Memoir and Family History: Part 3—Family History
April 13, 2009 by Lillie
Table of contents for Memoir and Family History
A family history tells the story of people in your family. Most people who write family histories start out doing genealogical research. After they gather all that information, they want to share it with other family members. I’m not going to talk about genealogical and historical research in this series—the subject is far too broad, and chances are if you are interested in writing your family’s story, you have already done the research.
The first step is simply assembling the information in some way. A relative has created huge notebooks with all her research on various family lines. She includes the family tree, copies of historical documents, and photos. While the notebooks are interesting, they aren’t very exciting. They don’t tell anything about the daily lives of her ancestors. They don’t entice the reader to get comfortable and read the story, ignoring everything around her.
So many genealogists decide to move to the next step: to put all this research into a book. You will find advice on turning genealogical research into a family history in Writing Family History Made Very Easy: A Beginner’s Guide
The challenge is to write something that people will want to read, which means including more than just names and dates and events. Readers of family histories want to know what the people in the story did, what they believed, how they lived.
For current generations, you can interview living people. Ask them why they moved across the country or dropped out of college or opened a business. Find out how they lived, what they did for fun, what motivated them. Start with your oldest living relative, even if their memory is failing. Often senior citizens who can’t remember what day of the week it is can clearly recall their childhood and early adulthood.
Ask questions that don’t require a specific answer but that guide the older person in a general direction. Asking “tell me about school” might get a better response than “what was a typical day like when you are in elementary school?” You may not get an account of everything that happened in a typical day, but you will hear about the things that are strongest in the person’s memory. Those strong memories will make your story more interesting and more authentic.
Recognize that each person’s memories are their own and may be different from other people’s memories of the same experience. Expect to hear different perspectives, and use those different perspectives to add texture to your story.
If you are writing about ancestors from earlier generations, you will have to depend on historical research. However, you may not learn enough details about your family to make the story interesting.
After years of genealogical research, my client David Bowles starting writing his family history as nonfiction. He wanted to share what he’d learned with his children and grandchildren. However, his family found the story boring. To fill in the gaps and make the stories exciting, he began writing The Westward Sagas as fiction. Although he has invented scenes and dialogue, nothing in the stories is in conflict with known history. He writes about real people in real historical situations. All the known facts, events, and dates are accurate. He may have imagined that his ancestor planted corn at a particular time and place, but he knows from extensive research that his ancestor owned a farm in that location at that time, that corn was a crop common to the area, and that the time he indicated was the right time to plant.
Some writers prefer fiction because they want to make up more elements of the story. In that case, you need to make clear to readers if the book is not historically and genealogically accurate. Descendants are reading about their family deserve to know if they are reading total fact, fact-based fiction, or pure fiction.
For more about writing family history, check out the following resources.
- 10 Steps to Writing Your Family History
- Cyndi’s List – Links to Resources for Writing Your Family’s History
- Genealogy Spot
- Genwriters
Next week, we’ll talk about getting started with your family history or memoir.
We’ve done a lot of family history research and most of it is just names and dates. We did find that my husband’s grandmother had a family member who was a horse thief back during the old west days–she was quite embarrassed about it.
I write in my journal every week so my kids will have the story of my life instead of just dates of things that happened.
Family history can be a great place to mine ideas for stories, especially if you have an active imagination.
Great blog.
Rebecca,
I can imagine your husband’s grandmother’s embarrassment. We all want to find our ancestors are royalty or leaders or great people of some kind … not horse thieves.
A journal is a wonderful legacy to leave your family.
I agree that leaving a journal for your family before you pass away is something to remember them by.
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Bakugan (if you wrote YourName@Keywords, I could address you as a real person, and you would still get your keyword link),
A journal is a priceless legacy for your descendants.
I’ve always enjoyed learning about my family and the history of where we came from and the people that I’m related too. I think most people like me enjoy learning about these types of things. A book is a great idea to pass down to future family members as well.
Philip,
It’s interesting to learn about family and family history, and I’m a firm believer that should be passed on.
It’s really a nice thing to leave a journal behind for the next generation to see and to continue. Great idea!
Elaphotography (if you wrote YourName@Keywords, I could address you as a real person, and you would still get your keyword link),
A journal is a great legacy to leave future generations.
I’ve learned a lot about my ancestors in the last few years from extended family members, who happen to possess old photos and information I never knew existed. I found out that my ancestors came from Wales and Germany, and one side of my family owned a slave! I couldn’t believe it! On top of that, my great-great-great grandmother was apparently a Cherokee princess. But I look nothing like a native American! The things we learn.
Lloyd,
You’re fortunate to have those records. We can learn surprising things about our ancestors!
I wish I knew a lot more about me family history, and some day soon I would like to explore it.
On another note, do we think new social applications (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc) which allow us to freely document our lives negates the need to write a diary? Will our online activity survive so that future generations can see our lives in great detail?
