Five-year-old Caroline was bursting with pride as she showed me the journal that she had created as a part of her kindergarten project. What a pleasant surprise to see that teachers are encouraging this enriching practice at such a tender age. I know that preaching to kids can be counterproductive, but I’d love to find a way to persuade Caroline and all of my grandchildren to continue to write about the life they see around them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of our ancestors had been taught to keep a journal? Just think of how much better we would be able to understand these people who have had so much to do with the way we have turned out.

Ancestors’ diaries, journals, and letters are often among the most cherished of family heirlooms. In reading the excellent articles in this issue of Ancestry, I was reminded of the importance of preserving not only the stories of the past, but the stories of the people we know and remember right now.

Admittedly, a busy schedule does not allow me the time to keep a regular journal or to record memories as I’d like, but there was one time I encouraged someone else to do so and now I’m glad that I did.

When my brother Eddie lost his voice after cancer surgery, it was tough to communicate. We could no longer make long-distance phone calls between Brooklyn and Illinois, and neither of us managed to write regularly. I tried to think of ways to cheer him up and to help pass the hours. An idea came to me after reading a book on oral history. Eddie had always been a great storyteller. The best in his repertoire were of his hilarious childhood antics. Since he couldn’t talk, I sent him a long list of questions about his favorite things and his favorite childhood memories. I was afraid his memories about those times would all be lost. The experiment proved successful. I was delighted to see the responses he quickly mailed back to me. But as good as it was, I knew that I had limited his responses with the small spaces between questions. So I sent him a typewriter and a request for him to write his memories. Only twelve pages came back, but now that he’s gone, I realize the importance of what he left. With few words, Eddie told us much about himself and what life was like as a city boy in the 1940s. His handwritten and typed memories are precious to me, and I expect they will be for his children and his children’s children.

Unfortunately, most of us do not have these first-hand accounts of our families’ lives and personalities. It is then that we have to look to historical accounts and the journals of others who lived in the same place or time to understand our ancestors. Not long ago, I was reading Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings (Henry S. Lucas. Ed., rev. 1997) and came across a poignant example of this from the journal of Hendrick Dam as he journeyed to America in July 1847. He not only kept a record of the weather and what he experienced, he also noted births and deaths of fellow passengers.

"On the twenty-first our friend R. Polsma lost a child two and a half years old. The funeral was a moving experience. It took place as follows. The body was sewed in a piece of sail cloth. A bag of sand was placed at the feet. Next, the body was laid on a plank from which it was gently allowed to slide down into the water and sink away into the deep. Here too will the truth be manifest, that the sea will give up its dead, as we read in Revelation 20, 13. Polsma was a tailor and came from Workum, Friesland. He feared the Lord."

This short entry tells us much about the writer’s character and provides specific information about his fellow travelers and this tragic event. Other entries written by Hendrick Dam speak clearly of the hardships endured by many of our ancestors and how they learned to cope as they came to this country.

Whether our people were illustrious leaders or common folk, nothing can compare with the firsthand accounts of their good times and their hard times. And like nothing else, these writings from the heart contain valuable lessons and have a certain power to inspire us and make us better appreciate what we now have. We have the opportunity to leave our descendants a wonderful gift by not only preserving the words of our ancestors and those who were close to them, but by putting our own thoughts into writing as well.

Return to the Ancestry Magazine September/October 2001 Table of Contents.