Hoarding History
The bane of genealogy
I’ve been visiting family the last two weeks, which inevitably led to talking about other family members and telling stories. I’ve been able to talk about gaps in the lineages I published, such as one of my uncle’s marriages that was overlooked, and share sources for information that had been long sought after. But I also ran into the bane of genealogists everywhere, the hoarding of history.
My mother’s last sister passed away a couple of years ago. During this recent visit, I finally had a chance to go through a box of “her things” that had been set aside for my mom and she didn’t want to go through on her own. It was a treasure trove of my grandparents’ history — pictures I had never seen before, keepsakes my mom had thought lost — and for decades, they had all been in the possession of my aunt who lived just a few blocks away.
Among the pictures were those of my grandmother’s sisters and grandparents. I immediately digitized anything I could and sent the files off to my mom’s cousin who is also very interested in family history, and he in turn asked if he could send them to two other cousins. I, of course, said yes. They don’t belong to me — they belong to the family.
The value is not in hiding them away, it’s in the glimpse they offer of the past
