How to share your family history with your family--a reader's idea.

[I had a reader e-mail me with a great idea for involving your family in their family history. Thought you might enjoy it. --Janet]

We did a very short skit years ago patterned after the popular TV program at the time, "Unsolved Mysteries". We called it "Unsolved Family History". I have an ancestor who came to Utah in the 1850's from Wales, who moved from Utah to Canada in 1899 to escape being imprisoned again for polygamy. He would travel between Canada and Utah through the years until in 1906 he was killed in Warm Springs, Deer Lodge, Montana, which is where one of the mysteries lay. There had been 2 stories: 1 - He was killed by Federal Marshalls, and 2 - He was hit by a train. I had my children draw pictures of the story which we used as visual aids during the "performance." My husband's great grandfather had been a sherrif in the area at the time and we brought in the Federal Marshall possibillity using characters from my ancestry and my husband's ancestry, which made it really fun for everyone to imagine the possibility of the 2 families knowing each other way back then. My oldest daughter, who was about 10 at the time, narrated. At the end she made the same kind of request they made on the TV show about , if anyone has information on this person please call such-and-such number. It really went over quite well.

BTW - we found out later this particular ancestor was hit by a train, when my grandfather's short history surfaced.

[Thanks Andrea]
Andrea Rounds E-mail: abrounds@finsvcs.com