Does Your Genealogy Have A Future?

04/10/2023 | Family History Hound | , , ,

When was the last time you wondered what would happen to your genealogy in the future? I think about this quite regularly. I wonder whether I’ll get all my organizing done before I leave this earth, and I wonder if anyone will be interested in it. More importantly, I don’t want my family to handle it one garbage bag at a time.

As a baby boomer, I realize that my generation, whether they are genealogists or not, has to deal with downsizing and dealing with all the things we might have collected. My mom wasn’t a genealogist, but I actually remember my mom telling me, “I don’t want to leave you a mess of things to deal with like my mother did.” She did her best, but there was still so much more. So is there a perfect solution? Perhaps we can do some research and give it our best effort. Here are some tips.

  • Let’s start with the tough part. Talk to your children and any other family members you’d like to include. Is there anyone who wants your genealogy collection? It might be a painful talk, but you need to know this in case they don’t, and then you’ll have the opportunity to make other arrangements.
  • Now that you know who, if anyone, wants your genealogy, it’s a good idea to include it in your will.
  • If no one in the family wants your genealogy, then you’ll want to consider your local archives or genealogy society, or historical society. Find out if they take private genealogy research and, if so, what kind of documents they take. For example, some societies will only take printed books of personal research.

You might not want to stop at just your genealogy when you have your family together why not ask them about anything else you might have to deal with. I have heard of some people who put the names of the beneficiaries on the bottom of each item and include a list of items in their will.

One of the things I have to deal with is my mom’s huge jewelry collection. She loved her bling, and after my niece looked through the items, I ended up with the rest. Which was still a huge collection. I have two sons, and neither of them is interested, so I’ve decided that I’m going to sell them on eBay and enjoy the cash.

There are many books written about these subjects that you can find on Amazon. Here are a few that I’ve read and can recommend.

As I dealt with and deal with my own collection of genealogy, I started creating a step-by-step approach to the organization and called it Saving Your Genealogy FOREVER.FOREVER is the site that I am using, and I love it so much I’m an Ambassador, I like it because I can make my children (or whomever I want) the beneficiary of my collection on FOREVER, and it has become my cloud storage for genealogy. FOREVER has its own app, which makes it easy to access my records whenever I need to. Whether it’s at a cousin’s home or at an archive.

No one wants to think about the end of life, but I also think it’s important to have a plan, and because my genealogy is a lifetime of my work, I don’t want it to be thrown away.

You can do it too. It starts with a talk.

I created my guides called Saving Your Genealogy FOREVER (you can find them on my store, Shop the Hound. There are two steps currently, and a third coming soon.

You will also find my newest product, the Digital Assets Checklist.

If you are interested in FOREVER® permanent cloud storage, I suggest you check the DEALS page at FOREVER. There you will see FOREVER cloud storage as well as FOREVER Boxes where you can have FOREVER digitize your photos, video, audio, and documents (including your genealogy).

Note that FOREVER has over 1000 5-star reviews on Trustpilot.

Recent Posts

Categories