Create a Family Journal

I'm thinking of a line that I heard in a movie, the name of which I cannot remember. In effect it stated that If you write a lot of letters, someone else will have the history of your life, but if you keep a journal, you will have the history of your life. This may not sound like an important concept at first, but think of the value your writings could have to a grandchild or a great-grandchild who never met you. I can only imagine how I would cherish a journal, a letter or even a note form one of my ancestors. I can find some of their names in family bibles or on public records but those documents reveal nothing of their character, their personality, their joys or the hardships they endured.

Being confronted with the task of helping one of my children with a school genealogy project made me keenly aware of my ignorance. I couldn't even spell genealogy. I knew only the name of my paternal grandfather. I could remember my maternal grandparents, but not even the names of my maternal great-grandparents. I had met one of my great-grandmothers when I was a small child and she was very old, but I knew her only as Granny. I knew nothing of their life, childhood, health, physical characteristics, philosophy, taboos, or politics.

We never think of these things when our grandparents are alive and able to give us some insight to our heritage; by the time we become interested it is usually too late. Fortunately for me, I was able to interview my mother and a couple of aunts for some names and a few personal glimpses into their past. With that information, the aid of Internet resources and some public records, I now have a well documented family tree with a lot of names. I know for instance that some of my ancestors fought in the revolutionary war, the Indian wars and the civil war. Some were married to Native Americans and most were modest farmers of European descent. What I would really like to know is how they lived, how they felt, what they thought and what they loved. It would also be helpful to know something of their health. What diseases were they prone to that may have been passed along? Were they diabetic or obese, did they have allergies, asthma, arthritis, heart disease or cancer?

Family lore, personal knowledge and public records tell me that there were no great literary minds in my family. To a person they were poor and uneducated if not illiterate. Estates were liquidated easily and heirlooms were poorly preserved. The Civil War was especially disastrous in that it left widows and children to fend for themselves while education took a back seat to survival. In today's world of technology, keeping and distributing a journal is a simple matter. Material is easy to come by and Internet venues are plentiful. A wellspring of resources are now available on the Internet in the form of email, blogospheres and social networking.

Rest assured that many of your descendants will not be interested, but those that are will be more than glad to know you by way of your journal. You can leave your descendants a legacy to build upon for generations to come. A personal journal or family biography may be the single most valuable thing that you can leave behind for your hairs.