Stories Bring our Family History To Life!

How many of you can remember hearing a story from your parents, your grandparents, or perhaps an aunt or an uncle?  Mine were always telling me about visits by friends and relatives or how Grandpa Matt Stodolski had built something.  I found out early in live that my Grandpa Matt was a man of many talents.

 My mother shared a story with me about my Great Grandma Lucy (Beaudry) Stodolski and how she was known for her fried chicken and lemon pie during the harvest season.  The farmers would travel from farm to farm harvesting and the women would provide the meals for the workers.

Stories like these are what give a family history life!  For those of us who like to build our family tree and are constantly looking for a date, a name, a location, or some other fact to fill a place in our tree, we often forget to also capture those stories we have heard or been told.  Obituaries are great for filling in those blanks, but many also show interests that a family member may have had and may offer us an opportunity to ask other family members more about that person.

I recently made a good connection with the Scharnatta family up in Canada.  They descend in our tree from Marie Stodolski, who married William Scharnatta.   As I have been interacting with our family members from the Great White North, I have noticed how they share little bits of information as they try to remember people from their past.  "Hey, do your remember so and so who used to live on the corner?" or "Do you remember that family we used to always visit?"  As we have those conversations, these are the stories we need to keep alive.  The smallest story now may be a really cool story later on.  They are also windows into our past.

So if you are asked to provide information for a family tree, remember to also share things you are not asked for...stories, exciting events in a family, or just fond memories of a family member.  If nothing else, write down the stories from your family so they are not forgotten.  We never want our family tree to die, and the stories about the lives of the family are what give it life.