[written in January, 2025]

After my Mom retired from teaching around 1980, she became very interested in family history. She had inherited all of her mother’s journals and letters and photographs, but she went far beyond that. She contacted many relatives, which led to frequent correspondence and even personal visits. Several of her correspondents became close personal friends.

When my Dad got a TRS-80, an early personal computer, as a retirement gift in 1981, Mom became a computer user and wrote all her letters using PCWrite, an early word processor. With the printer, she could print out copies of her letters and the replies. (Now, nearly 40 years later, we have forgotten what a miracle that seemed at the time!) She kept many file folders and 3-ring binders with all of her correspondence and notes.

Mom also became quite involved in using email and also some of the early online bulletin boards. GE had a “chat room” called Genie, and she frequently sent queries and responded to others researching similar family connections. All of this took place using the slow dial-up modems of that time. She also spent many hours at the library reading microfilms and old books she borrowed.

Although he was not directly involved in the research, my Dad was very helpful in figuring out how to use PCFile, an early shareware database, to keep records. He also created a computer program (probably written in BASIC!) to print out family trees. Later, Mom began to use a more sophisticated genealogy program (Family Edge) which he set up. Another contribution he made was to photograph many pictures found in old photo albums, some on loan from other relatives. Although the old files saved on floppy disk are no longer useable, I have the photos, and also the family trees. And, of course, all of Mom’s correspondence and notes!

When Dad moved from Marblehead to Brooksby Village in 2001, all of this came to me in a dozen banker’s boxes, thanks to the wonderful women from “Facilitations” who helped to sort all his stuff. After being stored in several basements for years and then in my old garage, I moved it all into the house recently to escape the dampness. And here it has been sitting ever since. During the pandemic, I started to go through the boxes, reorganizing and taking some notes as well as throwing away a lot of stuff that didn’t seem directly useful. I signed up for an account on Ancestry.com, and started to enter some information. But when life got busy again, the project slipped back onto the to-do list in the back of my mind .

Last spring, I finally took a deep dive into Mom’s stuff, inspired by my trip to Paris the summer before. I enjoyed it, but it turned out to be a much bigger task than I anticipated which involved scanning or photographing old photos and other memorabilia, reading old letters and translating some from French, and writing a lengthy memoir which I posted on John’s website. I used Adobe Lightroom for the photo galleries and had to figure out how to put it all together using WordPress. Quite a project, but I am quite happy with the results!

Now, I am looking into the genealogy of Dad’s family and I realize a lot has changed since Mom was doing her research. Thirty or forty years ago, people requested microfilms from the LDS church to read at a local library, and wrote to town clerks or government record keepers to request copies of birth certificates, marriage licenses, and so on. To exchange information and compare notes with other family members, many letters were mailed back and forth. People also travelled to places where their relatives had lived to look for cemeteries or to consult church and local records (which my parents did on their family reunion trip to Michigan in 1994.) It was a hobby with a lot of personal contact.

I’ve been thinking that something has been lost when it’s all online and all you have to do is go to the hints in Ancestry.com to find census records, birth and death records, and photos of grave markers, along with information on possibly related family members. Mom would be amazed at how easy it is to find information that she and her correspondents puzzled over for months with many dead ends. With all of this available, you could go a lot further back than I might want to go. One of my jobs is to decide what is enough and then get around to writing about what we know about the family. I know Mom intended to but never got around to it. And I feel if I don’t do what I can, others may not have the patience or time to follow up and the family history which I find so interesting will fade away…