Passing It On

If curiosity killed the cat, the cat died nobly

 "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. “

– Dorothy Parker, author

Are you a curious person? I’m going to guess yes.

Most people who are interested in family history are inherently curious. They want to know all sorts of personal things about their ancestors and their curiosity frequently rewards them with trips to wondrous places. My blogging friend Terry Thornton writes about one particularly curious member of his family, his aunt Dorie. Dorie’s aggressive curiosity over a neighbor’s business earned her a spot in family lore, writes Terry.

“From that moment on, my family has called all nosey folks ‘Aunt Dorie’," Terry says.

You may have an Aunt Dorie in your own family; you might even be one yourself. Take this test:

You may be a curious person if …

• You ever took apart a watch or clock just to see what makes it tick.
• You mixed every liquid you could find in your dad’s workshop just to see what would happen.
• You prefer actual reality to the TV version.
• You can pick up any volume from a set of encyclopedias and be entertained for hours.
• You ever stood before a mirror in a darkened room and crunched a wintergreen Lifesaver between your front teeth to see if it sparked.
• You ever sneaked a peek at a Christmas gift and carefully rewrapped it before the big day arrived.
• You mixed aspirin and Coke to see if the combination would really make you drunk.
• You ever buried a dead animal and dug it up months later just to see what happened.
• “Do Not Enter” signs set your mind to racing, wondering what’s in there?
• You don’t take Prego’s word when it says “it’s in there.”

A healthy dose of curiosity is necessary in any family history project. Here are 10 reasons why you should be curious and some tips on how to develop a sense of curiosity.

Writing tip of the day: What big family question would you like answered? What are you doing about it?

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of Dan4th.

Auschwitz discovery shows power of legacy letters

Legacy letters convey something of importance from the sender to another person. Whether eloquent or inarticulate in their presentation, legacy letters are often so emotionally powerful as to send the recipient reaching for a handkerchief.

Such is the case with the recently discovered “Auschwitz letter.” It’s possible that you missed the story, given the media’s interest in presidential puppies and Miss America gaffes, so here it is:

In 1944, a group of prisoners from the infamous Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, Poland was escorted about 100 yards outside the camp to work on reinforcing the cellar of a warehouse so it could be used as an air raid shelter for the camp’s soldiers.

Seven of the prisoners – six Poles and one Frenchman, all between the ages of 18 and 20 – tore a scrap of paper from a cement bag and scribbled a note in pencil. Although the exact details of the note have not been disclosed, it includes the names of the seven prisoners, their home towns and their assigned camp numbers.

They rolled the note, stuck it inside a bottle and hid it inside a concrete wall they were building. It was discovered by a construction crew that was recently renovating the site. Research shows that two of the Polish men survived the camp, but they have not been found.

The Frenchman, however, was Googled and located in Marseilles by a Polish newspaper reader. The man, 85-year-old Albert Veissid, confirmed that the camp number on the note matches that on his arm but does not remember anything about the note or bottle.

Imagine how meaningful it is for descendants of the four who didn’t survive the camp, to have this final message from their long-deceased relative. As one commenter at a Hamburg, German, newspaper said: “I think it was simply a case of we existed, remember us.”

Isn’t that we all want?

Writing prompt of the day: You have just 10 minutes to live. Write your own legacy letter. Quickly.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo of Auschwitz courtesy of Rain Rannu.

How bad do you want it?

Do you want it as bad as Carl Edwards?

For you, “it” refers to your family history project. For race car driver Edwards, “it” refers to crossing the finish line, something the NASCAR driver achieved Sunday despite a horrific 200 miles-per-hour crash near the finish line.

Front-runner Edwards was nearing victory when his car was clipped from behind and sent flying into the catch fence at Talladega, Alabama. It came to rest 100 yards or so from the finish line, demolished and on fire.

The uninjured Edwards crawled from the window of his battered Ford and ran towards the finish line, which he crossed with a sort of hop. Although Edwards, who is known for his victory back flips, was not credited with finishing the race because his car didn’t cross the line, the symbolism was clear.

Do you have the same determination in finishing your family history project or do the following scenarios more accurately describe you?

