How Can You Help Your Family Historian?
There are many ways you can help carry on the history of your ancestors. Personally, I come from a large family, but a dysfunctional one. Unfortunately, by the time I was a teenager, most of my family was either passed away or not speaking. So I didn’t have the opportunity to ask about family members and hear the different stories. I did get some from an immediate family member. But different family members have different memories.
You can help your descendants and your family historians by journaling. Simply keeping a journal that tells your favorite memories and your favorite stories could help preserve those stories for future generations.
One year, for Christmas, I bought journals for my mom and a few other family members that guide them through writing out their memories. The name of one of them was “Mother Tell Me Your Story”. My mom writes in her journal recording those memories and she will pass that journal on to me when she passes so that I can keep those memories alive for her. Just think of how much her 10’s great grand-daughter would cherish that journal!
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National Archives
Citizen Archivist
You can become a Citizen Archivist! No, seriously! You don’t need any specialized skills, you just need to know how to read and maybe some very basic typing skills. If you know how to find the letter on your keyboard, you’re golden.
There are millions of records in the National Archives that have been digitized. This essentially means, they’ve taken a picture of or scanned the record. The problem is, images aren’t searchable. In order to make them searchable, somebody has to sit down and type out everything in the record. Who has time for all that?
Well, nobody in particular. But if we all do a little bit to help out, we could get it done. There are millions of us! Becoming a Citizen Archivist is very easy. To learn more, check out the National Archives page for Citizen Archivists. That page gives 6 very simple instructions on how to get started.
Every little bit helps!
