> your post brings up a good point. as i work very diligently trying > to research my family history while I still have my mother and my > grandmother to use as sources i come across a situation where my > mother and an aunt had been married for a short period of time to > different men. neither of them wants to share any of their history > during those times. I know of these marriages because they were in > my lifetime so I have written them in my notes for use at a later > date but how does a person make others in the family understand that > this is a family history to share with our descendants so they can > know where they came from and who we are, They enjoy researching > with me and love to find new stories about our ancestors but still > are adamant about not sharing a small piece of their past. How can > we make people understand so they will share? > > Robin Percy <[email protected]> I don't think you can get someone to talk about something they really don't want to. I've hit that wall a couple of times myself. One thing I did do was I found a listing of one of the marriages in the newspaper archives in my area. That spurred a conversation that gave me a little bit more of information which included the approximate length of the marriage. I then found the divorce announcement (court stuff) in newspaper archives as was published in that time frame (not to long ago). .... Donna "D.M. ST. FELIX" <[email protected]>