• I really love hearing the old family stories and looking through the family photos. I hope somebody saves them for future generations.
• My grandparents lived the most interesting lives. Although I missed the chance to save their stories when they were alive, I’ll bet my aunts and uncles could tell me about them if they were asked.
• My parents sure lived through a lot while raising me. We didn’t always get along, but I’m starting to understand why they did what they did. I hope my own children somehow figure out what I’ve learned from them someday.
• I have so many scattered boxes of photos, letters and scrapbooks about my family that it would take years to sort it all out. Maybe I’ll get around to it someday.

These scenarios are all family history killers. If you don’t take on the responsibility yourself, your own important family history could just fade away, depriving future generations of the wisdom gained from previous generations. Family history doesn’t have to be a tedious, tiresome process. Quite the opposite. It should be fun, educational and enlightening.

If you need help, find a personal historian and set up a plan that works for you.

Writing prompt of the day: Identify family members who might help with a family history and contact them. Use them as resources for your project.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of rykerstribe.

VHS is dead, but recording living relatives isn’t

We all know that VHS is dead, right? But what about home video in general, or its predecessor, home audio?

Not to fear, both are still alive and well. They’ve just moved to new formats – DVDs, CDs, MP3s, iPods, etc. And they all have a place in your family history project.

Although I specialize in the written word, almost all of my projects involve audio recordings of some kind. There’s something special about hearing those family stories directly through the voice of the storyteller. Audio does that; video takes it a step further by adding the visual element.

That’s why I’ve teamed with that video guy, John Windschitl, to offer a special, money-saving combination video-book package for people in the Des Moines area. You can contact either John or me for more details.

Meanwhile, here are a few online video sites that share various aspects of personal history:

For some nuts and bolts research hints you can start with this video tour of one of the country’s top genealogy centers at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. For some great genealogy stories and tips, go to Roots Television.

Here are a couple of examples of how unique and diverse family history actually is – a 3-year-old’s life story and a hip-hop (R-rated) number, Family Tree, by Bone Thugs N Harmony.

Just for fun, check out this show from the 1964 first season of television’s The Addams’ Family. Gomez and Morticia were interested in their own family tree nearly a half-century ago.

For some great audio, check out Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems podcast with History Detective Tukufu Zuberi.

Writing prompt of the day: Which living relative would you most like to have a visual recording of? Have you done it yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people record their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker.

Every day was Earth Day to my ancestors

Happy Earth Day! Although Earth Day is 39 years old today, I’m certain my ancestors never conceived of such a day. For most of them, every day was earth day in its own way.

Those were the times when people lived within their means. If you didn’t have much money, you got by in the best way you could. You grew your own vegetables, tended whatever livestock your lifestyle required and used and re-used things until you could no longer wring any usefulness out of it.

It was only the rich who flaunted their wealth with their extravagant tastes and hyper-consumptive lifestyles. Regardless of one’s social position today, I’m certain many of my ancestors would put most of today’s Americans in the latter category.

The current economic problems are forcing many of us back into a sort of Earth Day mode, that is,  a return to the days when we lived more within our means. Ultimately, I think that is a good thing, but I do have a few concerns.

For one thing, I’m not certain that this spring’s gardening frenzy is the real thing. Successful gardening requires hard work and patience, virtues that require some cultivating of their own. I hope first-time gardeners take a modest, practical and sustainable approach to “living off the land.”

I’m even more concerned with the commercial co-opting of the term “green.” Honestly, the word means nothing these days now that corporate polluters have spun the term to their perceived advantage.

I do enjoy the cloth bags I use when shopping, but enough is enough. Does a person really need more than a handful? Just in the past week, I’ve unexpectedly been handed two at no cost and Walgreen’s is giving them away today (only today, by the way). I’m not accepting any more, even if they’re free.

The easiest thing we can do these days is something my ancestors took for granted: recycle, recycle, recycle. The gardening thing is a pleasant hobby to grow into, too. In fact, I’m taking my creaking knees and ailing back and shoulder into my garden today, a beautiful one in my neck of the woods.

Here are links to two blog sites that I find helpful in my efforts to live a more sustainable life – Unclutterer and Wise Bread – and a link to my Earth Day essay to my children one year ago. Enjoy!

