Sometimes treasures of genealogy information can be gleaned from reading old family correspondences. Before the days of cell phones, email, twitter and FaceBook, people actually wrote letters to one another as a way to stay connected. Some of those letters still exist in attic trunks or tied up with satin ribbons in a shoe box under somebody's bed.
Ask other family members if they know of any correspondences, Bible records or other family records that may be around. If the person you ask does not have them, they may know who will. You could be surprised by the wealth of information available to you. I know of some who have felt a special closeness to ancestors who left detailed margin notes in old recipe books!
I was fortunate enough to inherit a packet of family letters written by my great grandfather on my mother's side, Aola Urade Krebs. His oldest daughter, Fern, had gone to Japan to work as a secretary for the Methodist church. For the years that she was in Japan her father wrote to her faithfully every couple of weeks. Fern kept many of those letters and I now have them.
You can imagine my excitement when I received this package of letters from my grandmother. I was sure I would learn all sorts of detail about the history of my family in the lines of those long ago correspondences. In some cases, that would have been true. Not, however, with these.
My great grandfather worked for Central Arizona Dairy in Phoenix, Arizona. If there ever was a man who loved his cows, it was Aola Urade Krebs. Nearly all the letters to Fern are filled with infinite detail about the health and well being of each cow at the dairy. He reports meticulously how many gallons of milk were received and how much cream they gave. He tells all sorts of things about the operation of a dairy farm in the early 1900's. Then, almost as an after thought, he would quickly scribble at the bottom of the page "mother and children are doing fine."
I was deeply disappointed by the lack of usable family history information in these letters and almost gave up after reading six or seven that were all pretty much the same story - cows, cows and more cows. But I did not give up. I am tenacious if nothing else. I kept reading page after difficult-to-decipher page in my great grandfathers wavy handwriting. Finally it paid off.
In one letter he remarks that it is his wedding anniversary. EUREKA! Until I found that note I had no idea when he had married. This gave me a solid date in the man's own hand, something I could be sure of. Over the years I have learned to appreciate these letters more than I initially did, because for all they lack in family anecdotes, they really do give me insight into my great grandfather's work ethic and his affinity for his vocation. They help me understand what was important to him.
They also inspire me to turn off the computer and write a few old fashioned correspondences of my own from time to time. I can't imagine anyone keeping even the best phrased emails for 100 years. These letters from great grandpa are about that old. Hopefully in my own letters, however, I 'll say more than "mother and kids are doing fine.".
