All about family associations.
Back in the mid-1970s,
when Joyce and David Guerin began poking around in their past, they
were pleasantly surprised to find that David's kin (on his mom's side)
had given them a head start — in fact, they had formed a nonprofit
group called the Muchmore Family Association.
Family associations
are formal structures with officers, bylaws, dues and objectives. (See
the Toolkit resources on the next page if you're looking to form your
own.) The Muchmores' goals include “pooling the resources and efforts
of the members of the family so that the history and genealogy of our
ancestors may be passed on to all descendants.”
To that end,
since 1990, members have traveled from all over the United States and
England to reunite every two years. “Each reunion location has family
historical meaning, following the migration of the family from New
England to New Jersey to Ohio to Oklahoma,” says Joyce, who edits the
family's quarterly newsletter. “The coordinators provide tours of the
homes and businesses where Muchmores lived and worked. They even bring
in a speaker or historian from the area.” During the three-day affair,
family history also comes to life in genealogy workshops, heirloom
displays and storytelling sessions with artifacts as props.