After church services yesterday, a friend of mine, William, approached me. “How are you?” he asked. “Have you been busy doing family history?”
Have I been busy doing family history? On the 13th of February we met with J. Mark Lowe as part of the Mississippi Genealogical Society’s Winter Virtual Seminar. On the 15th of February Jennifer McGillan of Mississippi State University Libraries presented to the Society. On the 20th, we met with Mark again. Somewhere in between those meetings I managed to find some documents of a coroner’s inquest about a family member who died of poisoning (more to come on that later, I hope).
It’s been a whirlwind month, full of research, stories, and building the Mississippi Genealogical Society community. I explained all of this to William, who responded by saying, “You know—I’m not really very good at the entire family history thing.”
His statement struck me as funny for a minute.
“Do you have any pictures of your parents on your phone, by chance?” I asked.
“No, but I have a couple of my sister who passed away,” he said.
“Do me a favor, download the FamilySearch Memories app.” Now, I’m not the best at collecting photos on my phone. I’m also not the biggest social media user. But to be fair, there are some cool functions that are easy to use over at FamilySearch. And what is FamilySearch Memories if it isn’t social media for genealogists?
So, I showed William how to download the app and upload the photos of his sister. It turns out the photos were in his email, a modern-day shoebox where digital photos grow dusty and linger if someone leaves them untouched. Nevertheless, we found the photos, stuck them on Memories and tagged his sister in the photos so that other relatives could view the pictures.
By this time, which took all of five to seven minutes, a couple of other friends wandered along and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Family history,” William said. “Look at this!” He started showing them the photos he posted to the app.
“Ooh teach me,” one of them asked.
And William was off, showing the others how to post photos to FamilySearch Memories, all the way down to my admonition, “Now you need to be sure your photos are of people fully clothed and no kissing. It’s one of FamilySearch’s requirements for the photos.”
They all got a good chuckle from that one and soon enough, the four of us pulled out some chairs, sat in a circle and chatted about our families. We discussed family stories, how to get started in genealogy, common friends who are interested in their lineage, and more. One of them said, “I need to show these guys at work that app. There are three of them who love genealogy.” Another one stated, "I wish Davis was here. Out of all my friends, he’s the one who could tell a story and I imagine he could write a profound history of his family.”
After an hour we decided to call it quits for the day. It’s now a full two days later, and I’m still struck how fun it was to sit with a few friends and chat about family. It didn’t take much to start the conversation. It started with a question. “Hey, do me a favor?” and asking William to upload a photo. Then he showed someone else how to do it. Neither of them got “good at family history,” yesterday. But they did something. One thing. They preserved a memory for future generations. And they found a small community with likeminded interests.
If you’re one to enjoy family history, research, preservation of stories and memorabilia, or any of the other facets of genealogy, please join our community here at the Mississippi Genealogical Society. We’d love to have you, research with you, chat with you, see your pictures and more. Let’s just make sure we’re pulling stuff out of the old shoebox, literal or digital, and sharing it with others.
Let’s just do it fully clothed. And no kissing of course.