We spend endless hours on our computers.  We write notes to friends, colleagues, team members, organizations, politicians, editors, and a host of other folks.  We pass on funny jokes and interesting videos.  Much of this dialogue sits on our computer until the day you decide to do some cleanup and send it all to the “Trash” all the messages in your “Sent” folder.  Then, you go through your “Inbox” and delete all the hundreds of messages that you should have deleted long ago especially all the advertising.  Hopefully, your email world has now been decluttered until the next time.

So, one hundred years from now, one of your ancestors is wondering what your daily life was like?

Well, one way is to capture some of your yearly dialogue.  Print off, in chronological sequence, all your “Sent” messages for the year.  You can store all these messages in a 3-ring binder.  There are many ways to capture views of your life and interests, but this is one way.  You could store all this traffic digitally but then; it might get trashed also.  I still love paper as a medium.

I was looking at some of my traffic over the past year and found that it included the following:

  • Condolences for a loss of a loved one
  • Condolences for a loss by someone’s favorite sports team
  • Congratulations on an anniversary
  • Congratulations on a birthday
  • Congratulations of an academic completion
  • Congratulations on a promotion
  • Congratulations on a big sale
  • Congratulations on a new family arrival
  • Congratulations on a new pet
  • Sympathies for an illness
  • Support for a political view
  • Request for some support
  • Request for insurance coverage
  • Travel confirmations
  • Entertainment bookings
  • Sharing a memory
  • Checking in on someone
  • Sharing a success
  • Alerting others to changes in your life
  • And so on.

You will notice that many of these communications have to do with a person’s life history and, hence, of great interest to genealogists.  Especially, if they are thinking of writing your life story.

Join your local genealogical society to learn more. 

Ron Gilmore

Email:    rvg3@me.com

Website:       https://rgenealogy.ca