Coming Together

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Generated with Bing Image Creator AI, 21 September 2024

A recent article which I can't seem to find again got me thinking, mostly about the title, which was something close to "coming together in order to disengage." As I recall, it might have been about dissipating political tensions post-election. But it got me thinking about why we gather together in genealogy and historical societies and associated groups. Research and writing can be lonely. Just yesterday I spent hours imaging and downloading the 100+ pages of my third-great-grandfather's Revolutionary War pension application. Both my son and husband clearly didn't understand why I bothered! But I bet all our readers here DO understand, and maybe that is why we gather so often, even just to chat with other researchers. 

I found one article on the web about children's education which says, Children & adults must first feel safe in order to feel connected enough to learn. The adult’s job is to keep the classroom/building/location safe and the students’ job is to help keep it safe. 

Most of the article does not apply to our meetings, but I think the quoted sentence does. We gather with those who share our solitary endeavors, our interest in ancestors, their histories, communities, daily activities, and everything else we can gather about them. Sometimes we discover disturbing or even horrifying incidents from the past—not just natural disasters and accidents, but crimes and other tragedies, some perpetrated by relatives and ancestors; some which they fought or sought to improve or heal. No matter; we gather together to grow our courage to face these truths. And each of us who participate plays an important role.

 (Karen Ducey / The Seattle Times)

Many of us in the south King County Washington area experienced an intense storm this past week; some of us lost power for several days, some have home damage, and almost all of us faced road and business closures around us. We lived in a small way as our ancestors did. My grandpa Cowan told me he remembered the first time he saw electric lights where he grew up in rural Ontario, Canada. By the time he died in 1970, electrification had spread to many parts of the world, and electronics were being developed. There were freeways where there had been paths or dirt roads; so many changes over his 80 years of life. Looking back, it is a blessing to have experienced a bit of the way life was for most of history.

I hope that when we gather again we notice not only how important it is that we are supported and how that makes us feel, but that we each support others, too. We build connection every time we tell our stories, and encourage one another to follow our inspiration, plan, do the research, note our findings, and write our reports. 

Most Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving this week; I hope that all of us can be safe, warm, and rejoice in our own ways with our friends and families. Happy Thanksgiving!


Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository




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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org


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Valorie Zimmerman





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