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Why Organize Your Family for Genealogy and Family History Purposes
Will you consider organizing your family for genealogy or family history?
Let me give you four good reasons why you should seriously consider organizing your family to help with your genealogy and family history efforts:
1. Your family will draw closer together.
2. Sharing the load makes the work easier and the results better.
3. The lives of family members will be enriched.
4. Genealogy will become even more enjoyable.
Your Family Will Draw Closer Together
As you accomplish the work of researching your ancestors, you will find that there will be greater love and concern among your living relatives as you pull together to identify those who have passed on and learn more about their lives.
In my immediate family, for example, we noticed a real uptick in the “feelings-of-family-closeness meter” as my brothers and sisters and I worked together to research and write the combined histories of our parents and grandparents. The shared experience of completing and publishing our book, Remember Who You Are, increased feelings of unity to a degree we had never felt before.
The same thing happened when we involved eleven relatives of our ancestral family organization in writing the histories of our great-great grandparents and their children. We never had so many relatives come to our family reunion in Idaho as when we wrote and published our research for that event.
Sharing the Load Makes the Work Easier and the Results Better
Much more can be accomplished in a shorter period of time when the load is shared. “Many hands make light work,” the saying goes. We have found it also to be true in genealogy.
In our family’s case of writing our family history, we found that dividing up the writing and research among eight individuals with the support of four others in handling editing, layout, cover design, and funding, meant that each of us had a manageable task to perform. As an added benefit, the quality of the finished product was far superior to what any of us could have accomplished on our own.
Another example occurred in our extended family. Banding together enabled our family to invest several thousands of dollars in professional research we never could have afforded on our own.
The Lives of Family Members Will Be Enriched
“Spreading the blessings” of genealogy and family history to other family members and not “hogging” them all to yourself will enrich their lives. Surely you have noticed the improvement in knowledge, understanding and appreciation when you, yourself, have been involved in producing something worthwhile rather than merely having the output of someone else’s work handed to you. Involve others in the effort. You’ll be doing them a favor!
Genealogy Will Become Even More Enjoyable
Doing genealogy on your own is like eating chocolate cake by yourself. It’s O.K. eating it by yourself, but sharing it with someone else makes it so much better. The same is even truer with genealogy. Having others to share the experience with, both the disappointment as well as the exhilaration, brings an inner peace and satisfaction that is hard to describe to those who haven’t experienced it yet.
As one who has organized the preparation and self-publishing of three family heritage books (one each for immediate, grandparent and ancestral families) let me encourage you to organize your family and involve them in family history and genealogy research. Your family will draw closer together. The work will be easier and the results will be better. The lives of family members will be enriched, and your genealogy efforts will become even more enjoyable. I promise these results will be yours if you do your part.
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