When sitting around the dinner table this Christmas, it may be a good time to find out if your children and grandchildren know the names of their grandparents. Do they know their grandmothers’ maiden names?
If they they know where their grandparents were born, you may want to give them bonus points.
According to a survey commissioned by Ancestry, a third of Americans are unable to name all four of their grandparents. These disappointing results are probably similar in Canada.
Twenty-one percent don’t know which city a single one of their grandparents was born in, and 14 percent don’t know what any of their grandparents did for work.
The survey of 2,000 Americans revealed that 34 percent can’t presently trace their family tree past their grandparents. This and more survey results were reported in the New York Post.
If all your gifts are wrapped and holiday preparations are done, you may want to consider making place cards that will generate conversation, questions, and quiz people’s knowledge about family history.
As genealogists, we can sometimes go overboard with sharing too many details about our ancestors with family members. So, be gentle. Keep the information to a minimum at the dinner table, and enjoy the holidays.
Wishing you peace and joy.
Gail,
I would like to wish you a very wonderful Christmas season and a healthy and happy 2019. You have led me to so many discoveries since I started looking into my family’s genealogy a year ago. You are obviously a very busy genealogical bee. I am amazed by your contributions to genealogy. Though I don’t usually comment, know that I truly appreciate all that you do. A big thank you to you.
Francine
Thank you. Merry Christmas to you as well!
This is a great idea Gail. I will quiz my sons at Christmas this year.
If they manage to come up with the names of all their great-grandparents, you should be prepared to award them a prize.
Interestingly, my grandmother born in the Austrian Empire of Ukrainian heritage posed quite a problem even for her children. The military records of four of her sons all have her listed but all have assigned her a different given name. A little reflection had me recall that her children (my father, aunts, and uncles) always referred to her as “mom” or “mother”. Any other name would have been deemed as disrespectful. As a result, I suspect most did not know her given name. Records on which she appears further muddy the waters with further variations. However, the ships’ manifest shows her as Josefa, her tombstone as Josephine (English variant), and I recall her friends and peers calling her Iusypa (Ukrainian variant) which seems to be a good bet, but ultimately, I will not know for certain until I find a copy of her baptism record from a tiny village in Galicia four km from the one in which she lived her childhood.