It’s not enough to do my own direct ancestry for genealogical purposes. For one thing, there aren’t answers for some things that happened in my or my husband’s family that other families in the area may have answers to. For another, when I researched the descendants of every sibling of our grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on, they married into nearly every other family around, and we’re related to almost everyone (some of our collateral lines even intermarried). So that means I have to have a little bit of knowledge of these other families as well. Were they Scottish? Cherokee? English? German? Is the family story true or false, and who else witnessed the event? How come someone I went to school with turned out to be the daughter of a niece of my great-grandmother, and no one told me? How did Greg spend part of his childhood in a rural town in Wyandotte Co. KS, only two blocks from my great-grandmother, and none of us ever met until I moved back to Taney County 30 years later? I needed to learn about all these families, and in the process of discovery, found out that it was tradition in a great number of Taney County families to move to some part of the Kansas City area to make a living, and move back when it was time to come home. Someone has to care about the connections to other people. It’s not enough to know that my grandmother’s land has been in the family for 50 years. I want to know about all the places that she and Grandpa, their parents, their grandparents, and those even further back—where they lived, did they own or rent it, why this hill for a house and not that one? Who lived around them? How many rooms did the house have? Why was this house so different? Why does one church has a cemetery by it and another doesn’t? Why this school has 2 front doors? So I need to visit every cabin, house, business building, school, church, any structure that causes me travel back in time, to find out more about the places our people lived. Someone has to care about the buildings our people lived in, worked in, were educated in, and worshipped in. It’s not enough to discover that Mom’s grandparents owned a cannery. What did they can? Why did the business fail, or who bought it from them? Who worked for them? Did they live nearby? Why did they live in such an isolated area, or is it more isolated now than it was? What businesses were related or benefited? Now I need to find out about the history of the canning industry in the upper White River Valley, who owned them, who ran stores and bought the canned goods, the railroad industry that shipped them, the logging industry that built the railroads, the farms the timber came from…and the people who lived during those times. Someone has to care about the way people made a living. It’s not enough to reclaim, after years of neglect and near-destruction, a cemetery in which my great-great-great grandmother is buried. The cemetery had been hidden under downed trees and impossible brush for 40 years, surrounded by a subdivision for nearly 20 years, and not one person in that subdivision cared enough to clean it up or bring it to anyone’s attention. It took a person who had only lived in the area 2 months to call a meeting to shame us into doing something about it; now my dad spends much of the first Saturday of each month maintaining it. I can claim some ignorance, for I didn’t know of the cemetery’s existence until a year or so before it was cleaned up. Now, because I might find a burial of the family’s that I don’t know about, I have to do something about every cemetery in the county—how many are cared for or not, how many are active, what can be done to give each one a little bit of maintenance, get them mapped out and acknowledged, put signs on them. I want to research every unmarked grave, to find who might be buried there. Others have been on similar quests, and we are joining together, because it is a shame that these sacred places are not cared for. Someone has to care about the cemeteries. It’s not enough to talk to one older person who knew “so-and-so”, a relative of mine or Greg’s, and can tell me stories about the relative. I want to hear that older person’s story, for in it, I might find clues about someone else’s life, the culture, why “we didn’t speak of being Cherokee”, what they did for fun, who could play the best fiddle, how they courted. I have to talk to every older person I can, because there might be that one little clue, one little missing piece of the puzzle that makes a part of our family history suddenly make sense. I want to video them, recording the interviews for other people, in case someone else hears something which suddenly makes sense for them—for they, too, may come up with an answer to a question of their own, and in doing so, answer yet another question for me. Some of these older people will never write their memories down, so their history must be oral by necessity. Someone has to care about the oral history of our people. It’s not enough to collect old pictures, documents, family Bibles, military records, newspaper articles, and other paper records of just our family. One local author has published several books on her various family lines, and in one, there’s a picture of my great-grandmother’s sister, who died young, at her husband’s family reunion over 70 years ago. My grandmother’s family home burned in the early 1920s, sending family records up in smoke—but miraculously, collateral lines have pictures and other papers that we wouldn’t have access to, otherwise. A friend sent me a copy of her ancestor’s Civil War military records and pension application, in the hopes it will help me find a clue on my own family. I have pictures of people in my husband’s family, but only know a few of the faces well enough to identify them; luckily, his grandmother either wrote names down, or else his grandfather knows these people from either having met them or being told who they were. I know of empty buildings