When I was a teenager, I discovered that some of my ancestors fought in the US Civil War. My grandmother knew her grandfather – who had fought in the war. When I asked her to share what she knew she told me that I should “let the dead be.”
That always bothered me. We should connect with the people who came before us. What did they experience? Why did they do the things they did? How many stories were lost by letting the dead be? In the early 1980s, it was hard to find these stories. In 1997 I started to collect information I had discovered about my own ancestors' history. I found a lot of information about people I had no relation to which went on a modest website. Over time others found it and contributed information from their own family histories. The more that I was able to compile, the more people found it and contributed more.
Most people come to connect with their family history. They start with a name but they leave with a much better idea of what their ancestors experienced. Sometimes it might be old newspaper accounts, sometimes official reports and sometimes – if they are lucky – they find a photograph or a letter that their ancestor might have written home. It’s history on a micro-level. Maybe that’s the biggest challenge I wanted to address: what might be names on a gravestone somewhere were once living breathing individuals who were motivated by many reasons to leave their families, put their own lives in danger, and potentially sacrifice their lives for something larger than themselves.
It's a lot of work maintaining this sort of website, but gratifying because the work is meaningful to so many people who have reached out to me over the years. Getting emails that say things like, “We would all be sitting in some stuffy archives somewhere for the rest of our lives trying to find bits of information on our ancestors” or “Thanks for helping me open my eyes to my family's past!,” keep the fire burning.
That always bothered me. We should connect with the people who came before us. What did they experience? Why did they do the things they did? How many stories were lost by letting the dead be? In the early 1980s, it was hard to find these stories. In 1997 I started to collect information I had discovered about my own ancestors' history. I found a lot of information about people I had no relation to which went on a modest website. Over time others found it and contributed information from their own family histories. The more that I was able to compile, the more people found it and contributed more.
Most people come to connect with their family history. They start with a name but they leave with a much better idea of what their ancestors experienced. Sometimes it might be old newspaper accounts, sometimes official reports and sometimes – if they are lucky – they find a photograph or a letter that their ancestor might have written home. It’s history on a micro-level. Maybe that’s the biggest challenge I wanted to address: what might be names on a gravestone somewhere were once living breathing individuals who were motivated by many reasons to leave their families, put their own lives in danger, and potentially sacrifice their lives for something larger than themselves.
It's a lot of work maintaining this sort of website, but gratifying because the work is meaningful to so many people who have reached out to me over the years. Getting emails that say things like, “We would all be sitting in some stuffy archives somewhere for the rest of our lives trying to find bits of information on our ancestors” or “Thanks for helping me open my eyes to my family's past!,” keep the fire burning.
