re: #20 freetoken

Sad, but thanks for bringing this up.

The past slips away, often silently.

This, btw, is why professional genealogists always encourage people to interview the oldest relative. They will have information, usual not written down, about the family that, once they are gone, is totally gone.

One of my best college experiences was an oral history project for which we interviewed people who were around a hundred years old at the time (mid 1970s). One gentleman told us about the first time he had seen electric lights, at a county fair in 1882. “You can’t imagine what they look like to someone who has never seen them before.” A lady told us about her first experience with a telephone. This was in 1886, when she was 10 years old. She was with her family at a hotel. Her father had called the family lawyer to arrange an appointment, then allowed her to speak briefly to him. She hung up and asked, “Papa, is that man really a mile away?”