For about as long as I can remember, my grandparents have been compiling family histories. At first, my grandmother set up a typewriter in her living room. She gathered stories and pictures and wrote out pedigree charts. Then, she assembled them into beautiful albums. Some stories are typed in red ink because that is the only tape she had when she wanted to do her work.
I remember them buying their first computer. My grandfather was willing to learn other things, but grandma had one purpose. She wanted to know how to use it to type family history.
When we had the time to listen, they’d show us family trees and recount the stories behind them.
One year for Christmas my grandparents gave us all a typed family history of some of our pioneer ancestors and a book of stories of the handcart pioneers. I glanced at it then, and then put it on a bookshelf for safekeeping. I’d all but forgotten about it until my husband started researching handcart pioneers for a youth conference he was planning. And then I remembered. I pulled it out and dusted it off and started to read.
Rediscovering that history got me really thinking about heritage and how so many of the things we take for granted today are ours because of the sacrifices of others.
I got to thinking that maybe our history would be better off somewhere other than a dusty old bookshelf or a closet or seldom used hard drive where we seek it out only for school projects and sacrament meeting talks. So I decided to publish my grandparents’ history, not in a book format that would be easily tucked away, but online. As a blog. Where you can find new entries in small doses.
Maybe by using a little modern technology we can reach back in time and catch a glimpse of where we came from.
Emily Chidester Hoopes