Ca Ching

We've been running around like crazy around here with lots of things I promise to blog about this week.  But I had to share with you my happy dance for today.

My 15 year old son is speaking next week at RootsTech and today he had to write an unrelated paper for school today on "Why Family History Is Important" (In relation to the book The Giver.)  He said I could post it for you here.  We've worked and worked together on his RootsTech talk.  But he wrote this all by himself.  Take a look:


Why Family History is Important

I believe family history is important because it helps us understand where we came from and be confident because we can see what our ancestors did. My family runs a company that prints genealogy charts, so I am very I am very involved with family history, this year I am even going to teach a class about how youth can get started using online genealogy research sites at Rootstech, which is a huge conference hosted by FamilySearch.

My great great grandfather, John Hatten Carpenter, spent most of his life sending letters back and forth with people in England so he could do temple work for them (he was the first member of his family to join the LDS church.) He was able to complete his family history back to the 1200s. He was also the first one to move to America, which I thought was cool to learn about. When we went to England last year we went to see the farm he grew up on, and we also got to see lots of cool old documents, like old lamps and I got to hold an old will that was older than the Declaration of Independence, which was written on really thin leather. It was interesting to learn how they thinned the hide, there were dime sized holes in the leather, which it turns out were from mosquito bites before the leather was stretched.

Another reason family history is fun is because it can help you to understand the traditions you have today and why your family is the way it is. My grandpa went on his mission to Switzerland and we still do lots of stuff he learned when he was over there.

But the main reason I like to learn about my family history is that if you look enough you can find lots of really interesting stories. My grandpa has an old Edison amberola which he got from his grandpa. It is really interesting to see all the cool and old stuff they had back then, and how cool the stuff we have now is.

Learning about my family history has been a big part of my life and I am glad that I am able to access it so easily. I think other people should start to work on their genealogy if they haven’t already, because it is really worth it.
The End

I gave up long ago on having a "genealogist" for a child.  But I knew the importance of them knowing about their family history so I kept at it.  And look---it is starting to pay off!!  Happy Dancing Day.