and I guarantee they will thank you for it! (These are just a few of ours!)

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Visiting Ancestral Places...From Your Living Room

6/29/2013

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Family history researchers usually do a 'happy dance' when we discover a clue that leads us to that exact village or city where our ancestors once lived before "crossing the pond." And rightfully so - knowing exactly where great-grandma was born opens up so many doors as we try to research generations further and further back in time. And, once we find those special places in our family's history, we immediately feel a desire to go there - to see the buildings our ancestors may have lived in, to walk down a street they walked down everyday of their lives. But, let's face it, traveling thousands of miles is oftentimes not possible. Not to worry: Internet to the rescue! Below, I've listed some Internet resources and tools I have used to "see" these villages that are so far away. Give them a try, if you haven't already!

1.) Google it! Try seeing what an 'old-fashioned' Google search will get you if you type in the name of your ancestor's village. Nowadays, even some of the smallest European towns and villages have websites of their own. This is exactly how I found this website about my great-grandmother's village of Skrudzina, which is located in southern Poland. Using the Google Translate feature on my toolbar, I've been able to learn a little about the village's history from the site. Even if your ancestral village does not have its own website, there is a decent chance something from Wikipedia will pop up in your Google search. Also, when doing your Google Search, don't forget to click on the 'Images' button at the top of the search bar. Doing so will often return images of the town itself.

2.) Google Maps The Street View feature of Google Maps is a wonderful way of simulating a walk down the street of an old family neighborhood or town, as it looks in the present day. The Street View feature is still not available in all locations, but their coverage is getting better and better. I was surprised when I recently looked up my maternal grandmother's birthplace and found that there is indeed Street View available for Iselle, Italy, a very small town on the Swiss-Italian border. Isn't this a gorgeous view? I just love seeing all of the mountains in the background. (Click on photo to see the image directly from Street View.)

Google Street View in Iselle, Italy.

3.) Google Earth If you haven't yet downloaded Google Earth, do it...now. Like, stop reading my blog post and do it. The aerial details of the satellite images are scary-amazing - vegetation, land use, and urban development can all be deduced from looking at these images. Links to user photos posted via Panoramio are posted right on the satellite image, so all you have to do is click on the photo icons and the user-submitted photos pop up right there. Below is a screen shot of one of my husband's ancestral towns, Coesfeld, Germany. There are many, many photos available for viewing! And when I click on an icon, there is the photo! (That, by the way, is a photo of the church where my husband's ancestors were baptized and married; the present structure was built post-WWII because the previous building was destroyed by bombings.) The ability to view satellite imagery and photos is just one of the many great features in Google Earth that can be applied to genealogy; I highly recommend watching this video about Google Earth for Genealogy by Lisa Louise Cooke.

Google Earth Satellite View of Coesfeld, Germany.

After Clicking on a Photo Icon. Jakobikirche in Coesfeld.

4.) 360cities.net I recently discovered this website and really cannot express to you how much I love it. On this website, you can find 360 degree panorama photos for locations all over the world. Right now, it is the larger cities that have more "coverage," but their database is growing all the time as users continue to add to it. This, like Google Earth and Google Street View, is great for seeing what locations look like in the present day. Below is a screen shot of a panorama from a rooftop in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, where my great-grandfather was born. The detail of the photos is just wonderful and, of course, I can rotate it all the way around if I choose. There is also this cool street map utility on the left side that shows you exactly what your field of view is in this image. The map also can be zoomed in or out and closed and opened at your convenience. (Panorama shown below by Martin Kacvinsky.)

Rooftop in Palermo from 360cities.net

5.) WhatWasThere I have blogged about this website before, so I'll direct you to that post for the details about this site's features. WhatWasThere helps users upload historical photos and overlay them onto the Street View feature of Google Maps. Site users then have the ability to fade in and out between the old photos and the present-day street view. This site is a lot like 360cities in that the places YOU are interested in may or may not have photos associated with them. But, also like 360cities, their photo database is continually growing, so it's worth checking back often.

