My 100th blog post and my 100-year touchstone

100In a little under a year, I’ve reached a milestone on this blog with this, my 100th post. To you, dear reader, I’d like to say thank you for reading, commenting, sharing, helping, and inspiring me. Family history may sometimes seem like a solo pursuit, but at its core, it’s a cooperative affair. Family history is about our history, and we all have a role to play in ensuring that this history survives. Think of the heirlooms and old family photos you might have in your house. You would not have those had someone else not taken at least some care to help preserve and protect them. I am utterly grateful to my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond for making sure that some of our family’s history survived long enough to make its way to my hands and eyes.

Just as those who have gone before us helped preserve history for us, so must we help preserve history for the future. The more we try, the more history will be preserved; the less we try, the more history will be lost. History is not just a collection of facts and artifacts that survives on its own and can be counted on to always be there. If we don’t take an active role in nurturing and protecting our history, it will be slowly be lost.

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