To feel a bit sad to realise I am the keeper of most/all of this information?

[grenlei]

When I was a child my mum would talk to me all the time about her childhood, her extended family, life in post war London, and then growing up in the 1950s-60s. I was blessed with a good memory (got me through school and uni with minimal effort!) so even now many years on can remember a lot of this.

My mum sadly died over 20 years ago when I was 21; of her siblings, only 3 (in their 70s/80s) are still alive, and 2 of those didn't have any children. I'm an only child; my cousins have little or no knowledge of our family history, and even my mum's siblings don't remember half the stuff I do. At a recent family gathering one family member was asking some family questions that I was able to answer, but others I couldn't (although I know my mum would have been able to).

It just makes me sad that it's all going to be lost. There's nothing massively earth shattering, it's just life and memories, connections to big events - a relative was at the Battle of Cable St for example, but my children are not interested at all (I've always loved history so a bit different for me) and no one else seems to be either.

I guess it's the case for all families sooner or later so I probably am BU!

I felt very sad thinking about those poor babies. Deaths in childhood were so common then only just over 100 years ago

We are fortunate to have full family trees for both my parents and DH's dad's side where it seemed three out of four family members died without children. As will we. I know our story. I wonder what theirs were...

If you want to fact check some of what you know, there is so much online and your local archive can be really helpful.

Yes, though it can be interesting or uncomfortable to recognise how tweaked or manufactured people's memories can be when recounted, or what things people don't know or don't want to know. By my mother's account, her father (who died when she was in her late teens -- she's now in her mid-70s) was a 'lovely man' - lots of officially 'lovely' memories, how 'unfortunate' he was, and how 'lovely' his marriage to my grandmother was.

A small amount of research shows a much more complex picture -- he was peripherally involved in a sectarian murder during the war of independence, appears to have married my grandmother because she was pregnant with a baby who was later stillborn, lost the family farm through mismanagement, and spent various periods in a mental hospital having electro-shock therapy. (Which does explain why my mother is so reluctant to admit that her brother and half-brother have significant lifelong MH issues...)

I do know someone who discovered only after the death of the woman she believed to be her mother that in fact it was her grandmother who had died, and her mother was in fact her 'elder sister' who had got pregnant aged fifteen She discovered it by finding a cache of birth certs etc when clearing her 'mother's' house.

So I tend to be very suspicious of memoirs which are all picnics and Blitz spirit.

If you put your information on ancestry and make your tree public, other researchers can benefit from it too.

I found a copy of a family history written by someone in America in the 70s. It details the information she was told by her elderly relatives about their family's roots in England and how they came to emigrate in the early 19th century.

They're a different branch of my family and we share common ancestors. I now have photos of my 5x Great Uncle's log cabin pioneer house in Wisconsin and a written account of what happened to them all when they left Cheshire.

Once you release the information into the wild, there's no knowing who will find it useful. I've told my dc that even if they're not interested in family history, my grandchildren might be and they've got to hold onto all my research once I'm gone - on pain of a good haunting!

Definitely write it down! Your children might not be interested now but they probably will someday.

Also, are there any history groups specific to London and that period on Facebook? It might be interesting share with others who have an active interest in that area for the time being?