by Denise M. Oliansky
for the Polish Genealogical Society of New York State
There is nothing more heart-wrenching for a family researcher than to be driving along on garbage day and suddenly going by a house with boxes and boxes of ‘trash’ out front that contain framed pictures, albums, binders, and other papers or paraphernalia sticking out of them. It has been known to cause more than one family historian to turn around, backtrack to the yard, and get out of their car to see if the worst is really happening.
Someone is throwing away a family’s history!

All sorts of questions begin forming in one’s mind. Foremost of course is, who would do such a thing? This is all evidence of lives lived! How can someone just trash all this?
While standing there in disbelief, the practical rears its head. Maybe someone has died and the house is being cleared out. Maybe the owners are downsizing. Maybe there’s been a divorce. But, that just leads to more questions. Surely there must be relatives who would want these things? But, perhaps there is no one else. Perhaps whoever is cleaning out the house doesn’t know the family or has no idea how to contact surviving relatives.
It chills the genealogist’s heart to think this evidence of a family’s existence is going to be picked up and crushed at any moment, depriving some future family researcher the information that might have answered all their questions about an individual or whole family. It’s incomprehensible!
Faced with…