Fourth of July Family History Tradition

While rockets red glare lights the skies over this part of Utah on July 4, I always find myself writing some family history, so proud am I of my heritage.

But I will be spending time on another family history project this Fourth of July.

I found out recently that the website I built since the middle-1990s was taken down--MyFamily.com, owned by Ancestry.com. I cried, and I wanted to cut my heart out because it hurt so much throbbing inside my body. All the photographs. All the comments. All the neatly organized photo files of my siblings, grandparents, parents, cousins, trips, ancestors, family recipes, current family events--GONE.

I wasn't even informed, because the email I began the website with is not the email I have now, so they probably tried to notify me, but I didn't receive any notification. I learned, when I researched some more, that Ancestry.com only sent the website owners the photographs that were on the sites. They didn't save any data that went with them--no photo captions; no comments back and forth between relatives. I have all the photographs, but I don't have the captions that I got when I was avidly into family history with kissin' cousins. I have no idea how to reach a lot of them either.

There are a lot of grieving souls out there who counted on Ancestry.com to preserve their family history. We paid for those sites. I'm still mad at that company. I sent them most of the information they now have on my family. They are charging others for it. Anything they have on my ancestors, came from me. I had my whole family tree on there. They should pay me for the information!

But, enough said.

I didn't want another year or month to go by without trying to re-preserve all the information. A lot of my family history is on FamilySearch.org, but that website is so hard to maneuver. I even took a class in it, but the information went over my head and I got so confused. I guess, unless I'm working with it on a daily basis, I'm not going to learn it. And I don't have pictures on there.

So, I still have my Legacy genealogy program. I thought it was lost when my computer crashed, but, thank the Lord, I just downloaded the newest version and was able to whisk my data into it. Really, on my knees, thanking G-d. And I'm thanking the friend who fixed my computer. It's like it's brand new.

So, I am going to start a blog of our family history. Hopefully Google won't forsake it, or will have the kindness to give me some time to move it to another format, if that is ever needed--unlike Ancestry.com.

I will have a link on this blog. I'm working on it tonight.

The noise is dying down now, but we will have more over the whole month. Utah celebrates its founding on July 24th, so there are fireworks practically the whole month. They're not illegal here, and people down the street and around the whole neighborhood fire off the cannons and rockets and whatever they're called. It's a smoky mess out there! s.m.i.l.e.

Happy Independence Day!