Plants as a Family Heirloom

I recently had the opportunity to visit a few homes on the Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour. In this self-guided charity event, real people with real (self-made) gardens open them up to the public. It is free but a donation is requested for the charities that Mary Lou favored.

While at the first house, I was talking to the hostess when someone came up to her and asked her where she had obtained a specific plant. It is not found in any local nurseries. The hostess explained that she received a piece of it from her mother who had received a piece from her mother (the hostess’ grandmother). Immediately, I thought of genealogy and that I don’t even know what my mom’s or grandmothers’ favorite plants were!

My mom and grandmothers died before I became interested in genealogy. But when I asked my dad about this, he said when they had to move to a larger house, my mom wanted to take the Pittosporum tobira from the first house with them. It is still growing as a hedge at my dad’s house and I will have to get some for my yard now that I know this. To be “authentic” I’ll try to get an offshoot from his.

He also said his mother liked ‘Seven Sisters’ Roses. I’d never heard of this plant, but after reading about it, now I know something new.

If you’ve downloaded the inventory spreadsheet from my last post, you’ll see that the last row is now labeled “Plants”. I don’t know if I’ll start growing plants related to my family’s past, but I’ll have to think about it.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all of you who are mothers!

Inventory Your Family History

One of the first things you’ll probably want to do is make an inventory of what you have. This will come in handy for

• remembering where things are stored,
• realizing what items need special care/handling or need to be upgraded,

and

• helping you decide what you want to leave to others.

When I’ve talked to others about this inventory, I gave them a paper copy of a spreadsheet I put together. When I tried to fill it in for myself, I realized that some of the row and column headers were incomplete or could be worded better. This is what part of my worksheet now looks like:

You can download a blank inventory worksheet, then click the Download link in the lower right to open it in Excel. I recommend keeping this info in a file if it will be easier for you to locate and update in the future. Also feel free to change any row or column headings as you see fit. If you think I’ve left off an important heading, please leave a comment on it below. You can fill in the spreadsheet cells with an estimated count of how many of each item you own, an abbreviation of where it is stored, or any other info that makes sense for you. Remember, the whole purpose is just to realize what you own, so make it useful for yourself.

One thing I’ll be blogging about is how to migrate items that are on obsolete media to current media so they can be copied/preserved more readily. These items are indicated by the red row headers in the spreadsheet (CDs, zip drives, etc). Not only are these media becoming obsolete and deteriorating, but we may no longer have the means to read/extract from them. We certainly don’t want to let that happen.

Some people have realized that even the file formats and technology we use today may not be available in 20 or 30 years. Of course, the updating is not a one-time process. We’ll have to upgrade to future technology after it becomes available. As an example, my dad copied old 8mm home movies to VHS tapes a while back. Now those VHS tapes need to be migrated to DVDs. I think another relative now has the original 8mm movies. So I’ll try to upgrade from the original media, if possible.

However, the first media I NEED to migrate is a series of audio tapes I made when I interviewed older relatives about our family history.

Goal for this Blog

I am a genealogist. I am learning new things to become a better one! As I come across ideas that I think would also benefit others, I will blog about them. And I hope you give this blog feedback so we can share ideas together on what works, doesn’t work, or a better way to do something.

This blog started soon after I gave presentations on Leaving Genealogy Data to Your Heirs. (What better place to start blogging than at the end!) This is something I’ve been thinking about lately and after talking to others and not finding anyone who knows a lot about it, I figured I could learn some things about the topic, and now I’m sharing what I know. Obviously, the same things won’t apply to all genealogists and there is no guarantee that my ideas will work, but I’ll toss them out there for your comments. That’s why this blog was started.

One of the first things I should mention is the difference between Genealogy and Family History. Genealogy is the lineage of your family–who is descended from whom, when, and where. Family History is the story of your family, from why they did the things they did (eg, moved to a new place or had a certain occupation) to what made them different from other people. What were they like? What stories have been passed down through the generations?

I will probably use these terms interchangeably since they are so closely related and I am interested in both of them. I hope you are too.