6.) Postcards. Old vintage postcards are GREAT for looking into the past. In the world of postcards, those that show scenes of villages, countrysides, city streets, buildings, etc. are referred to as 'topographical.' eBay is, by far, my favorite place to find postcards of places. I especially love that eBay is international and that purchasing items through international sellers is relatively easy using PayPal. Through eBay, I've been able to find and purchase the three postcards shown below. two of them depict ancestral villages as they were almost 100 years ago. When looking for postcards, don't forget to search for postcards of old buildings that may have special meaning to your family. That postcard of the hospital in the center is where one of my great-grandmothers died in 1919. She was only 29 years old and my grandfather was only four when she passed away, so nobody in our family knows anything about her, other than that she was a Polish immigrant. This postcard gives a little more substance to her story. (The building itself was torn down decades ago.)

Iselle, Italy, birthplace of my maternal grandmother

Cleveland's St. Alexis Hospital

Réchésy, France, one of my husband's ancestral villages.

7.) Facebook. Type in the name of a town or village in the Facebook search bar at the top, and see what comes up. Just like with traditional websites, many of even the smallest towns have their own Facebook pages. Recently, I even found a personal Facebook blog all about one of my husband's ancestral villages, Hannonville-Sous-Les-Côtes in France. The page manager posts some lovely photos of the village and surrounding countrysides on a regular basis - I truly feel like I have been there. And, thanks to the fact that she knows some English, we've also been able to 'talk' a little bit about genealogy and family surnames, too!

8.) Books. Yes, I said it. Books are still a great way to learn about ancestral places. Genealogists can spend hours in libraries and archives trying to dig out information about specific people in their family trees, but what about the places where those people came from? Sometimes locating information about a small town will mean combing through a book about a larger administrative district or state. OR sometimes you may get lucky and find a book or pamphlet that is specifically about your town of interest. I was recently able to find (on eBay again) a book about Lauterecken, Germany, one of my husband's other ancestral villages. It is being shipped straight from Germany, so I have not received it yet, but I'm excited to learn more about the town and to see what types of images are included in the book.

©2013, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Timelines at The Indiana Historical Society

6/22/2013

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This morning, I went to the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis and attended a talk about family history timelines presented by Betty L. Warren, one of the Historical Society's professional genealogy researchers. She showed us several timelines and personal chronologies that she had set up for her family and one of her client's families (actually, the current governor of Indiana). It was very helpful to see a couple of different formats for timelines. She even showed us a way to incorporate some basic source citations into the timelines themselves. I also really like how she showed us how to visualize overlap among family members of different generations using simple colored posterboard:

Sample timelines made by Betty L. Warren.

To summarize her main points, timelines are great for genealogy research because:

1.) They allow you to visualize an ancestor's major life events all at once. Very helpful for making sure that dates make sense (for example, if a U.S. land grant happened before the person's immigration date, you know something is wrong there).

2.) Timelines enable you to see the gaps in your data. So, timelines themselves are a very helpful research tool that should be used even when you don't have a lot of life 'events' to put into the timeline.

3.) Placing a historical timeline next to a personal timeline can help you understand WHY your ancestor immigrated, or moved, or joined the military, or contracted cholera, etc.

4.) Making timelines, either on poster board or on a computer, is inexpensive. Most genealogy software these days does have the ability to construct timelines for you, but you don't NEED those programs to do it. She showed us a simple way to use Microsoft Word to construct a basic timeline.

5.) Timelines are great ways to get kids involved in family history research. My children are still too young to understand many genealogical concepts, like generations and historical context, BUT they DO understand life events, like being born, going to school, getting married, having children, etc. I can make a timeline for my great-grandmother and visually show them that she did all of these things, even if they don't yet 'get' the scope of how long ago these things occurred.

Betty L. Warren's contact information can be found on this web page.
Cyndi's List also has a great collection of websites that can help you create family history timelines and world history timelines.

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I Paid for a Document and It Paid Off

6/18/2013

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I've only been doing genealogy work seriously for a couple of years. My main sources of documents for my and my husband's ancestors have been FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, GenealogyBank, and Fold3 (only used free trial period). I recently was able to do some on-site library research and will certainly be doing more of that in the future. Up until a few weeks ago, I was reluctant to order and pay for documents like death certificates, because I've heard stories about researchers paying for them only to find that, in their ancestor's case, it didn't provide any clues helpful for further research. (Or, even worse, the next-of-kin who filled out the death certificate provided incorrect information about the deceased's place of birth and/or parents!).

