If I knew then...

·If I knew then what I know now: I would have paid more attention to the stories that my grandparents told me and taken more of an interest in the scrapbooks and photo albums when we looked through them. Now my grandparents are gone (for the past 20+ years) and no one knows what happened to the Family Bible or the scrapbooks. Luckily I do remember some of the things my grandparents told me and some of those things have helped me to unlock a few mysteries.

·If I knew then what I know now I would have added every bit of documentation to the notes/sources area of my genealogy as I put it in. It is so much harder to find it again and add it now than if I had added it as I found it.

·If I knew then what I know now I'd ask better questions of the living and not assume it would all be obvious later. I did interview my grandfather a couple of times and got it on tape. But it never occurred to me that I would have so much difficulty figuring out how his "Aunt Delia" was related to him. There are numerous things I have run across that I naively assumed would be clear when organized together, but many connections still elude me as I try to piece together the puzzle of family relations. The right questions asked of my grandfather would have helped immensely since with his death I have yet to find anyone else still alive who knows the answers.

·If I knew then what I know now where my great-grandparents had come from in Quebec, when I was there for my work a few years ago, I could have probably walked where they walked and met some cousins and seen what they had seen. I am in awe of the things they must have gone through to get to this country and start a new life, leaving behind their familiar life and family members. I don't believe I could have done that! And to think the majority of people today couldn't care less about their ancestors!

·If I knew then what I know now, I would have visited all the cemeteries in every town I ever lived in, and would have taken the time to record in a note book, the names of all the family members, and when they were born, and when they died.

·If I knew then what I know now, that one of our sons would move away, I would have made it a point to give him a written account of our family and my birth-family. I think I would have written him a book of "Mother's Advice" that could have prevented him from making any mistakes after leaving home.

·If I knew then what I know now I would have saved years of research. I was told by my mother, my aunts, the whole family, that my maternal grandmother’s maternal grandmother was Marie Louise Cloure who lived and died in Quebec. After years of looking for that name and checking census, birth records and marriage license I came across the name in Burlington Vermont. After much searching I finally received her birth, marriage and death certificates. Although she lived in Quebec, all her info was American. There big as life, Memere was Marie Louise Cloure born not in Vercheres Quebec but in Burlington Vermont. I could have saved years of frustration, but I'm now on the right track...I would still like to know how the family had pictures of her at 106 years old when she died of smallpox in her early 20’s. Maybe some day. Oh those elusive kin of mine.