First~ Getting started

52 Ancestors

I am creating a new blog for a special challenge. The challenge is to take 52 ideas about my ancestors, week by week and add them, after the year ends, to my genealogy pages. Sounds simple enough, but of course it won't be.
Oh I'll begin just fine, but then the weather will get warm and I will want to be outside and in the garden or on my horse- so giving myself this blog also gives me permission to take a few minutes out of each WEEK and write to the weeks prompts.

Wish me luck!

The first prompt is -- FIRST.

Everyone needs to begin somewhere, and the 'go to' first would of course be myself. Ego, Id, self, etc. BUT I am going to begin with the first time I thought about my past, my genealogy.
It would have to be me, under the kitchen table listening to my parents and grandparents telling family stories. Stories of each of their sister, uncles, relatives, grandmothers and grandfathers. I listened with rapt attention, but because I wasn't suppose to be in the room ( little pictures have big ears) I had to sit quietly and not ask questions.
Not ask questions about why my two Great Aunts have wildly different names from the ones they were born with. Not ask questions about where their mother had been. Not ask questions about why Great Uncle Isaac walked away from the Civil war battlefield and was never seen again. Not ask questions about the coffin in the ice house, the run away team through the grape vineyard, my grandfather living in a box to finish high school, or why my grandmother was on her own at age 14.

I have been searching for these answers for a very long time, and only now are some of those questions being answered after searching, slogging, picking my way through many, many pages of documents.
How much easier it would have been to be able to just ask Granny about her father and mother. Or ask Grandfather about his runaway mother.
The first questions would have begun with, " Why?"
Why did they marry?
Why did they Divorce?
Why did Great Grandmother Die?
Why didn't anyone go looking for Isacc?
The question of why begs to be answered with feelings; and feelings are lost among the papers of the past. No one can delve the mind of a long dead relative, one can only speculate. I suppose that is why it is at the end of the long list of questions you are suppose to ask to tell any story.
Who, What, When, Where and WHY.

If anyone reading this blog is involved in the 52 Week Challenge, or is just interested in genealogy, let that be the first question that you ask any living relatives. Let that be the driving question as you write your missives to future generations.
Why you fell in love.
Why you got a divorce.
 Why you moved across the country, the continent, the town.
Tell us the only thing we cannot endeavor to answer correctly for ourselves.
It may be painful, or shameful or thrilling to you, but in a few years our children's children will want to know. They will need to understand.
Let that be your legacy to them.