New to You – Month 9 of 12 Ancestors in 12 Months

Connecting Ancestors to Descendants

We are unique. We face challenges. We enjoy the good times and endure the bad times. We are here because our ancestors survived. They faced struggles and tragedies as well as successes and celebrations. It’s really important to share these struggles and successes with the children in our family.  According to Bruce Feiler, “The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. It turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness (The Stories that Bind Us).”  

Originally, I began my family history quest because my mother wanted to make sure that each of her children and grandchildren had copies of family photos with names identified.  She wanted her family to “live on” for future generations. I made books with many of the pictures and commenced my research adventure. I joined a genealogy club and Generations Cafe. During the COVID pandemic I successfully completed the Generations Cafe Ancestry Challenge and wrote 52 entries for my new blog, Journeying with Jacque. Later that year, I finally had my DNA tested and started an online family tree on Ancestry.com, primarily to make sure that the correct information on my paternal grandmother was available to family members (I currently have 121 people in my tree with sources attached and am really at the beginning stages of my family tree – my goal is to make it as correct as possible.)

My newest genealogy endeavor has been to purchase Family Tree Maker. This new-to-me program connects with Ancestry.com. It is a desktop program that has a cloud backup and syncs to Ancestry to ensure that all the latest changes to my tree are available both online and on my desktop. (Okay, I need to put the login info in my will so that my heirs always have my research, photos, charts, etc. available for the future.) I just started using Family Tree Maker so I am still navigating all the available features. In the Help section, there are training videos and my goal for the near future is watch them so I can get a feel for all the options. (YouTube also has many videos that I am sure will also answer any questions that I have.)

Back to the goal of using family history to encourage resiliency in the children in our family, I hope to share some of the family stories that I discover and encourage the connections between my nieces and nephews and their ancestors. I hope that these stories will enrich the younger generation and help them find meaningful relationships  to the past.

I wrote in my blog of July 15, 2022 https://journeyingwithjacque.com/extended-family-generations-cafe-ancestry-challenge/ about John Howland my 10th great grand-uncle who fell off the Mayflower. I bought my grand-niece, Magnolia, the picture book The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, or John Howland’s Good Fortune by P. J. Lynch. Henry, our direct ancestor and John’s brother, is mentioned on page 38. While John was a Pilgrim and signed the Mayflower Compact, Henry was a Quaker (his 2nd great grandson, Timothy Smith my 5th great grandfather and Magnolia’s 7th great grandfather, was a Quaker in the Revolutionary War https://journeyingwithjacque.com/conflict-month-6-of-12-ancestors-in-12-months/).

To show Magnolia the connection between her and these ancestors, I created a couple of charts in Family Tree Maker. The first is chart showing John Howland, his parents, and his siblings, including our direct ancestor, Henry Howland.

Next, I created a chart showing Magnolia and her direct lineage to Henry Howland. Magnolia just started kindergarten and is still a little young for this book. When I give it to her, I will include the charts. Hopefully, this will help her connect to her ancestors.

Sources

Coleman, Rachel. “Why We Need Family History Now More than Ever • Familysearch.” FamilySearch, 5 Aug. 2022, https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/why-we-need-family-history-now-more-than-ever.

“The Stories That Bind Us.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/callings/temple-and-family-history/sunday-lesson/stories-that-bind?lang=eng.

Wardleigh, Chakell. 5 Benefits of Knowing Your Family History – Selecthealth.org. https://selecthealth.org/blog/2019/08/5-benefits-of-knowing-your-family-history.