Family History books

I have scanned or made electronic versions of three of my family history books written by other people.

• Our Turner Heritage, the family of William Augustia Turner and descendants.

• Bryson Family History, a compilation of stories collected by my mother.

• Our Hughes Ancestors, the extensive research of my grandmother on her Hughes line.

Another useful resource is the Vern Bryson autobiography, transcribed by the incredibly patient Megan McGrath.

I'm pretty passionate about putting family history resources into the hands of the younger generation. Please, download and share with your family.

To my generation: Why you should care about Family History.

Family History is for old people who have time to work on it, right? What's wrong with that? I'll tell you what the problem is: tons of old paper records and obsolete computer files that nobody can understand when Grandma passes on. (This is no disrespect to my very computer-savvy family history Grandmother, who is a marvelous exception.) Sure, your whole family history has been done. But does anybody know what it is? Has anybody passed the information on to the next generation?

In Ezra, the children of priests whose genealogy was lost after the Babylonian captivity were denied the priesthood because they could not show that they were of priestly lineage. (Ezra 2:62) Here's the newsflash that I've had while I've been working on my family history: It's not Grandma's responsibility to make sure I know what my heritage is. And it's amazing how much of that information is getting harder to find as people get older. I thought that if I wanted my genealogy, I would just ask, and a nice computer disk or some paper copies would be supplied with all the information I need - NOPE! Someone has some information, but they think that So-and-So has more. So-and-So claims that he never had any of that, it was Aunt Jane...

Computers have completely changed the nature of Family History, and who is best poised to gather all the information and make it accessible to other family members? It's us, the people who grew up with computers. We have to make sure that the information makes it to our generation.