Problems / Resolutions

If you had collected your family genealogical information, photos, movies, and color slides from many people for decades, and added research following select lines back as far as possible, what would you do with it? Since I am the only one in my line with this data I’ve collected, if I don’t document it, no one will ever know. There will be no history. It will be as if my ancestors never lived, except for the fact that I am here.



Nellie Josephine Weeks
1874 – 1968

A person is more than the dash between the dates of when they were born and when they died. She is more than her occupation or where she lived. It’s how she lived. Not that she was born in Missouri, but that she was born in a sod house in Missouri and at the age of eight traveled with her parents, two brothers, and three sisters in a covered wagon to the plains of Fort Collins, Colorado where her mother and sister died from malaria.

How did she meet her spouse? Was he her first choice? You might not know that she was engaged to a cowboy when she was thirteen, but her father wouldn’t allow the marriage for a year. Planning to return, her cowboy went to California to pan for gold and was killed in an earthquake, and she didn’t find anyone else until she was thirty-four. She remained married for forty-one years until his death, which unfortunately was on her birthday.

I realize that I am here because of an earthquake!

My hope is to document what I know to date in the form of a family DVD video and distribute a copy to all my family members, so descendants will know more about the dashes.

For it matters not, how much we own;
The cars...the house...the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.
...Author Linda Ellis