Week 9:
58. Name one vivid memory you have of your maternal grandmother.
59. What was your favorite color when you were in elementary school.
60. Describe one property that has belonged in your family. What is significant about that property? What do you remember the most about it?
61. What was your favorite subject in school? Why?
62. Describe one dangerous thing/situation you were in as a teenager.
63. What was your mother’s profession?
64. Discuss what prompted you to begin researching your family history.
This week, I've chosen 64: Discuss what prompted you to begin researching your family history. This week I've talked to so many people about family history. I love doing it. I feel like it is really important. Sometimes, when I talk to them about it I feel like an ancestry pusher - but more than anything I don't want people to have regrets about something they could have prevented.
Of course, this made me think about the reasons that I started looking into my own family history. I grew up going to family reunions. When I was in high school, we had gone to Pennsylvania and I met my great-aunt (who was over 100 years old!). I didn't think to sit down with her and ask her about my great-grandparents. Or what her life had been like when she was a child.
My friend talked about her own regrets with her grandmother, and when I realized that my grandmother was sick I knew that there were things I didn't know about her - as a person.
I had spent my entire life around my maternal grandparents, but I had no idea how they met each other. So one day I asked. My grandmother told me that she had been a school teacher at Eglin Field. Grandpa said that she was one of 12 women on the entire base. He said that he asked her out because she had the best looking legs that he had ever seen. |
Asking that one question "How did you meet my grandfather?" completely changed my world. It started a series of other questions - all of which my grandparents patiently answered.
I realized that my paternal grandparents had also left me resources. They had written their own stories, and had answered any question that I would have asked of them.
Deciding that I wanted to know my grandparents as people - and the experiences that made them who they were - started my interesting in family history.