When Andrew’s grandfather, Don, died of a sudden an unexpected heart attack, I wrote about it here. I wrote about it as it was happening, mostly for my own edification (gave me something to do) but also as a bit of a tribute to a man I consider to have been truly remarkable.
Apparently, several members of the family managed to find there way here to read it (which sort of surprises, me, but then, it always surprises me to find out people read my blog; it’s just a strange sort of perception that I have of my blog and myself). A couple said how much they liked what I wrote, for which I thanked them.
Well… today I found to my great surprise that my blog entry was now part of family history! It has been preserved in the records of the Lawrence Carter Holmes family, which is a pretty huge family (LCH and his wife had a lot of children, and most of their children had a lot of children, who in turn had chidlren…. Andrew’s grandfather, Don, was the grandson of LCH, so it’s a lot of generations we’re talking about, and they’re spread out all over Australia and in New Zealand, as far flung as England and the United States).
So the next time someone says “What’s the purpose of a blog?” I can say, well, one of my blog entries is in a preserved family history, so there. And yes, it pleases me to learn this. I’m happy that people liked my writing and thought it was a good representation of Don, whom I loved very much and still miss.
The other interesting thing is that the article that was done on Andrew and me (it was kind of an “internet dating” sort of thing, but a bit deeper than that) back in 2000 was found by someone and preserved in the family records. It’s not uncommon for people to find newspaper articles or other things of that sort and send them to the historians in the family, who then carefully copy them and preserve the originals. At the Holmes Family Reunions, which are held every three years, they get out all these scrapbooks and put them out on long tables in the town hall (of an extremely small town, I should add) and have signs as to which family branch is in which book and then you can take a book and have a look through. It would be nearly impossible to see them all in the span of the weekend, I believe (told you, it’s a really big family), but you can find the ones that interest you and go from there.
Anyway, now there’s an article about Andrew and me and how we met on the net preserved in the family history books, too. That’s kind of interesting, as the article was really a Melbourne-only thing (in one of those newspaper-like magazines that are free to the reader and get their income from the advertisers), and we couldn’t even find a copy of it (they were supposed to send us one, but we never got it and when we called again, they didn’t have any copies left). I presume it’s on microfiche somewhere or something (do they even still use microfiche? or is it all digital now?), and I guess some clever family historian found it, so that’s good, and interesting.
Someday, I may have descendants who will read that and think what a story of the times it was, and how much like his grandfather, Don, Andrew looks (well, he does, and there’s a photograph of him with the article). (And isn’t it clever that I managed to tie Andrew and Don in the same sentence there? Heh.)
It’s nice to know I’m a REAL and ACCEPTED member of the family. I mean, I always felt welcome, of course, but now I’ve got an actual place in the family history books apart from being the mother of two great-great-great-great-granddaughters of Lawrence Carter Holmes.
