Our most valuable heritage is too often lost

In most instances, historical records are being continually preserved, digitized, and indexed, however, our most valuable connections to the past are being lost with every tick of the clock. Our most treasured history often goes unnoticed by the average person interested in genealogy: our stories, our photographs, and our DNA.

 

Stories:

With each tick of the clock our minds grow older and the stories tucked away in our family's memories get a little further away. Sadly many of our family stories die by the grave. Few take the time to record and preserve these treasures. While there may be discrepancies or coloration in some family stories, there's often at least a root of truth. Some family stories hide hints that can help us uncover more of our history and point at where to look. Others make no sense at all, but with some later genealogical discovery all the pieces fall into place and it makes perfect sense. If for nothing else, it's at least a good story for telling around the campfire or at bedtime, just like we read fairy tales. That said, there's often tons of meaningful history that can be gathered. I started with a cassette recorder as a boy asking my grandpa stories, but now I use a cell phone voice recorder. It's best to make a list of family history interview questions (there are many online), but I don't let it run my interview. I ask open-ended questions that encourage memories to flow and then segue from one topic to another that I would've never thought to ask by asking related questions based on the story I just learned. Later on I transcribe them. I ask not only my ancestors, but also their siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and others that knew the family, friends, or ever neighbors.

 

Photographs:

Often, old photographs have no names written on the back and there may well be only one such photograph in existence. I carried a scanner and laptop and visited parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins, scanning the old photos of my ancestors and their families at high resolution. If they don't know who someone is, I print a copy and take it to family reunions to ask other family members if they recognize them. If I hadn't asked them and then scanned them, most of these photos would've been lost forever, as the people inheriting them would've never known who they were and thus the value and meaning behind them.

 

DNA:

With each generation autosomal DNA is roughly halved. So instead of taking an autosomal DNA test to research my Dougherty ancestors, I had my Grandpa Dougherty take one, because he had around four times the amount of DNA from the Dougherty side more than I do. Y-DNA and mt-DNA are more stable, but it's still helpful to have DNA from the earliest generation possible, as mutations do randomly occur (my grandpa and I have a genetic distance of 1: i.e., there was a mutation between him and myself). Having his DNA was instrumental in discovering how close we actually were to the other lineages that existed just beyond our brick-wall ancestor.

​