What makes the Christmas season beautiful? For a child, the anticipation of Christmas morning and gifts from Santa might seem all encompassing. But the decorations, the holiday feast, the music, the lights, all serve to add to the magic of Christmas. Who makes the magic happen? Behind it all there is often a mother orchestrating the dance of Christmas. As I’ve been pondering family Christmas traditions, I’ve settled on the tradition of making the season...
Do you know a memory keeper? The person in the family who captures a moment in time with a photo or video, sharing and displaying, collecting and keeping? I have the good fortune to be the daughter of a memory keeper. As long as I can remember, my mother, Anna Mae Kelsey, had a camera in her hand, snapping photos of birthday parties, family vacations, babies. Those photos went into picture frames and albums. Her simple...
Family history stories: research is showing that they contribute to a child’s resilience and strength. But what about adults? What can we gain from a family member’s experiences, thoughts, and feelings? I set out to write this article for Veteran’s Day. I wanted to finally get down in writing my mother’s memories of sending off three brothers to fight in World War II. With almost all of her generation gone, my time for getting the...
You’ve searched Find A Grave and Billion Graves. You’ve visited your local cemetery and taken photos of the headstones. What’s left for your cemetery research? Answer: the records kept by the cemetery office or sexton’s records. You may be surprised at the details in these records. I recently discovered a collection of cemetery records at the Utah Archives for my Kelsey family and today I’m sharing what I found. I’ll also give you three tips...
Family history and serendipity go together. Talk to any genealogist or family historian and you’ll hear stories of amazing finds – cousins who email with just the information needed, family bibles that turn up in unusual places, the headstone you find in the cemetery when you’ve almost given up searching. I’ve had my fair share of serendipitous moments, but today I’ll share just one: revisiting the house that William H. Kelsey built. As a young...
How well do you know the women in your recent family’s history? Have you wondered how they weathered the changes of the 20th century? Do you know of their contributions to community? As part of Women’s History Month, I went in search of my 20th century ancestor to determine her involvement in public service. My reward was discovering facets of my grandmother’s life that just needed to be contextualized to give them meaning. Researching 20th...
“Well-behaved women seldom make history” was penned by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1976. Do you have a well-behaved woman in your family’s history? A woman who lived through the astounding changes of the 20th century and quietly worked to make a difference? To celebrate Women’s History Month, you might want to reexamine her life from a different perspective and tell her story. I discovered a single scrapbook page that my grandmother, Florence...
The excitement and hoopla of RootsTech 2016 ended last Saturday and I came home with a bag, two new books to peruse, class notes, and lots of pieces of paper. So what’s next?How do I organize everything I collected so I can find it when I need it? How am I going to use what I learned to make a difference in my family history efforts? After attending the Brigham Young University Family History Conference in...
Do you know of a diary or journal of a pioneer ancestor that used to be in the family and no one knows what happened to it? Would you like to hold the original and see your ancestor’s actual handwriting? If you suspect you might have an ancestor who left a diary or journal you can follow the same steps I did to locate, view, and share it. My ancestor, William Henry Kelsey, joined the Church...
