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Fast Forward to the Past - Recording family history important

A new year is the time for resolutions, and many families make the elusive promise to record family history.

A new year is the time for resolutions, and many families make the elusive promise to record family history. While well-intentioned, many times the project gets set aside because we think it takes too much time, or sometimes it just seems too daunting and we admit failure before we even begin.

The key is to just get started: do not expect that you will be able to go back several generations in one sitting. Start slowly and the pieces of the puzzle will begin to fall into place. If someone in your family has expressed an interest in exploring your family tree, encourage them to begin now, however informally, to record family information. Use whatever medium feels most comfortable. You don’t need elaborate programs or apps or spreadsheets to get started: a notebook and a pen will do just fine.

Begin with your current family and start working back as far as you can. Sit down with older family members and ask them to talk about family members, family gatherings, and record any and all stories that they remember.  If you have old family photos, ask them to identify who is who, and record this information on the back of the picture.  

Do not feel that recording the names of people in family photos is a task that belongs only to the old, yellowing photos of yesteryear. Photos from the 1940’s and 1950’s probably seem ancient to today’s children, and though the photos may not be that old, it is very likely that when you look at them now, you may not always know who everyone is. Make it a practise to always record the date, the names of people in the photos, and the locations, if possible.

An important part of family genealogy is the recording of family memories. Family stories make family members come alive more than a birth and death date on a sheet of paper.  Knowing how hard they worked to save money to buy a tractor or what a struggle it was to raise a family in a house with just a woodstove and no running water will tell future generations volumes about their ancestors. Come forward in time, and record what it was like to get the family’s first black and white television set and have one channel; what it was like to not be on a party line; what it was like to type out a college term paper with a typewriter. Come forward again: what was it like to get your first microwave oven; your first remote control for the TV; your first computer that took up your whole desktop.  These memories from the last 50 or 60 years may represent more change in everyday life than the previous one hundred years for our pioneer ancestors.

Visiting cemeteries where family members are buried is a summer road-trip, but it might interest you to know that there are over 3300 cemetery and burial sites in our province. The Saskatchewan Cemeteries Project aims to record the vital information from each cemetery, and currently has 1081 cemeteries transcribed and photographed and indexed.  (www.rootsweb.ancestry.com) The site lists the community or district, the name of the cemetery, the municipality, and the cemetery location.  Within these entries, you will find the names of all the deceased within a particular cemetery.  

The Yorkton branch of the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society meets the second Tuesday of each month at the Yorkton Public Library. New members are always welcome. Every family has a story: discover yours with the Yorkton branch of the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society!