Family Tree

prompts, Short story

My younger brother called me a few months back and asked if I can get in touch with some of our aunts and uncles to get information about our ancestry. His children, more than him were interested in making a family tree.

It seemed an uphill task as both of our parents and all four grandparents have passed away. How to get the relevant information and from whom was the tricky question because there are no long-term birth or death records maintained in our country, at least a few generations ago.

Anyway, I contacted my mom’s eldest sister who has a phenomenal memory to try to get the names of her grandparents, great-grandparents, their spouses, siblings, etc, and the same task I requested of my father’s younger brother.

It took them quite a long time but finally, a skeletal family tree has been constructed, populated by people from three generations back, but now he has lost interest in the whole project!

Written for Six Sentences Story- Tree, hosted by Girlie on the edge’s blog – Denise

#Keepitalive

#SSS

Published by Sadje

I am writing to express my opinion, share my experiences and to maybe provide some insight. My blog is addressing women at 50 ( but men are welcome to read my posts) ,their issues and the questions that come up at this stage in life. I don’t aim to teach, but to learn together.

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70 thoughts on “Family Tree”

  3. Nice Six Sadje. I have an aunt on my Mom’s side who went nuts with the family tree thing years ago. Bought the software and the ancestry.com membership. The whole nine yards. She provided a copy of the file to my parents who then completed a large portion of my Dad’s family tree. In all honesty it doesn’t really interest me on a grand scale but it is interesting to look at the branches when my parents, now in their 80’s, pull it out because they found some new long lost relative to fit onto one of the branches.

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    1. I think you have the advantage of records of birth and death available. We don’t have a systemized arrangement too keep these records. I still have that piece of paper. I think I’ll send it to him anyways.

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  11. It sounds so interesting to find out how far back you can go to find relatives. I’ve not tried, but thankfully I do have a few things on one side of my family. One wrote down all she knew, and it went back pretty far. And I have some photos, too. 🙂

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  14. The family tree is very interesting and fun. We are all family members take interest in this when our parents talk about grandparents and their lifetime and their lifestyle.
    I know 3 generations of our family from both sides mean from mom’s family and dad’s family.
    And also known origin of our family.
    When we start talking about it we can’t realize how much time we have spent on this conversion. It’s really great fun to draw a family tree.

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  17. My grandfather left behind one, but it has not been updated 🙂 A brother-in-law painted one with pictures pasted on it, when his wife was pregnant. He painted a mango to represent the unborn child. His daughter is still teased about being a mango.

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  19. Funnily enough, sorting through my mother’s papers (she’s just gone into a nursing home at the grand old age of almost 93) I came across a family tree someone on her side of the family did about 25 years ago. We’re going to have a smile or two going through it after all these years.

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  22. Bravo Sadje! My eldest cousin and I did the same thing recently. With most of the elder generation departed, we had to rely on memories, photos and a good deal of documents (luckily) we managed to save over the years. Hats off to my cuz… she has a detective-like ability for finding out information!

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