Do we inherit more than property and genetic traits from our ancestors?
Do we inherit values and personal characteristics, too? Do family stories tell us something about the legacy that we inherit?
Growing up on a farm in Iowa not far from my grandparents’ farm, I had heard stories of how a barn that my grandparents had built in 1930 nearly caused my grandparents to lose their farm. My fiscally conservative grandparents thought it was safe to build the barn because they had cattle nearly ready to sell and the cattle sale would enable them to cover the cost of the barn. But before the cattle could be sold, the cattle market plummeted, and they couldn’t pay their barn debt.
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As a kid, I knew that this story had a happy ending because my grandparents were obviously in control of the farm when I was a youngster. That’s the extent of what I knew. But I recently learned more from the farm’s land abstracts.
Interestingly, in rural Iowa at that time, loans were typically held by an individual rather than by a bank. My grandparents struggled for at least 16 years to pay the debt – fighting off judgments against them, seeking loan extension after loan extension, and renegotiating terms to finally prevail. Meanwhile, many others around them lost their farms.
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It can’t be just the so-called German stubbornness that enabled my grandparents to succeed because most of the farms around them were also occupied by Germans. Although I knew that my grandparents had struggled against long odds, I had no idea that they did so for so many years.
Through the documents recorded on those abstracts, I gained an even greater appreciation of my grandparents’ perseverance and hard work.
This year, I was lucky enough to find a shoebox full of letters that were written by my parents and grandparents to my uncle as he went off to boot camp in late 1950 during the Korean War years.
My parents had not yet had any children, and were in the process of fixing up a farm house, barn and other buildings at a farm near the farm where my grandparents, dad and uncle (when he wasn’t off to the Army) farmed. That became the farm that I and my brothers grew up on.
The letters were long and filled with the details of their lives and the lives of their neighbors at that time.
I couldn’t believe that my Dad had taken the time to write 6-page letters, but he certainly did, and often! There were many letters from my dad, grandparents and other relatives even though the letters only covered a 3-month period. The details the letters revealed about my parents’ and grandparents’ everyday lives during that period, and of their close relationship to one another, were incredible.
To hold letters in my hand that are over 60 years old, and in my ancestors’ handwriting and manner of speaking, was a treat. I got a glimpse into their worries about the Korean War and inflation, their purchase of a new car, their work ethic, and the intensity of my father’s love and concern for his brother.
I learned that my Dad at that time was giving some thought to getting out of farming (he didn’t), that he reluctantly sampled raccoon meat that a neighbor had prepared, and that my grandmother swept down cobwebs out of the barn (yes, the same barn that nearly caused them to lose the farm!).
What fun! Lucky am I that my uncle saved the letters. My grandparents, parents and uncle are now deceased. But their legacy lives on.
As an estate planning attorney, I find that an important related benefit to creating or updating one’s estate plan triggers consideration of legacy. That’s a good thing because your heirs inherit more than money and property. And family stories should be told and preserved.
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Bonnie Wittenburg, Wittenburg Law Office, PLLC, 601 Carlson Parkway, Suite 1050, Minnetonka, MN 55305, 952-649-9771 www.bwittenburglaw.com bonnie@bwittenburglaw.com
