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• Jacqi 10 Jul

  That's an issue I've been grappling with, too, Melissa. When I read other people's family history and see large excerpts from relatives' letters, I'm envious because my family never passed along such gems. Then, in a visit last summer to my husband's family in Chicago (with roots here in Fort Wayne!), we were bequeathed with a collection of letters and photographs, some dating from the 1870s, from our Tully family in Chicago and our Stevens family in Fort Wayne.
  
  With that precious collection now at hand, the first thing I wanted to do was share it. In a way, I've put in reverse the trend you wrote about today: I'm taking those old letters and digitizing them to share online through my family history blog, so others may enjoy them also. That way, the collection is publicly accessible and searchable, too.
  
  Sometimes, as you put it, it takes baby steps to leave behind our story. I do want to pass along my thoughts and important life events, too--and my baby steps right now are the journals I've kept--but job one for me is to first honor those whose lives went into making me who I am. I want to pass along their letters, their journals, their photographs. While the world may consider much of that to be no more than ephemera, I feel a call from even the nameless faces in the mystery photographs I've inherited to somehow tell their story. With every story of our ancestors, their friends and family, I infuse a part of myself, so in a way it, too, becomes a mechanism through which to pass along my own story.
  
  Great post! Thanks for the instigation to get readers thinking along these lines.