Starting Young

A young me at a cemetery in Texas

  Genealogy has always been a part of my life.  I can't remember a time when my Mom didn't research; I caught the bug when I was just 18 (read about that here), and my kiddos started going to courthouses & cemeteries when we still had to lug them around in their carriers. 
  Recently one of my buds encouraged me to teach a genealogy class to our homeschool group. Of course I was excited at the chance.  To me, genealogy can teach so much beyond just family relations, it's history, research techniques, problem solving, even math:)  While planning what to do for my fall class, my Mom brought to my attention a really cool program that our State Historical Society is doing called the Sleeping Heroes Project where students research Civil War Veterans buried in Kansas, and then upload the information into a database.  I picked out a handful of local cemeteries we can work on documenting, which was easy since our county has hardly been done yet.  In order to capture the kids' interest (and ok, I admit it, I couldn't wait!) I researched one vet from each of the cemeteries I chose.  I was really surprised at what I found: a spy, one who marched with Sherman through Georgia, a Confederate, one who fought at the first major battle west of the Mississippi, and even one of my own kiddo's ancestors who was captured at Chancellorsville. 
  My enthusiasm for the project rubbed off on Bubby who begged and begged for me to let him start transcribing the ones in our city cemetery.  I finally relented, making the justification that I could see how the whole transcription/research thing would go for a 3rd grader.  It actually went pretty well, he's been accurate with writing down exact spellings, etc... & actually helped me tweak my spreadsheet too.  My plan is to let the older kids do the research and transcription and the younger ones do the bulk of searching out where the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) stars are that mark the vets' graves.
  The plan is to meet once a month and work as a group and if the kiddos and their families have further interest they can work on a smaller cemetery on their own.   I'm excited to see what else we uncover with this project and maybe get some young ones interested in some history!