Tree

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Family Tree

Trees are one of the greatest things we have on our planet earth. There are over 600 species of oak trees, Oak has always been considered the best hardwood to use for furniture making, hardwood floors and any other place where a hardwood is needed. “Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut, that held its ground.” David Icke

There is a very large variety of trees, depending on location and climate. Some have lived for centuries. Some are short-lived, prone to disease and insect infestation, they never last very long. These trees usually drop many seeds to keep their specie going, replacing the ones that have died. Most trees grow producing many new branches.

It was a natural thing to equate a family heritage to a tree, as the many branches continued to form through the years. Setting up a family tree for future generations to hang on to is a gift to them . Someone once said of a historian, the best part of him is buried in the ground. I do believe there is more to family history than that. Be proud of your heritage, think about those who paved the way for your short stay here on this earth..

As a family tree gets older, branches run out in all directions, if it had a strong root system at the beginning. There will be many branches forming, showing all of the different families that started from that original pair. Many people have no interest in doing a family tree, genealogy study until they get into their advanced year. That is very unfortunate, most of the people who died before them had stories, names and relationships that died with them. A wealth of knowledge they knew about the family history, went away with them. History since the beginning of time has been passed from one person to another. If it isn’t written down, recorded, it will be lost forever. I think it is a very sad, many people today have no information about their grandparents, let alone six or seven generation back.

I’ve been doing a genealogy study on my family for close to thirty years, with some breaks in between. It is not a real entertaining thing to be doing for long periods of time. I set it aside, let it rest and then bring it out again, all fired up, ready to go. The goal is searching farther into the past for all the different branches that are missing. The branches are all out there, they just have to be put back on the tree.

I have researched old books, cemeteries, newspapers, county and state records and stories told by relatives and close friends of the family. You learn new things all the time. At 75 years of age, I always thought our family was Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, and Saami, or reindeer people. Just recently I learned I’m the seventh great-grandson of a fellow who came to Norway from Saxony, in the 1600’s. I found this information in a book written primarily about genealogy in that part of Norway. All about the families working in the copper and silver mines.

I think this is a great thing, start your family tree. It has never been easier, today we have worldwide Internet and computer programs that will do most of the work for you. When I first started back in the 70s. I was using snail mail and an old Underwood typewriter, sending snail mail messages to Norway and other places. Snail mail was even a lot slower than dial-up Internet.

Make your tree, put it on paper or in cyber space so it doesn’t end up just being lost forever. We as people are probably the next best thing on this earth next to the trees. I think working on a family tree can be very productive, entertaining and educational, make it a family project. There will be times during the research when you find out the tree was struck by tragic events, accidents, sickness, war, or acts of nature testing the tree’s roots.
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