Several weeks ago, I read this blog post by Judy G. Russell a.k.a. The Legal Genealogist, entitled "Ordering the SS-5." The SS-5 form is the form one uses to apply for a Social Security Number. It is filled out by the person requesting the number, or for more recent cases, by the parents of the child that the number is for. So, the information listed on this form is often (not always) first-hand information from the applicant herself! (A person must be deceased in order to obtain his/her SS-5 form.)

My great-grandmother, Sofia Krupa Bodziony, immigrated to the U.S. from Poland in 1910. I was able to find her village of birth on her naturalization forms, but I did not know the names of her parents. The Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, Ohio makes it pretty difficult to obtain parish marriage records (where the parents of the bride and groom MAY be listed), but the Diocese also states on their website that parental information is often withheld (yes, even if they were married way back in 1911.) So, I decided to order my great-grandmother's SS-5 form using the online order form. The document cost $27, which I admit I sort of cringed at when I submitted my credit card information.

The turn-around time on this request was pretty darn quick. A couple of weeks later I received an envelope from the Social Security Administration with a letter explaining what document they sent me AND a photocopy of the document itself. It turns out my great-grandmother filled out an IRS form to obtain a Social Security number, but the form itself contains the same information as the SS-5. (Gotta love government bureaucracy.) While she did not list the name of her ancestral village, she does list the names of her parents, 'Katherine Mourdas' and 'Joseph Krupa'.

Obviously, I was more than happy when I saw the information on this form. Having these names will surely help me find family records once I am able to find/read birth and sacramental records for her ancestral village. It was money well spent, and I am thinking about ordering a couple of other SS-5 forms for two of my other great-grandparents.

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Tuesday's Tip: I Love Wills!

6/10/2013

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Queen Isabel la Catolica dictating her last will and testament (Eduardo Rosales, 1864)

Over the past few days, my new favorite genealogy document has become the will. You know, that document you write before you die so that people know what to do with your home, land, and possessions. FamilySearch actually has a pretty decent online collection of Ohio Probate Records, and I've found many wills belonging to my husband's ancestors. (Unfortunately, the records are not recent enough to include the wills of any of MY ancestors.) And, let me tell you, just in the two days I've been looking through them, these documents have helped me solve some family tree mysteries. I'm even thinking of having a regular 'will' theme day on my blog maybe biweekly, in which I discuss individual wills and the mysteries that they helped me solve. Of course, after reading a will, you may have more questions about the family than you originally had, so wills may also put you out on the hunt again for more information (which certainly isn't a bad thing!)

What can you learn from wills?

- Name deceased person (testator) went by. For example, one of my husband's ancestor's was born Johann Heinrich Rolfes, but his will is signed 'Henry Rolfes.' So, now I will search for Henry Rolfes in other records and search engines because this is likely the name he used.
- Residence of testator and location of any land holdings.
- Sometimes date of death of testator, although I've found that it's not always directly stated.
- Name of spouse, if still living.
- Names of children and, sometimes, grandchildren and/or siblings of testator. This often includes daughters' and granddaughters' married names, which can be so difficult to figure out sometimes.
- Residences of children and/or grandchildren. Sometimes this may just be a state (if they live in a different state from testator) OR, if they are more local, it may be an actual town.

Pay attention to:

- Witnesses of Will: Often extended family members, close friends, or neighbors. If you have an ancestor's will, but cannot find him in, say, a census schedule, try searching for these witnesses instead. It may lead you in a roundabout way to YOUR ancestor's whereabouts.

- Date on which will was created/signed by testator. If great uncle Johnny is specifically excluded from great granddad's will, and the will was created ten years before great-grandad's death, whatever happened that angered the 'old man' happened *before* that will was created. Just a little clue if you are trying to figure out family relationship dynamics. (And, yes, I recently just found a will of one of my husband's ancestors who specifically excluded two of his sons from most of their inheritance due to "disobedience," but there was, of course, no elaboration on said disobedience.)

I have seen some incredibly detailed wills in which the testator is very specific about which possessions go to which descendant, but I've also found wills that only consist of a sentence of two, in which the testator leaves all of his land/possessions to his spouse. In any case, they are definitely documents that are worth looking for in order to help you tell your family's stories.

