For us, stewarding our family heritage is not a hobby we pick up when time allows. It is central to how we encounter and interact with life. We live our commitment to the spirit of family every day, in nearly every waking hour, and we love it! Yes, it can be challenging and sometimes overwhelming. We always run out of hours before we run out of projects: our lists are usually twice as long as the day itself. Yet beneath the labor is a deep and sustaining joy: the knowledge that every story preserved, every image captured, every record organized, every garden tended, every memorial cared for, and every family connection strengthened is part of a larger calling, a larger project in the greater life of the universe.
People often say to us, with love and concern, “Take some time for yourselves.” We understand the kindness behind that advice. But the truth is we are taking time for ourselves. To care for our family connections is to care for ourselves. This “work” is woven into it our own well-being. Telling, writing, publishing, preserving, and sharing family history is how we breathe meaning into our days. It is how we honor those who came before us, how we walk with those beside us, and how we make a path for those yet to come.
Through JnKDavis.com, living the spirit of family means maintaining the site, taking and preparing photographs, designing the pages, and curating the content. The site is a living archive, gathering what time might otherwise scatter. It reflects our days, our relationships, our questions, our discoveries, and our devotion to memory.
JnKDavis.com is the digital representation of Ridge Haven, where the spirit of family becomes tangible through library collections, memorials, gardens, photographs, stories, and the ongoing practice of “re-membering”—bringing people, places, and histories back into relationship. At Ridge Haven, we help preserve books, binders, family writings, images, artifacts, and personal collections so that discovery remains possible for future generations. We believe a family library is a house of voices. It is a place where someone may one day find a name, a photograph, a sentence, or a memory that speaks to them and deepens how they understand themselves.
We bring this same commitment to the Dragoo Family Association. The DFA’s mission, discovering and exchanging information about Dragoo ancestors and related family lines, reflects the heart of what we love most: family members helping one another find their way through the past—and simultaneously, the present and future. In our roles as library contributors, we assist in preserving, organizing, and sharing knowledge so that descendants can connect not only to names and dates, but to people, places, migrations, faith, courage, grief, resilience, and belonging. We see research, strengthening family lines, encouraging reunion, and helping others to find their place in the family story as sacred “work.”
We also contribute to The Carr-Davis Conviviality, our other family association, and to the daily stewardship of Ridge Haven. We grow our food. We care for the land. We tend memorials and gardens. We look for opportunities to connect with family, however extended that family may be. We serve where service is needed and volunteer where our hands and hearts can help.
This is what it means to us to live the spirit of family: It is healthy food, healthy sleep, healthy activities, and healthy connection. It is love made visible through effort. It is the joy of doing meaningful projects together. It is the conviction that family is not something we simply inherit, but something we cultivate, protect, remember, and share. For us, this is not time away from ourselves. It is ourselves, fully alive in the projects we are meant to do.