As you visit and dine with relatives this holiday season, you might want to do a bit of genealogy research. Sure, you can find names, dates, and places in census records and other public records, but those sources will never tell you the stories that bring your family history to life. You will discover that older relatives are often fountains of information. You may find yourself seated across the dinner table from a great resource. In fact, the dinner table may be a great starting place to get people thinking and talking about past gatherings!
The greatest resource in family history is carried within the memories of our older relatives. These individuals may or may not be able to recall dates and locations, but they almost always can tell you the family stories. To be sure, those stories may have faded or even been changed a bit with the passage of time, but the information they provide often cannot be found anyplace else. You may hear stories that were never recorded elsewhere. When someone dies, that information is lost forever.
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