If you’re like me, you may consider only a very few books worth re-reading.  After all, there are so many out there – how is a person supposed to get to them all?  The files, folders, family Bibles, photos and other accumulated “stuff” really is worth going over time and time again.

It isn’t “senior moments” that causes information to appear as if you’ve never seen it before.  Rather, as you gather data and accumulate information and stories some of the old previously discarded information takes on a new life as it becomes contextualized by the information you’ve absorbed since the last time you looked.

For example, when looking through my grandfather’s 1920 8th grade autograph album, suddenly a name I had seen many times caught my eye.  Previously it had just been a name among many, now I realized this person was his cousin!  Not earth shattering, but what he wrote added a dimension to their lives.  Remember, we are not reconstructing time lines, but wherever possible, attempting to learn something about people’s lives.  We call genealogy “family history” for a reason.