Tuesday, November 22, 2005

HELP THROUGH HELPING OTHERS

Following up on Pat Smith's Lead from November 16th 2005
there are others we can help while helping ourselves too. School kids are not the only ones that do smaller versions of family trees.

The Boy Scouts earn Merit Badges in many subjects, including genealogy! Using the knowledge and expertise we build while researching our own families is a wonderful skill that we can donate to others. To volunteer as a Merit Badge Counselor, simply contact your local office and tell them you would like to help out.

This is what happened to me. While helping one young boy, I decided to use all of the sites I normally check before going to our local Family History Library. It's a good thing that I did because while doing a Google search for his names, I suddenly was dumbstruck as if hit by lightning. There were names I knew I had seen before. I asked the boy more about his family and all the places they had lived. As it turns out his family had moved quite a bit, but we had lived within twenty-five miles of each other at some point. We discovered that we had common ancestors even though we both were over 600 miles away from that area. Further inquiry produced some family documents from the boy's mother that had been given to her by her great-grandmother--my great-grand-aunt!

Sometimes it is the act of helping others that will break your own walls.

Jeff Miller

Ancestry Daily News
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