Writing prompt of the day: If you have made lifestyle changes in an effort to live a more sustainable life, write about them, including what you expect to get from them. If you haven’t made such changes, consider what you could do to leave a healthier Earth for your descendants.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: Jens Andersen holds his daughter, Elsie, ca. 1922. (Walter B. Lehmer collection)

Your legacy is in your hands, for now

When a Playboy interviewer asked Woody Allen if he wanted to live on in the hearts of his fans through his work, Allen replied: "I'd rather live on in my apartment." Clever and witty, for sure, but it’s not going to happen.

Despite our most fervent intentions, our mortality eventually catches up to us, leaving our legacies totally in control of those who outlast and follow us. Any input we wish to have on our legacy has to be done from this side of our final curtain.

I was reminded of this in a post on the Smart Women’s Blog by a videographer friend, Steve Pender. Steve and I saw a presentation by University of Colorado at Denver history professor James Walsh in Nashville a couple of years ago. I wrote about it then, Steve wrote about it recently, passing on an African proverb about the two stages of dying that Walsh shared that day:

“The first stage is sasha. Sasha are people who have passed away physically – but the living still remember them and tell their stories. So the sasha are not yet dead. The second stage is zamani. Zamani are people who have also passed away physically. However, the living no longer remember them, nor do they tell their stories. Zamani are truly dead.”

Would you rather be a Sasha or a Zamani?

Some people wrap their legacy in material things, accumulating whatever they can with the intent of passing it on to their children. Yet financial advisors say that material wealth often is entirely gone within two generations. Research shows that the importance of material wealth is probably overblown anyway.

In a study by life insurance company Allianz of 1,300 “Baby Boomers” and their parents, 77 percent of both generations said the most important inheritance they could pass on would be values and lessons about life.

Since we are all just one generation away from not knowing anything about our family history and their values, it’s our duty to preserve our real legacies while we still can.

Writing prompt of the day: What’s the single most important thing you want to be remembered for? What are you doing to ensure that your descendants know about it?

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of RocketRaccoon.

It’s worth looking for your own family’s journalists

Diaries and journals are wonderful sources for a personal historian. Although the bulk of their content usually focus on the mundane activities of life, even those events reveal a glimpse of the rhythms that develop as we cope with life, one day at a time.

Diaries also document the highs and lows of a life journey, sometimes in painfully intimate detail. Diaries can take you to uncomfortable places. As hard as it may be for you to read the words summoned from a person’s soul during difficult times, think about how difficult they must have been to write, knowing that someone someday was going to judge them through the prism of their own experiences.

Even though I’ve spent my entire working career as a journalist and a writer, I’ve never had the discipline to maintain a diary or journal. My dad’s mother, however, was a fastidious journal keeper, at least for the years 1952 through 1980. These years covered her life from around age 50 until shortly before her death at age 79.

While transcribing portions of four years of her diaries – 1952, 1953, 1970 and 1971 – I’ve come to know my grandmother in ways I never knew her while she was alive. Like many journal keepers, she was obsessed with the weather, duly noting each day’s high and low temperature and neatly tucking relevant weather-related newspaper stories between her diary’s pages.

She was an industrious person, always cleaning and cooking. Even as a widow in her late 60s she often cooked a full meal just for herself, including pie or cake for dessert. She was also insecure outside her home life, as entries about entering the workforce in her 50s show.

She went through a lot in the early 1950s, losing a couple of young grandchildren and being forced from her home for weeks because of a flood, but she also enjoyed trips to California, Florida and Cuba. Much of her journal concentrates on her and Grandpa’s varied and chronic aches and pains as they entered their later years and Grandma occasionally mentions her struggles with her faith. It’s riveting reading for me.

I’ve got 25 more years of her diaries to read. I’m looking forward to it.

Writing prompt of the day: Identify relatives who may have kept a diary. Do you know where their diaries are? Ask around. You might be surprised by what you learn.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family history. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: Excerpt of Jessie M. Lehmer's 1953 diary. (Walter B. Lehmer collection).

Aren’t those rompers a bit worn in the rear?

"If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur."

- Doug Larson

Using words, even simple ones that make perfect sense to you, can often have unintended consequences. Just ask Kelly Moore.

