Older relatives have always encouraged their younger kin not to take modern conveniences for granted. This usually manifests itself in the form of that age-old story — you know the one: It starts out "Boy, do you have it easy!" and continues with the harrowing details of Grandpa's daily 15-mile walk to school. How he trudged along barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways, with only his gratitude for the educational opportunity to sustain him.

Despite Grandpa's denials, we know those anecdotes are merely hyperbole. But if yesterday's genealogists were to tell us "Boy, do you have it easy!" they wouldn't be exaggerating. We have so many more timesaving tools than our predecessors did — a fact I was reminded of recently, when my aunt and I taught a genealogy merit-badge class to a group of teenage Boy Scouts.