Sharing Your Treasures
What are your treasures in life? The answers will vary from person to person and mostly depending on your stage in life. Some of us may treasure our worldly possessions; home, land, jewels, clothing etc. Others may treasure their testimony of the gospel, covenants and their family. Where does your treasure lie?
We have read great books about pirates and sailors that live only for the treasure of gold and jewels. Earthly treasures that are here today and gone tomorrow. Seek for treasures far better than gold; genealogy is a true treasure.
Recently I received information that a distant relative has in her possession three diaries of a relative of mine. She has not transcribed them or shared them in any way. I would love to know what was in them! To see the books would be nice, but what I would really like to read them!! I don’t even care if it is straight out of the original books, they are treasures to be shared. But, the real treasure is what is written on the pages!
The following paragraphs are taken from Mormon Times article by Russell Bangerter Researching Family History: Finding and sharing our genealogical treasure
“We may learn that by sharing our genealogical treasures ….. a door may open for us to form a family organization where everyone can have a part of doing something within their means and capability of helping the work along. Whatsoever is shared with others comes back to us ten-fold. This principle, as with anything else, is also true with genealogy.
What happens at the end of "Uncle John's" life if the genealogical treasure is found in a dumpster because a son, daughter or other relative who simply did not understand the precious treasure trove they inherited? Rescue it from the dumpster! Share it with other relatives. You can be sure someone eventually is going to come looking for it. Once you have found your treasure chest, you may want to have a website created where other relatives can obtain copies of the documents, photos and genealogy. These are the real jewels of genealogy!” (If you aren’t sure if genealogy is worth your time and efforts read all of Russell Bangerter’s articles– it may change your mind)
Leslie Albrecht Huber –author, shared her thoughts featured in Heritage Quest magazine in 2005 titled Sharing Your Discoveries.
Leslie, talks about finding her 3rd great-grandmother’s birth record. She had been looking for months for any information on her grandmother. She knew when she came to the US but knew nothing before that. It had been a lengthy process of trial and error. While in this project of finding her grandmother she came across something unexpected. She found that someone else had already submitted her Swedish family some generations earlier. She tracked down the name of the submitter and with little effort found the submitter’s daughter. This person said that her mother had done lots of genealogy research, when her mother died much of the information had gotten scattered and filed away to be forgotten. She agreed to make some copies and send them along. A few weeks later a large envelope arrived in the mail. There was page after page of family information in great detail back to the 1600’s.
She goes on to say that she had thought she was forging new territory in looking for this grandmother, but now realized that was obviously wrong. She was thrilled and disappointed at the same time. She had spent months of hard work when the information had already been put together but had never been put in place for others to see!
Leslie also says that this experience is not uncommon for genealogists. People often spend a lot of time carefully digging for family information, only to leave the treasure buried when they are done. These family history discoveries become well-kept secrets, often not available to anyone, especially if you are to die. Share, share, share!!
The easiest and most obvious way to make sure others know about the new family history information is to give it to them! Spread your knowledge far and wide within your family. Distribution is easy today. Make photocopies, copy data files on to CD’s etc. Find ways that work best for you.
Last note; paper copies can be expensive, then there is the mailing expense also. Think in terms of other new media, use e-mail and blogs and other internet methods to share your pedigree files or computerized family history information. It is free and only take a few seconds.
