WANDERINGS FROM YOUR PRESIDENT
BY GAYLE STUART
Sharing genealogy is a rewarding experience!
I know we all have feelings of why should we share with other people when we have done the research and had the expense of gathering information. (Genealogy is not a cheap hobby.) We know all the relatives do not share our enthusiasm for finding tidbits from the past.
Over Father’s Day week-end we had the fun experience of visiting with a large number of Stuarts as we helped what we call the West Stuarts celebrate 125 years on the farm at Lexington, NE. Robert chose to move on to NE after leaving Clinton, IA. John, Alexander and Donald stopped at Walnut. Alex had no children and after Donald’s family finished with high school they did not stay in the Walnut area and all eventually went to Oklahoma, becoming the South Stuarts.
At this celebration, most were Robert’s family; there were three from Donald’s family and three from John’s family. Each branch has someone who is researching and this was interesting when it came to sharing.
In late July, my family is having a reunion just of my grandfather’s branch. If all would come, the possibility is to have 150 people. We did not have addresses of all cousins, so hope those we did send to pass the word on. Over the years, I have added to my material as I have found things. Now, when I have been going through my books, I’m finding I have some blank spots. I will need to work on these in the next couple of weeks. I will be sharing some of my material with the family by passing out a short history, only about 60 pages, to each family. By this I mean one person of each of my dad’s brothers and sisters families will get a copy and the rest of their family will have to get it from this person.
I believe in sharing information, but I am cautious about how much I give out without something in exchange. We probably have all heard, send me what you have and I will see what I can send you. Then, you don’t hear from them again.
We are going to try things differently from the past when we did a one-day get together. We are having a hot dog roast on Friday night, the main event on Saturday and, for anyone still around on Sunday, we have several things to see in the area with food available at noon.
gbs