First Family Lineage Societies

Today I was looking at the First Families of Tennessee lineage society description, and decided to look at requirements for other states. I was not only surprised and impressed by how many states have these sorts of societies, but some of them have different qualifying categories based on arrival time of your pioneer.

I popped over to Colorado, to see what they had to offer. They fell into the group of offering different qualifying categories. I was excited to see that they also had a list of pioneer families that had already qualified in their different categories. With excitement I pulled up the list and found.... my ancestors weren't listed anywhere. I was disappointed but also strangely sad as well. The same sadness came over me after the same results with another state. Why?

Joining as many lineage societies as I can is not necessarily one of my priorities. I am interested in commemorating my ancestors and leaving a roadmap of sorts for future generations. After some thought I realized my sadness was from the lack of recognition for my ancestors' bravery, hardship, sacrifice, sense of adventure, and ambition. These were people that either came to this country to make a better life, or moved west into the wild to claim land. They deserve to have someone remember them. So this task has now been added to my ever growing list of projects.

If you are interested in First Family Lineage Societies, a good place to find a list of them is on Cyndi's List. She has 3 pages of links to look at. Or, if you are like me, you can Google it. Good luck!