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Church Record Sunday: Catholic Directories on Google Books

5/18/2013

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Over the past week or so, I have been (slowly) researching one of my husband's distant uncles, Henry Drees, who was a Catholic priest in Ohio during the late 19th and very early 20th centuries. I have been using various Catholic directories on Google Books to trace his career and places of residence between census schedules. Wikipedia does a nice summary of the evolution of Catholic Directory publishing in the 19th century.

What makes these directories so helpful? The directories, usually published annually, provides a listing of every Catholic-run church, hospital, school, college, orphanage, asylum, convent, seminary, and missionary in the United States. And, actually, many of the directories that include the U.S. also include British North America as well. This one, from 1876, includes a listing of clergy from Ireland, too:

Each diocese/archdiocese is given its own sub-section; within the city proper, the parishes are listed alphabetically by name (left). Then, every smaller town in that diocese that has a Catholic church is listed alphabetically (right). If the church has full-time pastor and assistants, their names are listed. Some of these directories will provide a church's "ethnicity," if its services were typically conducted in a language other than English or if the majority of its parishioners were of a particular nationality.

Sadlier's Catholic Directory, 1891,

Sadlier's Catholic Directory, 1891.

Obviously, if you have relatives who were Catholic priests, these directories are wonderful for figuring out which institutions they served at and when. As I mentioned above, these directories also list Catholic schools and hospitals, which were often run by women's religious orders. The directories DO list the names of the women in charge of these institutions, BUT many women serving in Catholic religious orders adopt new religious names once they take their final vows. So, unless you know the name your relative took at the time of her vows, you might not be able to find her if she is listed, say, as Mother Superior of a convent.

The directories also have an obituary section in which the deaths of priests and other female and male religious members that occurred over the past year are listed. Typically, due to space constraints, not much information is listed: Date, name, location, age, order - SOMETIMES place of birth and cause of death are listed, but not always. The bonus in the obituaries is that women religious often have their birth names listed next to their religious names and titles.

Even if you do not have ancestors who were priests or other Catholic religious members, you may find these directories helpful. Perhaps you know your relatives were Catholic and you know the town in which they settled. Use these directories to figure out what church they attended (and then try to track down those sacrament records!). Perhaps you don't know where your Polish Catholic immigrant great-grandparents attended church in a bigger city, like Cleveland. Use these directories to figure out where the Polish Catholic churches were located and start researching those churches first. Remember that Catholic churches and schools are not static entities; new ones open, old ones close and merge with other parishes. These directories give us a snapshot of which parishes and schools were open and active every year in just about every location in the country.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many Catholic directories from the 19th and early 20th centuries can be viewed and downloaded for free through Google Books. Simply go to Google Books and type "catholic directories" in the search box. You will be able to browse through them and, if you are looking for a specific year or range of years, you can narrow down your search even further.

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When Nature Steals Our Memories

3/18/2013

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Most of you who read my blog regularly already know that in my pre-kid days, I worked as a meteorologist. One of my former professors, Dr. John Knox, made the news today for a study of his that was recently published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Using another woman's Facebook page that successfully helped reunite lost objects with their owners, he and his students traced the paths of peoples' personal items as they were picked up and deposited by storms during the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak in Alabama. Some of the recovered items had great amounts of sentimental value to the people who lost them, and, as stated in the article, "Knox said he sought to teach them how to conduct the research in a way that was ethical and sensitive to the victims since the tornadoes destroyed lives and homes."

Ten years ago, I would have found this study interesting mostly for the potential it has to help scientists understand the dynamics of a severe storm system. (Imagine a tornado striking a facility containing toxic or radioactive substances and needing to know where to evacuate and/or warn people who live downstream.) Since "crossing over" into the role of a family historian, I have developed a new appreciation for the destructive potential of Mother Nature. Yes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires cause terrible damage to buildings and infrastructure, but what about the family heirlooms INSIDE those buildings? Photo albums, birth certificates, church sacrament and education records, newspaper clippings, letters, and diaries all help tell the stories of our ancestors and will someday help tell OUR stories. When items such as these are picked up by violent atmospheric winds or damaged beyond repair in a flood or wildfire, they are likely gone forever and so is a part of our families' histories.

