In
a blog post I read the other day by Lorine McGinnis Schulze in the Legacy
News she made a comment I found intriguing, “… I
often feel bad that I'm doing so much that I'm not leaving my grandchildren the
fun of the hunt!”
This,
of course, assumes your children and/or grandchildren will be interested in the
subject at all.
It
seems almost everyone involved in family history societies these days is
worried about what is going to happen to their group in the future, as old
members decide they can no longer participate, or die off.
Recently,
as the Editor of Relatively Speaking (the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society), I have
been involved in putting together an issue that had the theme of Youth and Genealogy. I had the pleasure
of sourcing and now publishing articles from many authors who had a myriad of
ideas about how to interest young people in family history. We even had three
stories written by 11-year olds on research they did for a school project. It
was all quite eye-opening although what the future holds for the AGS and other
similar associations may still be up in the air.
Anyway,
I thought about Lorine’s comment and came up with the following ideas:
1.
Family lines expand as each generation matures and gets
married. For their children there are now two more lines in the family to learn
about and, judging by the number of people active in family history research
now, it is probable that many of the new branches will not have been studied.
In my own family, my aunt did an amazing job putting together
information about my mother’s side but it was left to me to dig
into my father’s ancestors.
2.
More data is continuing to be made available, especially on
the Internet. We have only made a start in seeing important documents digitized
so it is more than likely that there will continue to be a great deal of “new”
information for our children and their children to look at and add to their
family history library. As much as I have done in genealogy, I know there is
still a great deal more to research – every month, it seems I find something
new.
3.
As genealogical research expands, there are more and more
groups of people getting together to do joint projects. This is partly because
there is so much information to wade through but it is a direct result in so
many more people being able to reach out to each other directly and almost
immediately through social media.
4.
Anyone who thinks they have not made mistakes in their family
trees needs to think again. As confident as I am in my work, my grandchildren
might well find some additional information that will disprove some of my ideas.
Judging by some of Lorine’s descriptions in her blog piece mentioned above,
there could be many current genealogists whose work might be questioned by
their descendants.
I am
not worried that I will have found everything there is to find on my family. I
am more concerned with who will take charge of all my books and files when I am
gone, to preserve my years of work as well as that of my aunt and all the
cousins who have helped out with their own data.
Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated
