All photos are used with permission of Candy McCune
The Civil War comes to life every time Candy McCune opens a digital album structure full of memories she’s organized. She’s a family historian and retired attorney who owes falling in love with her heritage work to her great-great-grandfather.
When her mother passed, all Candy had was a single photo of this ancestor and his wife – a “stick figure” photo, she called it, because you could not make out their faces. No stories or details. Just names and a house in Texas.
Thanks to an interest in her 20’s in the old photos and stories of a grandfather, she decided to take some genealogy classes later in her early 60’s after she had raised a family and finally had time.
In that work, she discovered the story of her great-great-grandfather, W.D. McDonald. He fought with the U.S. Army in the west from 1855 to 1860, got married, and when the Civil War broke out, he battled alongside Confederate soldiers until he was taken prisoner in Louisiana.
The day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated is the day he walked out of a Union prison.
Candy’s fascinated by his story, a man who had 14 children with 10 reaching adulthood. He attended the First Baptist Church in Grayson County, Texas by the Red River. He and three other men met to study the Bible and pray for seven years trying to establish that church.
“They didn’t own a Bible. All they had was a Webster’s American Spelling schoolbook teaching literature using biblical principles.”
She found out from his obituary that he was a farmer and became an itinerant preacher. Plus a few more photos were found— the last one is him holding Candy’s mother as an infant.
The memories she has preserved link the generations and U.S. history.
Genealogy, she says, helps answer the big questions of “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?”
The life impact of genealogy
Candy has stories, photos and legacy materials of her ancestors permanently stored in ONE digital home. She teaches this to others in her Family History Bootcamp – organized for ease in discovering more ancestry details and creating a chronicle of their family history.
She describes the goal as “helping people preserve their legacy, their ancestry, where they came from and how it has impacted them.”
Our lives have high points and low points and struggles. Candy is a woman of faith and received an inspiring comment from a woman whom she was helping put together her life story.
“As I looked back over my life, and I was writing it and putting it in my photo book, I realized God was with me all the way through, even when I didn’t know he was.”
Candy paraphrased the scripture in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy which is the foundation for her work.
“ ’When your children ask you this question about what happened, you tell them, and you tell the story of how I, God, brought you out of being a slave in Egypt.’ Her instruction point is, preserve those legacies.”
Permanent storage + genealogy
How do you ensure that your memories are kept safe and protected for your enjoyment now and for future generations whom you’ll never meet?
Candy uses permanent storage with FOREVER® and she calls it a “perfect match” with her structure and system which aids family historians in curating their legacy materials in “one place”.
FOREVER®’s structure lets users create digital albums and nest additional albums underneath the main ones – all in a specialized order that is better than the traditional genealogy ‘family tree’.
Candy explains — “We use a modified ahnentafel numbering system which lines up the albums by generation along with an individualized number (plus their name and birth/death dates) which puts them in perfect genealogical order.”
“I’m the first generation if I’m the first person. Then the second generation people line up in their albums. And then the third generation people line up. Giving them their number puts them in order within their generation.
“I think the highest I have is a seventh generation person and I can jump right to their album which has all the legacy materials I have found on them.”
Candy says the albums are like buckets to fill with legacy materials held in different formats.
“I can put in everything: the photos, documents, audio, video, anything that there is in media and I can arrange it in chronological order.
“I can go to my great-great-grandfather and jump into his bucket and look at his Indian War and his Civil War experiences, and so much more. I’ve gathered information about the battle in which he was taken prisoner. All of that is in his bucket, lined up for me ready to write his life story.”
Candy’s passion for permanent storage
Losing family photos and videos is like having parts of your identity ripped away from you and your legacy completely lost to future generations.
Candy heard this heart-wrenching story from a photo coaching colleague.
A woman in her 80s called her photo coach and explained she had scrapbooking materials to donate, but in the conversation the real concern was revealed. Her son was packing up her things to move her to live closer to him but he didn’t want to take the boxes of memories including her genealogy research.
The photo coach offered to take the boxes but the son refused and threw away all the historical research.
“Who knows what treasures were in there? She had been doing genealogy for years.”
The story has strengthened Candy’s resolve to help families safeguard their most meaningful memories.
“It’s the goal of my work to help people structure a safe place for their legacy materials organized and shareable in a way that saves it for generations to come without the kids having to lift a finger or pay a dime.”
Even if the adult kids don’t want the memories, then at least they’re preserved until another descendant wants to dig into the family story.
Need to preserve your family’s genealogy? Ask Candy.
Get guidance if:
· You need to transfer and digitize your memories of a genealogical nature
· A genealogy bootcamp to learn the FOREVER® “structure” to build which will help you organize and preserve your family’s stories
· If you want to learn from Candy and her experiences in telling family stories
Contact Candy through her website:
Candy is mentioned in an upcoming book by Melody Whitehead. Learn how to declutter, digitize, and secure your family’s legacy.