Announcements
January 2012
Dear BFO Members:
How wonderful it is, and how grateful
I am, to be a part of this extended international Brough family! With
the wonders of modern technology we have been able to identify so many
of our living and deceased family members across the globe that we are
feeling more and more connected each day. We have helped bring forth the
identity and life stories of so many of those who have gone before us-how
grateful we are to them for their example, strength, accomplishments and
contributions that made the world a better place.
Many family members have asked me how they
can best help with this great effort. There is so much to do! Here are
a few suggestions:
We can obviously volunteer to assist our
Brough Family Organization (BFO) genealogy and family history committee
who can be reached at: officer@broughfamily.org.
They are working on so many "cool" projects right now such as
the Brough extraction initiative involving Australia, New Zealand, England,
and eventually Canada and other countries. I invite you to reach out to
them and offer your time, talents, family histories and creative energy.
In addition, we are getting more and more
involved with digitizing family pictures, histories, and other documents
so that they can be more accessible to all family members. With the progress
of the World Wide Web, it is becoming more and more the repository for
family historical documents. We have so many family histories already
on our family web site, but if you have any stories, facts or pictures
to add to those histories I invite you to submit them to the email address
noted above. In addition, you may have other stories, pictures or other
documents that may be great additions to those already included in our
database.
Along these lines, I invite family members
everywhere to get involved in one or more of the various volunteer indexing
programs going on throughout the world. Some examples include documenting
those buried in cemeteries (Findagrave.com), working to digitize and extract
from country census records, The UK / Essex Parish Registers, US Naval
Enlistment Registers 1855-1891, and the list goes on. To get more ideas
and get started, go to https://familysearch.org/volunteer/indexing
or http://genealogy.about.com/od/volunteer/a/indexing.htm.
Getting the younger family members involved
with genealogical and family history work will be the key to our future
success. They have energy and most of their lives still ahead of them,
and they better understand technology and the internet than many of their
parents and grandparents! The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
has recognized this need and has created a great website to help get youth
interested, motivated and energized in accomplishing this work: https://lds.org/youth/family-history?lang=eng.
I recognize that young people may not like working on "history"
and may shy away from it. But my guess is they would like to sit with
a grandparent or great-grandparent to hear and record their life story.
They would probably enjoy collecting, scanning, labeling and organizing
old family pictures. Indexing could be fun with the right project that
aligns with their interests. They might like to participate with us in
utilizing existing (and future) technologies to allow us to have real-time
virtual reunions and other family meetings. They might even like to set
up a social network dedicated to just Brough family members-and I'll bet
they could come up with a pretty creative name for it as well.
Some of our ongoing research activities
do come with a cost, e.g. obtaining certified copies of birth, marriage,
or death certificates, shipping and postage, telephone, engaging other
researchers, etc. Although membership in the Brough Family Organization
is free, we invite all who can and would like to donate funds to assist
with this extensive research effort to do so. To learn more about BFO
finances, funding needs, and how to contribute funds, please follow this
link: http://www.broughfamily.org/finances.html.
Also, if you have other ideas that you would
care to share with me I'd love to hear them. Always feel free to email
me at shanebrough@comcast.net
with any ideas, thoughts or concerns you may have regarding the ongoing
work and future direction of the Brough Family Organization.
The BFO is engaged in a most important and
exciting work! We are finding and connecting extended family members across
the globe and helping them feel part of a larger family organization.
We are discovering those of our various family branches who have passed
on before and bringing them and their legacy out of obscurity. We are
helping to fulfill ancient Biblical prophecy: Behold, I will send you
Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of
the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and
the heart of the children to their fathers. . . (Malachi 4:5-6). This
is a meaningful and rewarding activity and I invite you to get involved
and become a part of it.
R. Shane Brough, President
Brough Family Organization
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