by the dozens, in which some paperwork of some kind might answer a question from a descendant now many miles away; and these papers lie in neglect, with mold and dust decomposing a past that is important. Someone has to care about the paper trail lying hidden in the attics, basements, and closets of abandoned homes, forgotten by descendants. It’s not enough to know that a handful of people have a collection of their own, but hoard it to themselves without allowing access to others who have a right to see it. We know these collections are being cared for now, but we don’t know if there are provisions in a will for these collections. We know some collections are extremely valuable in terms of history, but the owner wants unreasonable compensation in the name of greed. We know that some people simply want to control what they have, because it denies pleasure and satisfaction to everyone else. We also know that some descendants couldn’t care less or are ashamed of the clutter of a collector’s home, and have destroyed many items as soon as they could, items that would be emotionally or sentimentally valuable to someone else. Someone has to care about the hidden collections of artifacts, to ensure their survival, in spite of the negative emotions that might surround them. It’s not enough to drive down a single-lane dirt road to a homestead, cemetery, or other hidden treasure, and walk in the midst of echoes. These echoes are the voices, the sounds, the lives of those who have been gone for much longer than we’ve been alive. A handful of us, crowded into a four-wheel drive, spend time relishing the paths our people—related or not—traveled, marveling at the natural beauty surrounding us. We go into a trance, listening, feeling, knowing, and exploring, communicating in a manner that sits gently on our souls and eases the pressures of the mind. We try to share this feeling with others, writing and talking about this wonderful place tucked back on someone’s pasture or woods, but it’s not something we can speak lightly of. It is life in a way we will never know, for to intrude for more than a short visit would cause it to disappear, and to lose it would hurt us more than we can imagine. Someone has to care about the emotions, the life, the culture that made our people come here and stay, even if you are the first generation to live here. It’s not enough to do your genealogy, be a member of a historical society, participate in or attend a pageant, visit a museum, read a book, or simply say, “I like history.” If you truly like history, you have to live it, breathe it, let it deep into your bones, so that you can understand who you are, why you are here, and the people who made it possible. You have to protect the land, the buildings, the places, the documents…you are the guardian, the researcher, the worker, the force that sweeps in and envelops these things with your care. You can’t say “I can’t find the time,” for it simply means you aren’t going to make the time. You can’t say, “I can’t get involved,” for without your involvement, the history’s going to disappear. You can’t think, “But I’m not from this place I’m living at now,” for if you help out with the area you are living in, maybe someone else will help out in the area you are from in your place. One hour per week spent cutting weeds around tombstones will help bring that cemetery out of the brush, will make someone stop and see what you’re doing and maybe help out; will bring you immeasurable satisfaction that you are doing something to preserve your history, which in turn will preserve your ancestors’ and your descendants’ history. Everyone has a desire to make some kind of mark on the world, to leave some trace of ourselves in the memory of our descendants, to make sure that we are not forgotten. By wiping out our own or someone else’s history, either through neglect or destruction, we are ensuring that our own lives won’t leave a lasting trail for someone else to follow. By our behavior now, it will appear to future generations that we didn’t care about our history, and they are likely to follow by our example, in our footsteps…whether for the good or the bad. If we do not want to simply disappear from our world, we’d better ensure that our people’s world sticks around as well…leave some kind of trail. Forgetting to do that is likely to ensure that we ourselves will be forgotten. Historical activism—actively protecting and ensuring our collective history lives on—has so many different aspects, anyone can be involved and yet not have to be everywhere at once. Everyone has some specialty which can contribute to preserving the past, and it needn't be either expensive or time-consuming. Everyone needs to ensure the mark they make on the world is a permanent, respectful one, by protecting the marks our ancestors made on the world—it is an immortality that no one can deny. Someone has to care about the connections to other people. Someone has to care about the buildings our people lived in, worked in, were educated in, and worshipped in. Someone has to care about the way people made a living. Someone has to care about the cemeteries. Someone has to care about the oral history of our people. Someone has to care about the paper trail lying hidden in the attics, basements, and closets of abandoned homes, forgotten by descendants. Someone has to care about the hidden collections of artifacts, to ensure their survival, in spite of the negative emotions that might surround them. Someone has to care about the emotions, the life, the culture that made our people come here and stay, even if you are the first generation to do so. Do something to preserve your history, which in turn will preserve your ancestors’ and your descendants’ history. ListMom for MO-AR-WRV http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~moarwrv/ http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gregvonda/ http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/~vondak/