Alphonse J Wagner

Ree Young Exactly. It's mind boggling how much information is lost so quickly with the passing of just a single generation. Sounds like you're doing an excellent job with your detective skills & chronicling it all - way to go!

My kids could not care less about our past, sadly the stories are lost.

Denise MacColeman My sons didn't much care either until they became adults...after my youngest son had his two kids, he started asking more about his grand- and great-grand parents.

My oldest boy got interested when he was in his mid-20's, and his interest grew more after my dad died. He and my dad had been very close, so when his grandpop was gone and I'd given him a few of my dad's things that my son remembered from childhood, he became more curious.

Of course, I had been telling them stories from my past and things I'd been told ever since my sons were little...especially when the story involved them, too...like what my oldest boy did when his grandpop took him fishing at the pier and a pelican chased them. He loved to hear these tales about his younger self, and that they involved his grandpop made him more curious about his grandparent's history.

So, even when they weren't interested in ancestors, they still remembered these stories.

I think that, as we get older and the reality comes that, no, we're not going to live forever just because we're young now, our family and our past become more pertinent. I wasn't all that interested in my family history until I was in my 30's. By then, it was just about too late...my mother already was sinking into Alzheimer's and most of my aunts and uncles were gone. Luckily, from the time I was a kid, my mom had told me the stories she'd been told, and I later started researching to learn more. I was nearly a senior citizen when I started to really dig deeply into my family's past.

You never know when something will strike a kid's interest and make them question the past. Or a grandchild, as he or she gets older, might be fascinated by the family history. That's why I think a written record of some sort is important. Too many people say the same thing...that they waited too long to ask questions and now have no one to answer them.

I'm sure my maternal grandparents never thought to write anything down because they were not to know that their second youngest child would not have any kids until she was 40, and that they themselves would be long dead before that child was born, much less old enough to tell the stories to.

It's like planting trees. We don't plant them for ourselves. We plant them for those who come after us. What is just a sapling during our time will become the shade tree that a future generation will sit beneath and enjoy.

And we don't know which ones in that future generation will want to know more about the ancestor who planted the tree.