Why It Is Important to Keep a Family History

It used to be that families never ventured far from home

. Most extended family members lived close together, many times in the same town or even as neighbors. Today you don't find many families that live close. Jobs and education have created families that are spread far and wide. Although we can stay in touch with email and phone calls, we miss out on the personal relationships. As time goes by, we lose touch and never really get to know our extended family.

The interaction we have with our family that lives far away is similar to how we know our ancestors. We know of them, we may even know a little bit about their lives and what they do. But do we know their personal stories?

We get a sense of who we and are our place in a family by connecting to our extended family, whether it is faraway family of today or our ancestors of the past. Personal stories and family experiences are invaluable to making that connection. We need to make the effort to stay in touch with our extended family as well as learn more about our ancestors.

Staying connected with our family that live faraway is both easier and harder than ever before. It is easier because of all the technology available to us today. We can email, send videos and make telephone calls. It is even easier for us to visit our extended family. People in years past might have never got the opportunity to see their family that moved even a few hundred miles away because of the slow methods of transportation available to them. We can quickly cover the distance with modern travel. However, our lives are busier than ever so it is hard to find the time to make those important family connections.

There are simple ways to stay connected with your extended family. It may take a little time, but when you really think about it family is worth the effort. Many of these ideas will also help toward writing your history for your posterity. Someday we will be the ancestors and our descendents will wonder about our stories.

Start a circle journal. If you have siblings or cousins that live faraway, start a circle journal within the group. Start a journal and keep it for a week or so. Write down information about your family, things you have been doing and what your kids are involved in. After you have kept it for a short time, mail it to the next person on the list and they will do the same. Set up the time period so each person gets the journal about every six weeks. When you get the journal back you can read about what everyone else has been doing with their lives, then you update your information and pass it along again. Every year, copy all the pages and mail each person a copy. This is a fun way to keep in touch with a group of people and it is more personal than a yearly update letter.

One of the great things about a circle journal is you are creating a history of your everyday life for your descendants. We tend to record the big events, but not our daily routine. If you research your family history you will find that you cherish the records of the mundane things of everyday. These are the events that make our ancestors real and help us to identify with them. It is important to create that kind of record for your posterity.

Start a family blog. Blogging is a great way to stay in touch and share stories. You can keep your blog private and only invite family members. This is a perfect way to share everyday events and milestones.

Create a digital scrapbook. Digital scrapbooking is an inexpensive, mess free way to create a family record. The great thing about digital scrapbooking is you can share your pages with family far and wide by posting them on the web. You can also have your scrapbook professionally printed and bound and give it as gifts.

There are many different ways to keep a record of your life. Just as records of ancestors are important to us, someday your record will be invaluable to your posterity. Family history is how we know where we have been and where we are going. Make sure your family history has you in it!

Why It Is Important to Keep a Family History

By: Piper Cox

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