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Thanks for your story. I’ve been educating the grandkids about family history, writing names on the back of old photos, & making sure the next generations know the family history & don’t forget what made them who they are.
They even had a great, great grandfather & his brother who walked to California in 1850 & came back with enough to last his & his whole extended family through the entire depression.

Yep...those stories are precious. I never got to know any of my grandparents. They had all passed before I was born in 1947. I always felt like I missed a lot, never having known them. So much family history lost. My mother never really knew her father, since he and her mother separated when she was very small. She knew nothing of her family's history, only that her uncle John had died in WWI. I do have a couple of pictures of him...one in uniform, and on a horse. When I asked where he was buried, she'd say "Flanders Field," not knowing the cemetery he was in.

Even my father, who came to the U.S. from Holland with his parents, and two brothers in 1912, knew nothing of his family history. He always told me his mother, who died in 1920 of TB, was buried in an apple orchard. It wasn't until years later, through a 1st cousin, that I found where she was buried.

After my mother died in 1990, I went to Canada where she had been born, and found vast amounts of info. I also hired a researcher in Holland, who was able to provide me with about 7 generations of my father's family. Everything else I've discovered, has been through Ancestry.com. I even found a photo of my great-grandfather (my Dad's grandfather) there. I'm the last one in my family, so the only one's I have left to share this info with, are my two sons, and my brother's widow, and my niece.