PREFACE
On Writing Family Histories
Select an individual
An individual that is inspired to write about their family, will select themselves to write about for their first history and that is a wise choice, as we know more about ourselves than anyone else. In writing your own history you will learn the important things that should be included in other histories. The information that was important and interesting in your history should be your outline for writing the histories of your parents, grandparents and other ancestors that you decide to write about later.
Your own history, however, is the only one that you can include the emotions and feelings you had about events and experiences, good or bad, in your life. With other histories you will only be able to provide whatever details you can find about the person and where they lived. You would be very fortunate to find letters and or stories that they had written that could be incorporated into your history of them. There are time lines professionally prepared that will give you historical facts and events that were taking place at the time your ancestors lived in a given community. These events from recorded history should be used selectively in describing their environment and the area events that probably affected their lives.
The size of your project will depend on how much you know or can find in your research about an individual and how interested you become in their story, as well as your writing skills. Some histories may be several hundred pages long and some will only be one or two pages long depending on the above circumstances.
Whether you are a prolific writer or not should not be the determining factor in whether you accept the responsibility to make sure an ancestor’s life is not totally lost to their descendants, including your own. They say, “When a man dies, they bury a book!” Let us exhume as many of those books as we can. Ancestral histories are the only link that we have to the past and to those who broke the trail and bridged the rivers of life that we cross over every day, usually, with little thought to their hard work and bravery. The importance of writing our own story and the histories of our kindred dead is what will keep our memory alive and the memory of our ancestor's existence alive. Someone said that it puts clothes on their spirits so that we can see them in our minds eye and know who we should be grateful to for the preparations they made for our turn on earth. Knowledge of our predecessors tends to humble us, as humility is a byproduct of a grateful heart. Humility is a virtue that we should all aspire to, in order to find that special peace of mind in this life.
By Emil O. Hanson
Your Personal History
"Your personal history isn't for the masses -- it's for your family. And your family doesn't want volumes - they just want pages. They don't need golden plates -- plain paper will do. The key is to just get busy and do it. Write one experience at a time...
Your personal history is scripture for your posterity. It is a means by which you can teach them long after you are gone. It will help your family understand you, and will probably help you understand yourself. And as you write it, you will probably experience a spiritual awakening. You will come to realize how blessed you have been, and how much the Lord loves you.
A personal history is an essential part of what you should leave for your posterity. You should leave your genealogy so they know you were born. And you should leave your personal history so they know you lived -- you really lived. "
---George D. Durrant, Church News, January 16, 1982Personal Histories
Following are two programs that may be of help to those writing their histories. The first is a software program designed to walk a person through their writing of their personal history, step by step. The second is the personal and family history, teaching manual that has been used by the Ogden Regional Family History Center staff to teach personal history.
ANCESTORS WERE PEOPLE TOO!
by George MorganAs the last-born child of my generation, it was my misfortune to have missed knowing a number of my relatives. Some either died before I was born or they died when I was too small to have remembered or known them well. Nevertheless, family stories have come down to me. "Along Those Lines ..." will talk this week about how family stories contribute to our genealogy.
Recently I've had occasion to talk to two of my relatives, each of whom shared a story with me. I'd like to share them with you because they illustrate the value of interviews, both in-person and telephone style, and the importance of preserving stories as part of your genealogy research.
My aunt Penelope Weatherly of Burlington, NC, celebrated her 84th birthday in January. We got together in Florida the day before her birthday for a marvelous visit. During our time together, I asked her to talk about her parents. She told me that her mother -- my maternal grandmother -- was "a clown." She had a wonderful sense of humor, shared jokes and laughed with her four daughters, and loved my grandfather deeply. My aunt told me that my grandmother was persuaded to spend Christmas, 1947, with her own sisters in Georgia, and that my grandfather had to remain at home. It was a lonely Christmas for him. It also was his last, as he died in April of 1948. I learned that my grandmother never forgave herself for not spending that last Christmas with her husband, and that much of life's joy left her after that. This story made an indelible impression on me and taught me much about my grandmother that I had never known.
On a cheerier note, I spoke by phone with my first cousin Penny Frank of St. Mary's, GA. She is the niece and namesake of my aunt Penelope. I asked her what she recalled of this same grandmother's sisters. She recounted a family tale about three of the sisters having traveled from NW Georgia to the beach by train. There they saw some lovely live crabs for sale. They decided to purchase some and take them home on the train. They had booked accommodations on a sleeper car -- a train car with upper and lower berth beds with privacy curtains. During the night, our great aunt Emma Dale (always a jokester) decided to play a prank on her sister, Anna. She reached under the privacy curtain on Anna's berth and pinched her bottom. Anna woke up with a scream. She immediately began screaming, "The crabs are loose on the train! The crabs are loose!" Needless to say, the conductor came running, and the rest of the sleeper car was in pandemonium. And ... Aunt Emma Dale was in the doghouse with her sisters for a week.
What these stories do for me is bring these people to life. These stories add another dimension of humanity to my relatives. They make me realize that my ancestors and relatives aren't just names on a pedigree chart or a family group sheet. They were individuals with likes and dislikes, complex relationships with other people, and senses of humor. They tell me, too, about the times in which they lived, the way they traveled, the way they spent their time, and their relationships with their family members.
The way we learn the facts about our ancestors and hear these stories is by interviewing relatives. Leave no stone unturned! Certainly, you can't learn everything in one sitting. I like to use "the installment plan." In almost every conversation, I try to turn the conversation to "what can you tell me" or "what is your recollection of ..." or "what was so-and-so like" questions. Open-ended questions requiring more than yes or no answers are best. Sometimes these casual conversations give me leads to research elsewhere. Sometimes they raise more questions than they answer. But they always provide me with a more human insight into my family.
These stories and the telling of them are family traditions. If they are not recorded in some way, they will be lost. And when they are lost, some of the sparkle and perspective is lost forever.
What stories do you know? Are you recording the family stories as part of your family history? Are you interviewing all of your relatives? Why not?
Happy hunting!
WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO DO
YOUR FAMILY HISTORY?
For those of you who are leaving your family history to do when you are "older", have you ever thought of the following:
None of us knows the length of time that we'll be here.
It's a tough sell for folks to admit that they have arrived at "old".
The body tends to be less cooperative-- vision, arthritis, etc. can be a problem.
Medical & financial issues can become such a burden that travel is curtailed.
Opportunities to gain needed skills and knowledge have been passed up for years.
The mind may not function as effectively as it once did. This leads to incorrectly linked families.
Financial & mental ability to keep abreast of technology adequately for the research & input adds difficulty.
It's tough to gain a testimony of an area that is not practiced, and even harder to share that with descendants.
People who know pertinent information for our research will die or have mental challenges while we wait for "that season" in our lives.
In some areas, more records are becoming available, but in others, they are being withdrawn from circulation and/or sealed.
Now is the time for Family History, not later!
Sheri Lynn Lemon
Logan Utah Regional Family History Center