Hey, I can relate to that! That story in The Passionist Heritage Newsletter captures my interest
The following unsolicited email from 2005 identifies the inspirational value of The Passionist Heritage Newsletter. The Passionist Historical Archives (PHA) website can have the same powerful impact. Used with permission of the author and edited for publication, read this letter sent to the archives with the realization that the PHA pushes away historical dust in search of buried knowledge: the gold for all genealogists and researchers. Certainly, every issue of The Passionist Heritage Newsletter has the possibility to reveal parts of history that bind all of us together when we question our personal past. As you see, people do read our newsletter and are motivated to learn more. Your donation will allow us to keep publishing The Passionist Historical Newsletter so others can stay on the road of their historical quest and know they are not alone. This will be all the more important as we go "green" into the future. Please support our efforts if this story rings true to you.
Thank you for sending the latest Passionist Heritage Newsletter. This one was particularly moving for me. As a genealogist it is often difficult for me to explain the enthusiasm and excitement that I feel as I research the Carlson family history. You captured many of the feelings in your articles, the excitement when I found a small stone in a vast cemetery in Rhode Island commemorating the life (not death) of my husband's uncle who was killed in WWI on a ship in Japan; or the gravestone of my great grandmother in a large New York cemetery where she was buried soon after her arrival in the U.S. to be with three of her nine or more children in 1914. Or one of the most exciting moments was my tracking down the phrase in the obituary of my husband's great grandmother's obituary: that the funeral service was performed by "Father Thomas Sullivan, pastor of St. Rafael's Church, Bridgeport, CT, cousin of the deceased." This was of particular interest since my husband is not Catholic.
I have compiled all of these records into a presentation that I use with junior high and high school students to help them to put history in perspective. As you shared in your article on Hunan, China it is the people and their daily lives who explain history and luckily people like you make the preservation of the paper trail we create in our lives accessible to all who want to look.
Surprisingly, I hated studying history as a child. Now I wish I had many more hours to study the history surrounding my Jewish family in Europe (which I have traced back in one line to 1824) as well as my husband's family history. It has been a pleasure to be able to research in Hartford. Someday I dream of visiting the archives in Vilna, Lithuania, Berditchev and Uzghorod, Ukraine with a translator to continue my studies. I have also managed to trace my husband's Danish roots back to 1820 with the help of the dedicated itinerant priest who serves Mjolden, Denmark. He searched the church records after my letter passed through the hands of two other residents of Mjolden.
Luckily I use a wonderful computer program to record all of my data and I have compiled some of my more detailed records into books and presentations.
Sorry to ramble on so, but as you can see, your articles invigorated me and spurred me on to new quests. One of the things I love about the hobby of genealogy is when I get frustrated, I can put it down for six months or longer and come back newly charged for more. I am trying to get my daughter interested (successfully) in my studies so that she may continue them at some point. I was sixteen when I began and she is sixteen now. It is making me look back at what got me started (the death of my last remaining grandparent) and how far I have come in spite of the relatives who told me they "couldn't remember anything." I have over a thousand names in my records going back almost 200 years and I have only scratched the surface.
Now, I need to prepare a presentation for our Jewish temple Sunday school 5-7th grade classes for early March. I have to decide what to share and how to excite them about family history at this young age in only 45 minutes.
I need to pass on the idea you expressed in your last paragraph in your Passionist Heritage Newsletter: "It is that our desire to resonate with the multi-cultural world," (and the heritage of these children) that "may in fact lead us back to respect how much we must bring the depth of culture back into our own lives as people and nations" through the study of our own family history. "History can be an important deposit of knowledge in the quest." There, now I have a theme.
I can empathize with the emotional and spiritual experience of your latest return to China and wish you many more such experiences.
Linda Carlson - Genealogist; Special Education Teacher
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