Family tree

I may have mentioned a while back that my family did some tests via the Genographic Project to trace our ancestral origins.  They looked at my maternal ancestry, and we also had them trace the ancestry of my father's paternal DNA.  (On order is a kit to have my dad do his mother's side, which may help us to figure out which of our ancestors was Cherokee - or at the very least will help us eliminate one option.)

I took the (free) option of transferring our results over into FamilyTreeDNA also, which has turned out to be an incredible thing.  

Based on my father's DNA results, we were able to identify a few distant cousins in the system.  I have been talking to one of the women with whom I share great-great-great-grandparents (I'll call this great(3)-grandparents).  It turns out that she has been an absolutely AMAZING source of research.  She's shared some published information about various ancestors and - what Laura and I agree is absolutely the neatest document - a transcript of a letter to our great(4)-grandfather Peter from his son Jacob (a prominent Lutheran minister) discussing the former's conversion to Baptism.  (The conversion was very successful, to Jacob's sorrow, and that line of the family remained Baptist for generations... I believe up until my father left the fold, although I am not sure about the spiritual leanings of my paternal grandfather either.)    

Our correspondence today - email, primarily - contains nothing like this level of detail or historical value, which makes me kind of sad.  On the one hand, our future generations may never even have genealogical mysteries to solve as everything will be already tracked and available online...   but, then, without the challenges and mysteries to get them excited, I wonder how much they will really care?