I kept some letters my grandmother had saved, made no sense to me but when I "KNEW" enough one letter was the complete family of my 2Xggf on the Lord side and the other was the death of my great gran on the other side, including references to her brothers. Genealogical gold - but only when I knew enough to make sense of them.
Eliz
On 7/23/06, Dawn Crowley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
To quote John Adams:
"I am half inclined to be very angry with you for destroying the anecdotes and documents you had collected for private memoirs of the American Revolution. From the memoirs of individuals the true springs of events and the real motives of actions are to be made known to posterity." --John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 4 December 1805
(text from the "History and Memory" chapter of The Wisdom of John and Abigail Adams, edited by R. B. Bernstein )
I'd go with saving more than tossing where it is plausible. What do you want to know about someone who died 100+ years ago? Why did the move from Connecticut to Ohio? Why did they do it so late in the year that they arrived on 21 December? What were there heartaches, their aspirations, their seemingly mundane responsibilities? What moved them to tears, to action, to rejoice? What did they believe, and why? Did they vote? If yes, then how did they cast their ballot & why? Who were neighbors that later became relatives? Etc., etc. These things may not be genealogy, but it makes them human beings. It can also aid research.
Dawn
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Genealogy has mainly been a lark for me over the years fueled by curiosity.
Filling in the blanks was the goal, not documenting every word. Using Legacy
made me rethink my approach, along with communication with a cousin who does
it the "right" way. Her records made me realize that it is important for my
descendents to be able to find where I got my information. I am slowly
documenting what I can of my research instead of gleefully adding
names...not much fun in that! This list is being enormously helpful.
When my parents died (father in 1996 and mother in 2003), I gathered all the
papers they had saved relating to genealogy. Happily, I had spent time with
each of them identifying old photos and documenting stories. The papers have
been sitting for a long time. A few months ago, I finally started organizing
and transcribing them. I am archiving original legal and other important
documents, of course. However, there were reams of letters and notes from
family members. I have transcribed them verbatim and noted that they were
handwritten letters from so-and-so, then discarded them to save space. Now I
am thinking that I am destroying original records and should be given 20
lashes! But, says me, these are like oral history, not solid documents like
birth certificates and such. It seems that trying to keep every scrap of
paper is unwieldy and unnecessary.
How do you decide what to preserve?
Judie
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