I have found some great web and hub pages regarding family genealogy, some talk about sites that help you find facts about your family and others give you information about diffenent items to look for but this article is about what you might be leaving out of your family history.

I have noticed while doing genealogy that some friends and family are completely fascinated by finding out about Great-Uncle  Joe's death date and where he's laid to rest or what yeart Auntie Myrtle's  came across the big ocean to America (although we don't know exactly where she came from), but others find these fact mildly interesting at best. 

At  a recent family gathering I took some of my genealogy papers along, this is what I noticed was not one person opened the book containing the census records, moderate response to the family pages, little response to birth and death records but constant and continual clamering around the pictures and stories I have collected through the years. Pictures take a lot of time to find and sometimes you never do but you need to always be on the look out for them.  Be sure to write down every story that someone tells you to add to your notes.  Some time before this gathering I had found on the igrandparents,com web site a list of practical questions to ask family members, at that I printed some copies and sent them to some of the older family members.  These put life into some of the people that some of the guest had never met.

What we found from these questions were things such as home heating, cooking, schooling, and what they thought were great inventions.  These facts bring more interest than just facts and figures.  Some of us genealogist forget that there is more than dates and names but to keep others interested we need to find personalities in our findings.  I would recommend that you print off some of these questioniares and send them to family members and don't forget to fill one out for yourself.

Heres some of the things we found out after reviewing the answers -- almost all heated their homes with wood, coal, and or corn cobs and cooked with wood stoves.  I have a aunt that can't believe that we don't have small personal helicopters for personal transportation.  Sundays were almost always the day for visiting and dinners.  Most either walked to school or lived in town during school session.  They had gardens and raised cows and/or pigs and chickens.  Very few were political and kids did not seem to have as many chores as you would think they did.  Radios were very popular and families were very proud that they had one. 

Don't forget how all of our facts and figures lived, already since I sent these questions to the family members 3 of the have passed on, although most know the date they passed they probably don't remember how they lived.  So don't forget to add whats beyond the facts and figures.