During my "Planning a Future for Your Family's Past" webinar for the
Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston on Sunday, I spoke about how to plan ahead to save your family-history collection for future generations. An attendee asked a very important question:
Does the strategy change if thinking into future generations, more than one generation ahead?
Oral history lost after three generations
As background, let me point to an old news item quoting archivist Aaron Holt of Fort Worth. He said “it only takes three generations to lose a piece of oral family history. … It must be purposely and accurately repeated over and over again through the generations to be preserved for a genealogist today."
Today, I'm thinking not only about oral history--the stories we hear and tell about our ancestors--but also about photos, documents, and other physical items that connect us to generations in the past. What can we do to keep our family history alive in the family for more than one generation into the future?
Top priority: Share information widely
In my experience, the best thing we can do to keep family history safe for the future is to share the information widely among family members now. We must be sure that the next generation will be aware of our genealogy and key pieces of information about our family's past.
The more relatives who know stories, names, faces, and facts today, the more likely that family history will survive into the generations beyond our own.
Case in point: My maternal grandmother's Farkas Family Tree. She and her siblings formed the tree association in March, 1933. They kept typed and handwritten notes from monthly meetings stretching from 1933 into 1964. I remember attending meetings when I was a little girl. From my perspective, it was a time to see cousins and eat. I had no idea what the adults did during the meeting.
In fact, I had no idea written notes were taken at each meeting until one of my mother's first cousins mentioned it casually about seven years ago. He had two volumes of meeting minutes that had been bound for safekeeping. Did I want to see? Absolutely! What a gold mine of genealogy these minutes turned out to be. If not for this chance comment, the existence of the books of minutes might have not be known or remembered by the next generation.
My cousin allowed me to keep the books long enough to scan the 600+ pages, filled with details of family life and social gatherings for 31 years. I had the scans printed and bound for some cousins and, later, shared the scans electronically with a larger circle of cousins. Some of the cousins were too young to go to a meeting and were quite interested to read the month-by-month doings of our family. The "Farkas Family Tree" will live on in these meeting minutes, now in the hands or computers of more than a dozen cousins across the country. They can discuss with their families and share with descendants.
Provide context for future generations
Without sufficient context, how will relatives two or three generations from now understand who's who and where ancestors actually fit into the family tree?
I was lucky enough to be able to discuss the Farkas Family Tree minutes with four older cousins who attended meetings back in the day, and get their perspective on what I read in the minutes. I also conducted genealogical research to fill in gaps where needed. In essence, I was a connecting link from the past to the present, and learned enough context to share with future generations.
As a result, the package I sent to cousins was more than just the minutes. I included a 60-year-old family photo with identifications, an alphabetical list of names from the minutes, and an explanation of who each person was: Hermina Farkas Schwartz was the oldest daughter of Moritz Farkas and Leni Kunstler Farkas, the wife of Theodore Schwartz, and the maternal grandmother of Marian Burk Wood.
So my advice for keeping family history alive two or more generations in the future is: share info/documents/photos/stories now as widely as possible, and provide context so later generations can understand the names, relationships, and lives of ancestors from the distant past.
For more ideas, please see Amy Johnson Crow's post about LOCKSS--Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. And, of course, keep in mind the privacy of people still living.
