Excerpt from upcoming Book “Tales From the Hearth: A Step by Step Plan on How to Save Your Family Legacy for Future Generations” 

Imagine you have an ancient document in your hands. You’re wearing white cotton gloves because it is so fragile. It’s a worn manuscript from 500 years ago, dated around 1500 AD. As you open the leather bound book a musty smell rises. Your breathing quickens as you are filled with anticipation, because it’s a message from an ancestor to you, their descendant far in the unknown future.

It starts:

Dear One, you do not know me but I am your Great Grandfather from long ago in England. This the year of our Lord 1516 has blessed our land with the birth of Mary I to our good King Henry and his queen Catherine of Aragon. We have hopes for another good harvest this year the LHord willing. Our family has been blessed and is prosperous as we have been taught well in the management of the land. Our cattle grow fat and we have added a room to our house due to the blessing of the Lord…

So begins the story of a life that touches you deeply, because this story is speaking to you directly, and tells of an ancestor’s life of struggles and triumph, a life which you would never be able to conceive on your own.

Sadly almost none of us have such a book, but if we did imagine how you would treasure it, and preserve it so you could pass it on to future descendants. In the past the storms of time eventually wreak all ships, and as our precious ones pass as we all must, so pass the stories of how they participated in the story of their time, and we lose that connection with how we fit in with the greater human story, and are a part of the great quilt of human lives that create the story of humanity.

This book provides guidelines on how to collect and preserve your own family’s stories and begin that journey to connect with your family members far in the future.