difficulties gathering family history

[Hermit]

When I was in my early 20's and stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam war, my father wrote me a series of letters describing the island hopping and the job he did in WWII. He ran a communication unit and went on the islands right behind the initial landings. The letters described both what was happening and his interactions with the people he worked with. He was a good writer and they were a very nice description of life under the wartime operations. Unfortunately, I have no idea what ever happened to those letters.

After my father retired, both he and my sisters got into genealogy and we have a quite detailed ancestral history. My sisters also have helped me put the late DW's Hispanic family history together. Members of her family lived in what is now northern New Mexico and southern Colorado for many generations. It is quite different than my family history which goes back to Revolutionary War times. My kids will have a fairly detailed family history along with memories of family get-togethers.

 

[travelover]

Another factor is that previous generations were less forthright about things like divorce, out of wedlock children, even children with disabilities. Sometimes asking questions in general that might bring up taboo topics might cause them to clam up.

In my own family, we were never told that my dad had been divorced and had additional children until a drunken uncle blabbed it to us kids at my dad's funeral.