Unlike our ancestors, we are fortunate today to have the option of digitization when it comes to photos and any sort of paper-based records. But how many of us actually do it? Not only that, but once the information is scanned onto a computer, how many of us save it in multiple places - on a separate 'cloud' drive or on a CD or external hard drive that is stored at a location AWAY from our place of residence? If you are, like me, into preserving your family's memories, you are probably likely to take these precautions, but the average person usually does not, and when nature strikes, generations of memories may be lost. We also need to continue to support our libraries in their efforts to digitize historical records, because, unfortunately, they suffer from the effects of natural disasters just as much as the rest of society.

(By the way, the image above is the front page of the Chicago Herald Examiner from March 20, 1925. On March 18, 1925, an exceptionally strong and long-lived tornado (or a continuous series of strong tornadoes - it is still debated), completely destroyed several towns in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people and injuring over 2,000. It is known as the Tri-State Tornado and, to this day, remains the deadliest tornado in our nation's history.)

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Tuesday's Tip: Crossing State Lines

3/5/2013

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Kindergarten sign-ups have started in my town, which means that I get to register my eldest child sometime within the next few weeks. (Not even sad or sentimental about it; he's ready to go - he NEEDS to go :-) Of course, that means I had to get out his birth certificate. I haven't really looked at it much since his birth (maybe once for t-ball registration?), so I spent some time staring at it. When my kids were born, we lived in northern Kentucky, but both of them were born in Hamilton County, Ohio. (I was very high risk and needed care from specialists at one of the major Cincinnati hospitals.) I looked at the birth certificate through the filter of a genealogist's eyes and thought to myself, "Man, if one of his descendants is ever searching for his birth records, he or she may really have trouble finding them." We never had a residence on the Ohio side of the river, neither me nor my husband ever worked there, and we weren't registered at any churches there. (Of course, I'm *hoping* that all my meticulous genealogy record-keeping will ensure that none of my kids' descendants will ever have to search for this kind of stuff :-)

Once you've been doing family tree research for a little while, you learn to check a neighboring state's records if your ancestors lived and/or worked near the border. But, if you are just beginning your research, you may run up against a bit of a "brick wall" when trying to locate certain records. Soon enough, you realize that finding records "across the border" can be quite common. My husband's maternal grandfather lived in Mercer County, Ohio, which is on the Ohio-Indiana border; however, he passed away in Indiana because that was where the nearest big hospital was located. A ggg-uncle of my husband's was married, worked, and lived in Cincinnati for most of his life, but in his old age he went to live with his son, who lived across the river in Kentucky. He passed away and is buried in Kentucky.

So, if you are ever stuck looking for a particular birth, death, or burial record, AND if the person lived relatively close to another state, check records from that state. You just may find what you are looking for!

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Tuesday's Tip: Designating Tomorrow's Heirlooms Today

12/11/2012

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Family historians and genealogists are often so consumed with learning about the lives of dead ancestors that we forget that each of us living today is an important piece of our family tree puzzle. What are we doing to make sure that our treasured objects and memories are preserved for future generations? This post is meant to encourage you to think about how you want to be remembered and to remind you to take the time to set aside the things and memories that are true representations of your life and personality.

Think about physical objects you would like to leave to your descendants. In this case, I'd like you to focus on things that are exclusively yours - not other family heirlooms you have inherited from older generations. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking about what you value:

- Things you had to work hard for: A university degree or dissertation, a medal from a race or other sporting event in which you participated, a volunteer or service award, a uniform or piece of equipment representing your career path, books, poems, or stories you have written (published or unpublished), your own genealogy research.

- Things of sentimental value: A wedding ring, photo albums, ticket stubs, a favorite childhood toy or book, special notes or greeting cards.

- Things you made: Quilts and knitting projects, pottery, artwork, hand-crafted furniture, recipes you created.

- Things that reveal your personality: Your favorite music album, book, or film, a personal journal, a favorite piece of jewelry or clothing, a favorite piece of artwork.

Once you decide what objects you would like to pass on, it's important that you write down what these objects are and when you received them, AND explain why they are so special to you. The grandkids are much more likely to save a couple of old concert tickets if they know that they were from grandma and grandpa’s first date. Then, make several digital AND paper copies of this list and keep them in safe, but accessible, locations. Don’t undervalue the objects, experiences, and memories of YOUR life; to future generations they will be worth more than you know.

©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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