Ancestral Guilt
Are the people today guilty of what other people did in the past?
I don’t care if it’s ancient past or recent. Is my child automatically a bad person because their parent, grandparent, or great aunt, once removed, was associated with a time in history that they had no control over?
Short answer. NOPE.
My mom did the family tree-I watched, listened, and occasionally helped her research it for years. We would sit at the kitchen table and talk about various subjects, and genealogy was a topic that came up often.
Mom researched the old-fashioned way at first, tracking down birth and death certificates and cemetery records. The internet has made it more accessible. She found journals and diaries, newspaper clippings. She connected with distant relatives via snail mail, phone calls, emails, and social media, which is still ongoing today.
We had heroes and a horse thief in our family tree.
My grandma’s brother Eugene died on the beaches of Normandy. Another great uncle was killed when his plane was hit in WW2; we had a letter that he wrote before his flight.
