Which Shoe Fits?



What’s Your Style?

           Imagine wearing your hiking boots on the sunny beaches of Florida, or wearing your flip flops in a snowstorm.  Different shoes fit different activities, and  different talents and tools fit different activities in family history.  No one particular way is right and no one way is best, every way is good and effective in our efforts to record our lives.
            Most of the family history work we do are hobbies or part of a way of life, and they are quietly incorporated into part of our everyday lives—like traditional family recipes or story telling.  Even new media becomes sources of family information used in family history.  Blogs are the new journals and Facebook can be considered the new photo album.  Although these mediums are newer, they are still an effective tool used to record our life and our family’s history.
            Whether passing down family recipes, stories, or photographs, you are doing family history work.  When we record our lives for our posterity or when we pass on information from our ancestors, we are doing family history.  It does not matter if we wear flats or high heals with a dress and similarly, it does not matter if we record our family’s information in words or in pictures.  It is central that we wear shoes, and it is important in genealogy to record information. 
            We each have different talents that enable us to add flair to our family’s tree of names and dates.  It is the combination of dates and places in addition to photographs that give us the extensive picture of our ancestors.  Similarly, it is a closet with several different pairs of shoes that enable us to have a well rounded choice of shoes that fit the activity or occasion that we are dressing for.
            Just as one pair of shoes does not adequately provide for our needs and activities, one type of source information does not adequately provide the overall and extensive picture of our family’s tree.
            So, send us your blog addresses, and invite us to be your Facebook friends…Keep on scrappin’, and protect those heirlooms…For dinner, fix those family favorites sprinkled and spiced with a few family stories…


journaler                                 artifact keeper                        photographer
scrapbooker                            record keeper                         storyteller
biographer                              autobiographer                       researcher
memory keeper                       recipe recorder                       history keeper

 

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