SNGF - Which Family Members Stayed In Contact With Your Family?

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:

1)  Most genealogists try to stay in contact with their aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Who among them made the most effort to stay in contact with your family?  Did they write, use the telephone, or send cards or gifts?  Did they visit you, and/or did you visit them?

Here’s mine:
My mother was a letter writer, though she also enjoyed talking on the telephone. Few of her letters have been saved, mostly ones sent to her mother. She wrote weekly to her mother-in-law and Nana wrote back. Her sisters-in-law wrote to her, too. I remember she had a big box full of these letters that she saved. After she died, I looked for the letters, thinking they might contain some good genealogical information. However, the box was not to be found. My sister said that a family of mice discovered them in a closet and used them to make nests.

My grandmother kept up with her double cousin, Dorothy, and her two brothers, Wayne and R.D., who all lived in Texas. She either wrote letters or telephoned them. After she and her husband moved to California, she wrote letters to her father and she saved some letters from him. I have those letters.

My aunts remembered our birthdays until we turned eighteen and money would be included in the cards. My godmother, June, remembered me on my birthday even after I became an adult, and then remembered my two daughters on their birthdays. I always sent thank you letters for the money and taught my daughters to do the same.

Through my genealogy research, I have met some distant cousins and communicated via email and for some years with Christmas cards. I even met a third cousin who lived in Joliet until they moved to South Carolina. Another time, we met some distant cousins in Conway, Arkansas, and I exchanged Christmas cards with them.

My husband’s mother’s family has kept in touch better with cousins, aunts, and uncles. They have a yearly Nilsen reunion. These reunions were started with my husband’s grandfather’s generation and have been going on for over seventy years. It’s wonderful when up to four to six generations are present at the same picnic.

We have also visited my husband’s first cousins from his father’s side. One lived in Chicago and later in Arkansas. Another lived in Kansas City (in the Summer) and Mission, Texas (in the Winter) and we visited them in both places. His third cousin lives in Florida, and the trip enabled us to visit Disney World. I enjoy sending Christmas cards and we exchange cards with all these cousins.

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