When family history informs us about American History

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4. I'm lucky - I inherited a lot of family research

We have a letter written to my great-great-grandfather in the 1870's discussing family history. By 1911 my grandmother (his granddaughter) had done enough research to join DAR. When Mom married into that family she worked on researching her family - which was easy because they had settled in one part of Alabama between 1819 and 1834 and stayed.

Now I have inherited the records for my husband's family which was begun about seventy five years ago. His mother researched her maiden name and compiled a book that tried to include everyone with that surname that ever lived in the United States!

Mostly I am trying to get digital records and digitize everything we have. When Mom and grandmother were researching, they didn't have access to original census pages, just the indexes - plus they knew where their ancestors lived, so they seldom even looked at those records.

My parents were both stationed in Hawaii during the war - Dad was in submarines and Mom was a Navy Nurse. That's how they met.