Moore, who blogs for my local newspaper, wrote a cute little post about her kids playing in the mud and innocently identifying themselves as “mud people.” When readers pointed out that those words were formerly used as a denigrating racial term, Moore responded that she’s certain her 4-year-old didn’t mean them that way.

The lesson here is that words and their meanings change over time. This is important when doing family history work because of the risk of misinterpreting what you are hearing or reading.

For instance, my father-in-law was fond of the word rompers. He wasn’t referring to people having fun or kids scurrying about. He was describing what most of us would call pants, trousers or slacks. Or knickers. Or britches. Or probably dozens of other terms that I’m unfamiliar with.

Slang is a particular problem. I’ve heard police referred to as cops, fuzz, bulls and "the man" but the list of synonyms for police is much longer than that.

Genealogically speaking, the waters are even murkier. Cousin often meant niece or nephew to past generations and the term Mrs. often referred to social – not marital – status. Afflictions of the past are also often known by different names today.

Keep this in mind when evaluating information of your ancestors. Are you sure you know what their words actually mean?

Writing prompt of the day: Make a list of ambiguous or unusual words you’ve found in your family history research and verify that you’ve interpreted them properly.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: John Hayes relaxes in his rompers. (Rose Hayes collection)

How will same-sex marriage affect family trees?

As a family historian I admit to being a bit loosey-goosey with some rules of genealogy research. For instance, I’m much more interested in collecting a good (preferably accurate) story about an ancestor than I am in nailing down a citation for a marriage certificate.

That’s not to say that I don’t try to verify the accuracy of people I’ve listed in my own family tree, it’s just that I’m not as concerned about these things as a professional genealogist would be.

It’s from this point of view that I’ve pondered the recent trend toward recognizing same-sex marriages. The Supreme Court in my home state of Iowa has ruled in favor of such unions and the people of New Hampshire recently voted to allow them as well. I expect that other states will follow suit.

My question is: How will same-sex marriages affect how people track their family trees? Mind you, I have no answer to this question and I was pleased to note that no less a genealogical expert than Dick Eastman had no answer either in this post from last November, though some of his commentors did.

A broader question for me is whether family trees should track “family lines” or “bloodlines.” Adoptions pose much the same problems as non-traditional marriages in a family tree context. To track bloodlines, birth parents must be known and shown at every branch of the tree. And who can say for certain whether those children now listed as family members from several generations ago really are the biological offspring of their listed parents?

With the proliferation of DNA testing in recent years, I wonder if this will truly help or merely muddy things even further. These are difficult, important questions worth considering when doing family history work.

Writing prompt of the day: Examine your own family tree for possible problems as outlined in this post. Have you dealt with them to your satisfaction?

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of tntblonde.

Is that the real you in that picture?

It’s Easter weekend, a time to get all gussied up. The Easter parade is an American tradition dating to 1870. In the years since, these parades have offered a chance for Americans to put on their Sunday best and strut among their neighbors.

But the parades peaked in popularity over a half-century ago and are a mere blip on our current American culture radar. Still, Easter Sunday is one of two religious holidays (Christmas is the other) that even casual members of an organized faith observe.

It’s one of those special occasions – like funerals, weddings and posing for family photos – that forces a man (or child) into a suit. It’s also a time for picture taking, as a spin through your  family photo album will reveal. For many of us, these dressed up photos may be the only ones we have of a long-deceased relative.

But what do these photos really reveal to us? Do they show us a man who normally rolls up his sleeves and digs into his chosen vocation with back-breaking vigor? Or the woman whose days are spent behind an apron, tending to the family garden, sweating over a hot kitchen stove or scrubbing her brood’s clothing by hand? Did those kids really sit up straight all the time, with clean fingernails and a spotless face?

Probably not.

Photos of relatives in their Sunday best should be valued and cherished for what they are – a formal snapshot taken at an important time in their lives. To really learn about the people in the photo, though, you’ll have to dig a bit deeper.

Old photo tip: Betty Kreisel Shubert has a clever way to date old photos by using tracing paper and books to identify the clothing.

Writing prompt of the day: Examine a formal photo of your own family and write about what was going on with each person pictured at the time it was taken, who took it and why.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Photo: Jack & Elsie's handsome Lehmer boys of North 28th Street in Council Bluffs.