Open Discussion: What Kind of Paper Trail Are YOU Leaving Behind?

Last week, I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of the comments that readers posted about What To Do With Skeletons in the Closet. So I thought it would be fun to open this blog up for Open Discussions from time to time.

Today's Open Discussion Weekend is about the kind of paper (or digital) trail YOU are leaving behind for your descendants. Several memes have found their way to me this week, so it would appear the greater Universe is trying to tell me something.

Last weekend, I began tackling the paper monster surrounding my desk and I filled four trash bags with shredded paper. It's a well known fact that I don't do paper! More accurately, I don't manage paper in the way that I would like to. I might need that for something! Digital filing? Much better at that. Could you email that to me as a pdf?

Whenever I make a purchase I always keep a receipt. I think that goes back to my childhood when I bought 16 Magazine, Datebook and Tiger Beat the day they hit the newsstands. I went from drugstore to drugstore with my magazines and always wanted them in a paper bag, with the receipt, so that the other drugstore wouldn't accuse me of shoplifting. I wanted proof I'd purchased my magazines.

Now at the end of the week, I have to unload all of those receipts for groceries, lunches, gas, etc. out of my wallet. Right through the shredder. As I picked up some "window food" at a drive-through the other night, I immediately put the receipt into the litter bag. That was when this bolt of lightning struck me and I thought about how I treasure and preserve every little piece of paper remnant left behind by my ancestors.

From my ancestors, I have receipts, notes that bills have been paid, ration coupons, school report cards, newspaper clippings that have no immediate connection to anything or anyone! It's a rather eclectic assortment of paper ephemera. No doubt, you have such a paper archive on your ancestors as well.

Last year it was announced that the Library of Congress acquired the entire Twitter archive.

This all made me wonder what kind of paper (or digital) trail are we leaving behind for our descendants? Are we setting aside the more important paper documents that would be wise to pass down? Or are some of us accumulating such a massive paper trail that, rather than sort through it, our descendants will begin shredding everything without looking through it?

In 100 years will a descendant be treasuring a receipt for a Whopper Junior and fries, while saying in astonishment, "You won't believe the horrible kind of food my great-great grandfather ate back then. It's no wonder his death certificate said he died of heart disease!"

For discussion:

• What is your relationship with paper?
• Are you saving or sorting not only for your immediate needs (taxes, insurance, wills) or with future generations in mind?
• If all of the paper in your home right now were placed in a time capsule and opened 100 years from now, what kind of portrait would it paint of your life?
• Are you treating your digital footprint any differently from your paper footprint?

I encourage your comments and discussion on this topic!

What You Can Do With 20 Minutes

Quite often, I'll find myself up early in the morning - after a quick check of blog posts in my reader and Facebook messages from my fellow genealogists, I'm faced with a few uncommitted minutes before I need to get ready for work. This is when I will turn to my family tree on Ancestry.com and select one of those leaves that tells me I have a hint or two about someone in my tree.

That's what happened yesterday morning as I checked the information on the siblings of my great grandmother. I didn't have much information on one of her brothers whose last entry was the 1930 census in Sheridan, Wyoming. I turned to Google, typed in his name and "Sheridan Wyoming." Among the first hits was a reference to his burial at the Sheridan Municipal Cemetery. There were several other people buried there with the same surname.

Next step: FindAGrave.com. There were listings for him and his wife. I clicked. There was a photo of their tombstone, with the years of their births and deaths. There was one other name on the stone - that of their son. And there was room for a fourth name, not yet added.

I entered this information on Ancestry. I returned to Google and entered the name of the son. These search results told me that his wife just died in April of this year at the age of 90. There were several references to online obituaries for this relative who Ancestry informed me is the wife of my first cousin, twice removed. I clicked. There was her beautiful, smiling face, from her younger years, on the screen.

Her obituary told me where she lived when she died, when and where she was born, the names of her parents, the high school and college she attended (and the years), the date she married her husband, the names of her children and grandchildren, names of her brother and sister, where she attended church, a story of how she helped her husband through five battles with cancer, and her 45 year career in nursing.

Her obituary states that she enjoyed her achievements and worked hard with her husband to create a complete, balanced and very happy life for her family.

Her name is the one waiting to be placed on the tombstone that is pictured on FindAGrave.

That's what I was able to learn in just under 20 minutes yesterday morning. Twenty minutes gave me three generations of a family I knew nothing about when I started.

Note: because this woman's death is so recent, I have opted not to list any names here out of respect for the privacy of her and her immediate family. To write such a wonderful obituary, it strikes me that there is a lot of love and respect there and it sounds like she was a much loved and respected woman.

Interlibrary Loan - Is This How It's Supposed to Work?

I went outside my comfort zone this week with a research tool I had never tried before - interlibrary loan. I'd found a 40 year old family history book on one of lines of my family on Google books several months ago. It was available only in snippet view. My keyword searches showed some limited information about the family I'm researching, but I really needed to see the book in its entirety.

It's not available anywhere online, but I found several libraries across the country that have it. I found the request for Interlibrary Loan on my local library's web site, filled out all of the information, sat back and waited.

The response I received said that one of the libraries that my library contacted would photocopy the table of contents and index for me for $20. Then, if I were to pick out some names, they would photocopy those pages only for $20. The fees aren't my concern with the process. The request form asked how much I'd be willing to pay to get the book and I said $35, and if it was more than that to let me know.

I guess I thought that Interlibrary Loan meant that this other library would send their copy of the book to my library and I could go to the library to read the entire book. I would understand if I wouldn't be able to check the book out and only be able to use it within the library.

What bothers me about not being able to review the entire book is because the research I've discovered refutes quite a bit of the information in this original family history. And that is based only on the snippets I've been able to access on Google books. Very few of the "facts" in this book about my great grandparents are accurate. Names and locations are incorrect. In fact, there is a documented incident of one of my ancestors killing his daughter and then committing suicide. The family history book I'm trying to locate tells the story differently - that the father drowned while trying to save his daughter from drowning while she was swimming. The newspaper accounts of the day confirm that he drowned - by suicide - after killing his daughter with an axe. How many people do you know who go swimming in Pennsylvania in February?

Ever since locating this family history on Google books, I've wanted to look at the entire book. I'm not sure how much of it is accurate after the differences I've discovered between it and my own research. But I want to read the whole thing! Even if there are errors in it, there are still probably some clues that I could follow. What's interesting is that the book was never published until after the author was dead.

I would appreciate input from my fellow genealogists regarding their experiences with Interlibrary Loan. Is my experience typical or do you usually actually get the book sent to your local library? I suppose that if I really want to read the book, I'm going to have to plan a trip to St. Louis (8 hour drive) to read it in their library. That's the closest library I've found that has it.

Please leave your Comments below - I look forward to hearing about your experiences.