Passing on The Stories

When I was a child, extended visits with my Harre grandparents always meant spending some time with Grandma looking at family documents and pictures that she kept in one drawer of her dresser. She'd tell me stories about her family and Grandpa's. Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to realize that I should be recording the stories in some way, both of us had forgotten most of them.

Third quarter of my freshman year in college I took a 20th Century U.S. History course. The professor selected only one textbook for the class that took adifferent approach to exposing students to the history of our nation. It's one of the few college textbooks I regret getting rid of. It covered the usual facts, figures, social trends, political movements, etc. But each chapter of facts was followed by a chapter that told how they affected the lives of several families, including two that immigrated to the United States during the 20th Century. For our term paper, the professor asked us to interview relatives and write a history of our own families in the 20th Century.

And so I became the official family historian. My niece Michaela called me for help with an eighth grade project. She asked some questions, and I printed out a Register Report for the Harre side of the family for her. Her brothers John and Jimmy each called in their turn when they had the same eighth grade project.

When Joe, the youngest, and I chatted online a couple of weeks ago, he asked what I knew about the family history. I wondered if he had the same project, even though he attends a different parochial school than his older siblings. No, he responded, he was just interested. We made plans to spend time together while his father and older brother visited a college in the Boston area.

Joe asked questions about the Harres, the Hilsmanns, and the Bancrofts. We did some poking around on Ancestry.com looking at a collateral branch of the family. He learned to fill out a Census form gathering data on the Charles Harra family from the 1880 Census. With some practice under his belt, he tried looking for information on his mother's side of the family. We didn't find very much, and I told him he needed more information about his Dougherty grandparents. I printed out some simple forms to help him talk to his mother, aunt, and uncle and gather the information he'd need to start digging further. I also printed Register Reports for the Harres, Hilsmanns, and Bancrofts for him to take with him.

Oh, and I showed him some of the same family documents Grandma showed me all those years ago.

Even if he decides that genealogy isn't his thing, the fact that Joe was interested in spending some time with Uncle Older Guy to learn about our family made for a nice day.