Paul,
That’s a very interesting observation about how our online presence will be used by our descendants. I think it will definitely make it easier for them to find information about us, but I wonder if there aren’t things we would put into a journal for ourselves and our family that we wouldn’t/shouldn’t post for the entire world?
Wonderful advice, Lillie. There aren’t enough people recording the lives of grandparents. People aren’t living in generational families and, as a result, stories are being lost.
Great series.
Helen
http://sraightfromhel.blogspot.com
Helen,
You make an excellent point that people don’t live in generational families any more. When I was growing up, we lived on the same farm with the grandparents. Their house was just about 100 yards down the road from our house, and we were with them all the time. Now it’s common for families to live far away from any other family, and younger family members have little opportunity to get to know their grandparents and other relatives.
Lillie,
There were no records from my great grands and so I started making one from yesterday. I can only recall the lives of my grand parents but I’m taking the help of my Dad to say some thing about his grandparents.
It feels fantastic to know how things were in those days before Independence which I never knew.
Even my parents are showing great interest in recalling their childhood days.
Thanks for bringing this wonderful idea Lillie..
sriraj,
I’m so glad you’re talking to your family and gathering the information, and I’m especially glad that you are enjoying it. You are creating a priceless legacy for yourself, other family members, and generations to come.
it is indeed not easy to write our family history, it need a lot of work, effort and cooperation from every family members.
david,
It is a lot of work, but I believe it is well worth the effort.
Knowing our family’s history is really important for me. As our nation’s number of people grow massively it’s really hard to determine who your relatives are. That’s why, I often asks my grandparents to tell me few things about their past way of living and other things related about our family tree. Even though a lot of generations have been taking part nowadays, let’s make our first move by preserving and not forgetting our ancestors.
cooking (if you wrote YourName@Keyword, I could address you as a real person, and you would still get your keyword link),
I hope you are writing down or recording what you learn from your grandparents. As I found out from my own experience, over time those memories fade, and it’s important to record them to preserve them.
I’ve always wanted to put together my family history, but putting your family history together is tough when they come from foreign countries, and you don’t keep in touch with them.
Joe
Joe,
It is more difficult to reconstruct family history in the situation you describe. One genealogist I read about contacted the parish church in a small village in Poland and got information from the parish records. If you know where your ancestors came from, it might be worth looking into the area. In small communities where the people tend to share a common faith, a local church might be a good starting point.
I did some research into my family history, and I found a thief, two other criminals, and my great great grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee. Neat stuff!!
Amanda,
You certainly come from an interesting family. I hope you found some honest folks, too. People might tend to wonder about your integrity if they know you come from a line of criminals.
Seriously, I suspect many of us have ancestors who have done things that we aren’t necessarily proud of, whether it is breaking the law, owning slaves, or other things.
I’ve been researching the history of my family for a little over a year now. My goal is to put our family stories into a scrapbook with photos. I’m currently working on recording information on my maternal relatives because it’s so much larger than that of my father’s family. It’s tedious work, but thus far everyone in the family is really happy that someone cares enough to record our history!
Fantasy Girl,
Yes, the entire family benefits from one person researching and compiling the family history. Your family is lucky to have you doing this.
Speaking of tracing our ancestors…hmmm, I often heard people saying, “mr. so and so was your relative, etc….”, and since I don’t want to simply accept that info, I thought of tracing my roots…nyahhh, its not that easy though…until now, its still in the process.
Anne,
It’s a lot easier to trace your family history now than it used to be. There are many online resources that can help.
Hi,
Yes Internet is become powerful.
Anyone can know the information about us and our history.
flyer (if you wrote YourName@Keywords, I could address you as a person rather than a function, and you would still get your keyword link),
People don’t always think carefully enough about putting things on the Internet. Any comment you make, anything you post to social media, anything you write in a blog will stick around forever.
It’s great to be able to find information and have others find information about you, but it isn’t so good if you write something you later regret.
My hubby’s mother has done a lot of family research. We discovered he has relatives that came over on the Mayflower and he’s related to Mark Twain.
My family. We can barely go beyond my great grandparents. Not for lack of trying. A friend of ours — whose family hailed from a small place in Poland — went there and met disappointment. My grandmother’s family left Latvia with very little.
On a brighter note — I discovered a family site with photos and genealogical information most of which we already knew. It had photos (including one of my parents and me!) where the people behind the site didn’t know who some folks were. My mom knew. It was neat to identify faces for them.
I’m glad I started keeping a journal of my family’s life when I got married. I write in it with hopes that future generations will read it.
Meryl,
It’s great that you have had such good luck in tracing back your husband’s family and that you have found the Web site with your family’s genealogy information and photos. Your mother must have enjoyed identifying the people in the photos. Too bad you can’t go any further with your family. Sometimes the records just aren’t there.
You’re doing a favor for your descendants in keeping the journal. That will give them so much more information than typical records will.
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