My Hometown - When Daughters Ask - Part 3 of 3

My Hometown

When Daughters Ask

Part 3 of 3

Silver Dollar City, Thanksgiving 2016

Allison King, Annette Lamb, Arrion Rathsack

As my wife, Nancy, our daughter, Annette, and I discussed the ‘eighth-grade yearbook’ that featured Nancy’s mother, Ruth, as a seventh-grader, and my father, Pete, as an eighth grader (the only one, actually), our discussion also involved the younger brothers and sisters of each as we looked at the photos and pages about the other classes in the one-room country school. This brought up another important aspect of talking about your family history with your grown children.

Each child will have different memories about relationships with older members of the extended family as well as different cousins, perhaps. Annette pointed out, for example, that she had memories of interacting with aunts and uncles in our hometown that her younger sisters didn’t. We only visited the hometown a few times a year, perhaps monthly, in her early years, of course, but by the time the two younger sisters were old enough to remember, we had moved out of state and hometown visits were no more than once or twice a year, if at all in any given year. Conversely, on those later years trips, Annette was out on her own, not with us, so the younger sisters knew many cousins that Annette never really got to know well.

So, my point here is to remember that each child will have different interests, and disinterests, based on their own experiences with various portions of the extended family - in addition to there natural interests in one aspect or another of family history study… at the point in there life when they become interested at all… if they even do. As for our girls, I’ve already mentioned Annette’s interests. The youngest, Arrion, and her husband, travel to Europe regularly, so she has become interested in the ‘way back’ parts of our family history. In contrast, Allison, the middle one, is really the most connected to the living relatives, keeps in touch with many of them, and likes to visit them, when possible. Different strokes for different folks, so to speak.

I would enjoy hearing your comments about how your next generation has reacted to and become involved with your family history studies and research.


Families are Forever! ;-)

My Hometown - When Daughters Ask - Part 2 of 3

My Hometown

When Daughters Ask

 Part 2 of 3

Silver Dollar City, Thanksgiving 2016

Allison King, Annette Lamb, Arrion Rathsack

In Part 1, my wife Nancy was showing the first of two family history research projects on which she had been working to our oldest daughter, Annette. We looked at her reaction.

Then, Nancy handed her a folder with the second project, barely begun.

The key artifact in that folder was a multi-page ‘eighth-grade yearbook’ hand made at a one-room country school, using mimeographed sheets, and containing many little black and white photo images taped onto various pages. Each photo was of one or more of the students. This book was created in 1928!

Having been a Media Specialist in a local School, as well as a Professor of Instructional Technology and Library Science for many years, such a historical document ‘caught her fancy” immediately.

However, it was the content of the booklet that really caught her attention. She quickly realized she was looking at content written about both her maternal grandmother, in seventh grade, and her paternal grandfather, in eighth grade, chronicled in the yearbook!! At the same one-room country Star School, Union No. 1, where her own mother had attended in later years (the 1940s)!! Annette said something to the effect: “This is part of my family history, both sides of the family, in one document!”

This led to extensive discussion, of course, from both of our perspectives. Many memories invoked, shared, and discussed.

For this post, one particular aspect piqued her interest. Grandmother Ruth, the seventh grader, had written the ‘future’ stories of other students, and in particular, regarding Grandfather Pete, the eighth grader. It went something like this: At some future date, I (Ruth) was returning from an ocean liner cruise from Europe, and read a sports news article that featured Pete Smith. He was a star baseball player with the Des Moines Giants team and had hit 50 homers that year…. and went on like that.

Another page in the yearbook had noted that Pete was the leader of the local baseball team and it was his favorite sport - in addition to wanting to be a great farmer.

Annette immediately wanted to know if the “Des Moines Giants” had been a real baseball team of the era, and began an extensive computer search on the subject - she is very skilled at this. Jumping ahead just a bit, she got into the archives of our hometown newspaper, a weekly which is now available on line from 1882. She came across news articles, from the 1920s, of a local farm baseball team named the Willow Creek Giants, that features the Hilgenberg brothers. Willow Creek runs right past our home Smith farm… which Pete had purchased in 1941 from William Hilgenberg. Needless to say, this led to much more research and discussion. And, many, many maps trying to locate exactly where all this occurred, exactly, where and when and by whom. I did a full census-based family tree of the Hilgenberg family to add to the discussion. I knew many of them, growing up. One was an uncle, married Pete’s sister, and others were neighbors and friends. What fun!

This wasn’t perhaps the outcome that Nancy had expected in sharing her second project, but we all created new memories, learned new information about our family, and learned more about the neighborhood in the process of just a few hours. This occurred because we listed to “what our daughter asked” and followed her interests, not just our own.

In Part 3, tomorrow, we’ll look at some of the relationships we discussed related to the above and more…


Families are Forever! ;-)

My Hometown - When Daughters Ask - Part 1 of 3

My Hometown

When Daughters Ask

Part 1 of 3

My wife, Nancy, and I are very fortunate that each of our three grown daughters have developed a serious interest in their family history. Nancy and I are more than pleased, and proud, to encourage that interest and share our extensive research, datebases, and writings, of course, to kick-start their own research… which they are doing, each in their own ways.

Silver Dollar City, Thanksgiving 2016

Allison King, Annette Lamb, Arrion Rathsack

Holiday interchanges are always critical since two of the three live in different states, so we are only face to face a few times each year. This post was kicked off, a few days after the Thanksgiving Day holiday, a few days before our oldest daughter, Annette, was ready to leave. Her interests include timelines and places (maps, places to visit, etc.) she says. Annette and Nancy have already published two family history books together, so it is always interesting to see where these discussions lead.

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Nancy brought out two projects she had worked on lately, to share with Annette, to see if either caught her eye. For the first one, Nancy had built folders of information on the decades of her paternal grandfather, who was sort of a ‘black sheep’ in the family. It has taken years to build a decent history of him, since her family didn’t want to talk about him. There are still a few holes to fill in, but there is a story to be told one day. Annette showed interest, of course, but no new sparks seemed to fly… until she came across a photo from about 1914 of her three-year-old grandfather standing beside a pond/lake with “Longfellow Gardens, Minneapolis” written on the back. The ‘place name’ caught her attention. She immediately wondered if this “place” still existed and got to work on her computer.

She soon located “Longfellow Gardens” as a current part of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board [https://www.minneapolisparks.org/parks__destinations/gardens__bird_sanctuaries/longfellow_gardens/] and started to muse about a possible visit next summer as part of a previously planned trip in the vicinity. Wouldn't it be neat to have a similar photo, now, with her standing where her three-year-old grandfather had stood, over a hundred of years ago.

She also mentioned she knew someone who had worked with the parks there at one time. Was he still there? The pondering and planning continued, along with further discussion of Nancy's project research.

My point in posting this is how important it is to let the next generation pick and choose their own topics/subjects of interest in our family history studies. When they pick something that excites them, then perhaps the work we have done will become real to them, not just boring vital records and cute stories. They will move ahead with their own research that will add depth, detail, and context to what we have begun… that we would likely never have done, ourselves.

Part 2, tomorrow, will continue with another example… that second project...




Families are Forever! ;-)