I used ancestry.com when it was new, and it was fascinating. There was so much that I was somehow wrong about. Like, I found out my grandfather was a twin, and part of 7 brothers who came here to america and split up into groups to find their fortune. Imagine your own family doing that.... moving to, say, Peru and then splitting up never to see each other again. Anyway, I found my own sense of family history was not very accurate.

I thought I was french, but found out that this side of the family was considered Indian until just a few generations ago. And I'm cousins with Angelina Jolie.

Fun stuff.

Think very hard before you start telling people you're doing this, though. As older family members winnow down belongings, or as people die, you will get mountains of items. Because you care! This is very nice, and you'll get an old diary from your great grandmother where she talks about getting an egg from a neighbor and how good it tasted. You'll also get your great grandfather's long underwear and conservation corp ID.

I just put it all in a cedar chest, but I'll have to deal with it one day. People will give you boxes of photographs after someone dies, and they're never labeled. Hours of work going through them, and you won't know most of the people. But then you'll find some gem of a photo, with the names written on the back. Or some really interesting event.

But what do you do with most of it? I have no idea.