Family Reunion Friday - In the Beginning...

In the beginning there was a great idea...to have a family reunion.  To a genealogist a family reunion is a wonderful opportunity to fine-tune the family tree.  This isn't the motivating factor for many people to attend though.  A family reunion tradition may begin for many reasons.  Remembering the descendants of a beloved couple.  A get-together for a monumental anniversary or birthday celebration.  It doesn't matter why you have them, but if you want them to continue regularly and be successful then you need to do some maintenance on them now and then.

Too often family reunions begin and as they age into their 25th...50th...75th anniversaries you see changes.  Fewer people show up.  The people that do show up stay in their smaller immediate family cliques.  The old-guard are the only ones on the committee and new ideas don't seem as well received.  Many regard these reunions as boring and go only to please an older family member.

It's sad to see family reunions fall apart.  I am somewhat of a family reunion novice.  I've only been to two in my life.  One was when I was a very little girl.  I was shy and left to play with the other children...only there were no games so there was no playing involved.  Just a girl and her sisters bored to tears and constantly asking our father when it would be time to go.  I also attended one as an adult where I sat with my immediate family members, met a new cousin-in-law and fellow family historian and talked and got to hear my children ask multiple times when it would be time to go.

These are my only two experiences.  You'd think I'd be somewhat jaded about them, but I'm not.  I think they are a wonderful way to remember loved ones that have passed.  I think it's a great opportunity for new cousins to meet each other and keep in contact.  I think it's a fabulous way to introduce the family's history to a new generation and get them in to keeping it alive.  I think none of that matters if it's not an ever-changing entity that everyone builds on.

Do I know how to make a family reunion successful?  Nope.  Do I have ideas?  Yep.  Will my ideas work for your family reunion?  Who knows, but listening and trying other people's ideas isn't a bad thing.  I hope that other people will share what they have experienced (both good and bad) with planning and going to family reunions and maybe we can all learn how to make them better.  To make them more successful.  To make sure that family reunions are revived and do not become the dinosaurs of our age.  Extinct.  Things of the past.

This is the first post in what I hope will be a successful series.  So until next time...

Follow Friday - This is Why We Subscribe to Blogs!

Seriously.  It never ceases to amaze me the number of fantastic blogs/posts that are out there.  There is simply no way to share them all, but each is worth it's weight in gold.  We all have various experiences and our collective knowledge base...wow.  No matter your experience level in genealogy and family history, you can always learn from others.  You just need to allow yourself to!

Here are just a few of the fantastic posts that I've wanted to share from the past few weeks.  I hope you head on over and check them out.  I'm sure you'll enjoy them as much as I did!

Lynn Palermo at The Armchair Genealogist has a rockin' series on Family Reunions.  I'm a family reunion ignoramus having only ever been to one and I rather young at the time...and bored to tears.  That was the Tabor family reunion in the late 70s/early 80s.  We never went to another, which was a shame.  I'm sure there would have been a point when I started enjoying them!  June 2012 is a big event in the Cayemberg Family.  The 75th Cayemberg Family reunion will be held in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  I've been married for almost 12 years now and I've never gone to the annual reunion.  It's not from a lack of desire, but the military has kept us so far away.  Next summer, come hell or high water, we will depart Texas for the trip to Wisconsin.  There's no way I'm missing this one!  Reading Lynn's posts got me so incredibly excited.  I hope we do some of the neat stuff she suggested...and a Facebook page for the event...FANTASTIC idea!  Check out "Family Reunions - Part 2 - Fundraising and Genealogy"...you'll be hooked and going after all the previous posts!

Genealogy Gems brought some exciting news about the 1940 census (who isn't extremely excited about this!).  The census won't be indexed when it first comes out so to search you'll need to do it by address which means that you need to know the enumeration district for the people you're looking for!  NARA has uploaded the maps to their website and Steve Morse has created a search form to help you find the E.D. easier.  Links at Lisa Louise Cook's Genealogy Gems blog!

Got Belgian ancestors?  My husband does and I've got to say, I was delighted to discover the Belgian Laces publication and the "What's New in Belgian Genealogical Research" blog.  I don't tend to hear about Belgian research often so it's great when you find blogs and societies that specialize in them.  Get out there and look.  You'll be surprised at what you find!

Trying to find ancestors that fought in the Civil War?  Lisa Swanson Ellam's (The Faces of My Family) post "Military Monday:  How to Find Possible Civil War Soldiers in Your Tree".  She explains a filtering process she learned at Fort Wayne's Ancestry Days from Anne Gillespie Mitchell of Ancestry.com.  It will narrow down the list of people you have in your tree to those most likely to have served during the Civil War.  I have to adapt it to the filters in my genealogy program, but the concept should still be the same.

At Onward to Our Past, Scott has another tip for "Real World" genealogists about saving and organizing your family trees, photos, documents, etc.  I always love his tips.  Practical for us all!

That's all for now.  There is so much more to share though.  So many impressive blogs...so little time!