What Will Happen When I Become a Death Certificate

[chiddicks]

Have you considered what will happen to all your Family History work after you’ve gone?   

​​​​​​​https://chiddicksfamilytree.com/2022/04/24/what-will-happen-when-i-become-a-death-certificate/

[pandacub]

I found your link very interesting reading, thanks for posting it.  I'd already thought about some of the steps but you've given me some more good ideas there.  A distant cousin died a few years ago and I was only just in time to stop her daughter throwing away years of research and boxes of books and maps. 

[Andrew Tarr]

I haven't read your link yet, but if you have found no-one in your (extended) family interested in taking charge, I would assume that your work will go in the trash, like most other domestic accumulation.  Unless perhaps you have refined it to the standard of a thesis.  One of my daughters is moderately interested, so I may bequeath mine to her.  As it happens, she and her mother return today from a brief visit to the north-east renewing family connections.

My parents lived to a ripe old age; both were artist types and lived in a mid-Victorian house with an attic, so you can guess what it may have been like.  When Father died, Mother wanted to move on quickly, and I was lucky (and surprised) that the new owner wasn't bothered about a house clearance.  I shudder to think what he thought of all that lifetime's junk 

[chiddicks]

I found your link very interesting reading, thanks for posting it.  I'd already thought about some of the steps but you've given me some more good ideas there.  A distant cousin died a few years ago and I was only just in time to stop her daughter throwing away years of research and boxes of books and maps.

If I stop to think about it, it's heartbreaking, I have been researching for 20 years and my fear is all that hard work will literally be confined to the skip, which is why I have started thinking about what to do next

[chiddicks]

I haven't read your link yet, but if you have found no-one in your (extended) family interested in taking charge, I would assume that your work will go in the trash, like most other domestic accumulation.  Unless perhaps you have refined it to the standard of a thesis.  One of my daughters is moderately interested, so I may bequeath mine to her.  As it happens, she and her mother return today from a brief visit to the north-east renewing family connections.

My parents lived to a ripe old age; both were artist types and lived in a mid-Victorian house with an attic, so you can guess what it may have been like.  When Father died, Mother wanted to move on quickly, and I was lucky (and surprised) that the new owner wasn't bothered about a house clearance.  I shudder to think what he thought of all that lifetime's junk 

Sadly I think you're right Andrew, unless I can convince a family member in the next few years to take up the baton, my lifetime's work will be consigned to the skip. The chances of a record office taking it on are probably extremely limited. The next best option is to upload it online in as many places as possible, that way at least future researchers will be able to take advantage of my labours

[Andrew Tarr]

Sadly I think you're right Andrew, unless I can convince a family member in the next few years to take up the baton, my lifetime's work will be consigned to the skip. The chances of a record office taking it on are probably extremely limited. The next best option is to upload it online in as many places as possible, that way at least future researchers will be able to take advantage of my labours.

That must depend on how closely it is focused on your family's ancestry - if you have worked hard to set it all in a wider historical context, there may be some interested readers 'out there' making it worth your while publishing it.  But when all is said and done, its main purpose has been in giving you the fun of discovering and putting it all together.

My only bequest to posterity is a handful of scientific papers which had my name on, back in the 1960s.  Very occasionally it seems that some other scientist has looked at one 

[Top-of-the-hill]

  My children are both moderately interested in the family history, and neither of them are declutterers by nature, so they won't throw things away. However, I do realise that most of the work was done for my own interest, and just reading what someone else has done is not quite so gripping!
   I have started doing a bit of clearing and annotating of both paperwork and computer documents. I have even said "you don't really need to keep this" about some of the stuff.

[chiddicks]

Sadly I think you're right Andrew, unless I can convince a family member in the next few years to take up the baton, my lifetime's work will be consigned to the skip. The chances of a record office taking it on are probably extremely limited. The next best option is to upload it online in as many places as possible, that way at least future researchers will be able to take advantage of my labours.

That must depend on how closely it is focused on your family's ancestry - if you have worked hard to set it all in a wider historical context, there may be some interested readers 'out there' making it worth your while publishing it.  But when all is said and done, its main purpose has been in giving you the fun of discovering and putting it all together.

My only bequest to posterity is a handful of scientific papers which had my name on, back in the 1960s.  Very occasionally it seems that some other scientist has looked at one 

For me, it's been a fascinating, fun and absorbing hobby and I do get that other members of my family might not feel as passionately about it as I do. The family artefacts i am sure will be well looked after, the papers, who knows?

[chiddicks]

  My children are both moderately interested in the family history, and neither of them are declutterers by nature, so they won't throw things away. However, I do realise that most of the work was done for my own interest, and just reading what someone else has done is not quite so gripping!
   I have started doing a bit of clearing and annotating of both paperwork and computer documents. I have even said "you don't really need to keep this" about some of the stuff.

I probably have far too much paper and my plan for retirement is to gradually reduce that, easier said than done of course. By nature I am a collector, but I'm hopeful that as my children have kids of their own that they might become moe interested, you never know!