Friday, May 8, 2009

How Good An Ancestor Will You Be?

How many times have you wished one or another of your ancestors had kept a diary? Or lamented the fact that an obituary or wedding announcement you were reading in an old newspaper had not been written with more detail? Why couldn't our ancestors have been more considerate in that regard...why couldn't they have contributed more to our knowledge of them...why couldn't they have been "good" ancestors?

Thoughts like that certainly beg a question, don't they? That question is: how good will you have been as an ancestor?

It is not a big stretch as genealogists to picture a day in the future when some descendant of yours may be thinking the same thing about you as he or she sifts through old newspapers, partial records and, yes, census forms looking for information about you. Will you have been a "good" ancestor and left information for that researcher, or will you have been like most of your ancestors...making you wish for more...inadvertantly erecting brick walls for you to run into?

Put your thinking cap on the come up with ways you can leave information for your descendants. Add those ideas as comments to this post so everyone can share in them.

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