Have you ever kept a journal?

If you have - perhaps even as a young teen - what would happen if your grandchildren or great-grandchildren found it? What would it say to them about you, your life and the times in which you lived?

I know that some people who keep journals might not be too happy if their descendants found those, well, revealing diaries - which recorded their inner-most thoughts at a young age.

But what would those teen writings mean a century from now?

I have a friend whose family arrived in the New World in the early 1600s. One of their ancestors, a young woman, kept a journal about her travels, her family, the day to day chores, advice for her descendants and much more. The writings are a revered and priceless piece of family history.

I wish one of my ancestors had done that. I want to know how the family lived in Mogilev, Belarus in the 1700s, and how, in 1837, some formed an agricultural colony about 12 miles out of town called Vorotinschtina. And, I want to know how they got from Spain to Belarus even earlier.

We did have a 300-year-old genealogy, brought to America by one of the last to leave Belarus, but it disappeared in the 1950s when the man who had it died. It was likely discarded when his possessions were cleared out of the house.

While our family can never completely reconstruct those 300 years, we still try to find as much information as possible.

One reason we began this journey is that we'd like our descendants to know more than we did when we began our quest.

If you cannot locate writings of your ancestors, consider keeping a journal for your future descendants to go along with the family history you will leave to them.

Think about what you wish your ancestors had left to you, and try to do something like that yourself.