If you are a genealogist and you have children, you have probably wondered whether or not your children will share your interest in researching family history. Whether your children are young or old, you may hope for the day when a situation comes up involving you and your child where you share a “golden moment” that piques their curiosity and gets them interested in genealogy. It is only natural to have these sorts of hopes and dreams. Genealogy is a family affair, and much of the purpose of what you do in your research comes from a desire to preserve your family’s unique story for future generations so that they may know where they came from.
In the spirit of our genealogy hopes and dreams for our children, I have collected a couple of excerpts from real-life stories from around the world wide web that show the many ways in which genealogists’ children become interested in family history. There is the story of the father who was passing through Salt Lake City and stopped to grab a quick copy of a death certificate at the Family History Library while the rest of the family waited in the car. One child wanted to go in with him, even though it was just going to be a quick trip. The man showed his eleven year old son (who previously had stated that genealogy was boring) how to use the microfilm reader and make a copy of the certificate. On their way out of the library, the boy asked his father when they could look for more ancestors because genealogy is cool. A genealogist was born right then and there.
In another true story, a young girl was captivated by the “Little House on the Prairie” series of books. Her grandmother knew about her interest and told her granddaughter that she actually had Ingalls ancestors. Together they sat down with research that the grandmother had done and they figured out that Laura Ingalls Wilder was the granddaughter’s seventh cousin four times removed. Imagine how delighted that little girl was.
Photo by jppi on morguefile.com.