YOUR ASSIGNMENT SHOULD YOU ACCEPT IT

 By Caroline Clemmons

I hope you’re enjoying the arrival of Fall. I love the colorful leaves and cooler weather. Someday, I’d love to visit New England at this time of year. Not likely to happen. I’ll have to content myself with a couple of watercolors done by a New England artist, Mrs. E. Van Liew.

Today, I want to encourage each of you to do something for posterity. Doesn’t that sounds important? In my opinion, it is. 

Here goes: Even if you couldn’t care less about genealogy or history, someone in your family’s future will. Start now and write down everything you remember your mom, dad, aunts, uncles, and grandparents telling you about their lives. I mean all the little stories that they told—good and bad—which seemed incidental at the time you heard them. Unless you record them permanently, those stories will disappear.

You don’t have to do any research! 

Facts remain for others to find. Thank goodness for our National Archives, for Ancestry.com, and for the massive archives stored by the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) in Utah. But, you see, those are just the skeleton of your past. You need the anecdotes to flesh out the body of information and give it life.

Personally, I have enjoyed research because (1) I'm a history nerd and (2) facts made history come alive for me. When you learn where those in your family served in wars back to the American Revolution, those people are not just names and dates—they’re individuals.

For instance, the reason ancestors of my dad's moved to Georgia was because they blew up an English munitions warehouse near the end of the American Revolution. You can understand how this made them extremely unpopular with the English, who put up handbills and issued warrants for the extended family. They had to abandon their former home quite rapidly.

I admit learning this relieved my mind. Previously I had wondered if they lived in Georgia because initially someone in the family had come when Georgia was a penal colony. <g> See, research can be liberating!

As I said, you don’t have to do research. 

Simply write the stories you remember. They don’t have to be in chronological order. Some of the stories will be funny, some exaggerated, and some sad. You’ll discover repeating cycles of strength and weakness. They are part of you. No, finding bad people doesn’t make you bad; that’s not what I mean.

I’ve done my part for my family. My mother-in-law asked me to write a book about her life for her grandchildren. I did, but then we had to have a second set of copies done for other people in the family. Since I did a book for my mother-in-law, I had to do one for my mother, even though I don't think she really cared until it was finished, other than the keeping things equal. (Hero’s parents and my mom were in the same Sunday School class.) My dad had asked me to write a book about his family, and I’d been collecting information for years. Unfortunately, he died before his book was printed. Now I’ve done three family books, and I’m done. My sister-in-law did one about Hero’s dad.

Now it's your turn for your family.  See how I passed the buck... er, I mean baton.

Stay safe and keep reading. Don't forget Sheriff Jesse Cameron and Rosalin Arnold's story comes out the 29th!