In the process of getting my office put together I went over all all my Grandma's obit information she keep on the family history. I know obits aren't 100 percent accurate, but they do shed a lot of light. For example, I didn't know that my Great Grandmother (the Indian side of the family) actually had 14 kids but five died in child birth and two shortly there after so they ended with a family of seven. Wow, that must really have been hard on them to lose that many kids. Perhaps the medical care on the Rez wasn't so hot. I even have been able to trace down a census count of an 8 year old girl back in 1880 who was my Grandmother.
On my Great Grandfather's side I found out they came to this country in 1875 from Bohemia. Actually due to the work of a relative, I can go back to the 1500's. On my Dad's side of the family, another relative has done much of the work and I can go back to the 1600's in Sweden. I've actually got quite a bit of information. I guess as the youngest in my family, I guess I'm the holder of the family history.
You know, deaths of babies and children were just a lot more common back then; my own grandparents on my mom's side had 3 out of 6 die. We can really be thankful for modern medicine in the keep-the-young-alive dept. (and thankful for modern birth control, for that matter...!)
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