Monday, January 14, 2013

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!

2 comments:

  1. Hi. I sat next to you at a luncheon at FGS last year in Birmingham. Unfortunately, the next week my dad was in a serious accident, and between moving my parents, a teenager, and a full time job, I haven't been a good blog follower! But today I am trying to catch up on everything and I found your card. This blog entry really grabbed me. I like joining societies because it seems many, many of my ancestors were the Forrest Gump of history...always near but never really recognized! So good luck on your continued professional development and I look forward to reading more! Sally

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    1. Hi Sally, and thank you for checking out my blog! I'm so sorry to hear about your dad and hope all is better now.

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