How are you telling your family stories?

Some of my thoughts:
-------Chronological by Family
-------Generation, Era or Historical Event (Revolutionary War, Pioneers, Immigration--families intertwined)
-------Use of local flavor, i.e. what were the times like when your relative lived
-------Pedigree line with little stories spread throughout
-------Family pages

Just some thoughts

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Caro Nally on July 18, 2009 at 10:36am

Currently this is my idea:

I have the families divided. I am doing my "Descendants of" pages for the furthest person in each line and then doing the sheet. After that I'm going to write about that family, how life was like in that place at that time and speculating what they might have done. It will include pictures and maps and hopefully a travel map. I think this is the best way for me to do it since I'm doing more than just an ancestors; I'm doing all relatives. My book will include all known descendants of the furthest person in each line. A daunting task, I know.

I'm going to it in the traditional order, father then mother.

Each section of the book will be a different family. I'm hoping to have a preface and closing notes, which will be personalized and written to my daughter, for whom I am writing the book. I do hope to print a new book (with updated information of course!) for each child I have. Therefore, each book will have a slightly different preface and closing notes.

Also, I would love to include a CD/DVD with the book, complete with a digital copy of the book and separate pictures files, in case they would ever want to use the pictures of something.

What are you doing?

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 18, 2009 at 11:31am

I have two distinct books in mind: My Dad's side most all of which go back several centuries; and my Mother's which goes back to mid-1800's in Norway. Each is quite distinct and this way I can share with two different sets of cousins.

I don't have any children, so my legacy will go to my nieces and nephews, siblings and cousins. I only have three living aunts: two by marriage and one great aunt.

I was loooking for the book I did through Ancestry but can't find it right now, might be in a box I haven't looked in. I do however, have it in a notebook. This one I did by family: Doolittle, Newman, Gary, Gladfelter, Horn (The norweigians). I have mini bios where I could find them. The Pedigree page. Family pages. One interesting this is a timeline.....What was going on in their lifetimes. This was a rather simple approach and rather dry.

I really like your idea of including maps and how life was like and what they might have done. I have a book written by a lady in England who researched the England Ancestors. Rather than a lot of facts and figures she wrote most of the book in prose and did indeed include what life was like. She also included drawings to supplement that life.

I have a second book researched by a different lady of the same family descendants. This book I pulled off an online site. She did include some of the history as prose, but much of the family history was chronological by specific year. One interesting thing she included was the description of a voyage that was documented at the same time as my first Doolittle can to the US. With these two books, I should be able to come up with almost a book all by itself. Both ladies differ slightly on one generation in the 1500's so when I write about that I'll give both sides and then leave it up to the reader to decide, which is what one writer was doing anyway. It seems that there is a bit of argument between the two authors.

I have one book that has a bit of information on my Patriot who fought in the Revolutionary War. He was one of the first settlers in Rushford New York.

So anyway I'm still considering how I would like to write it. At this time I will show siblings where I have them, but I'm not going for the second and third cousins, that is unless it fits.

I'm thinkg that this group will give me the boost I need to gear up again with my genealogy.
Trudy

Permalink Reply by Caro Nally on July 21, 2009 at 12:00pm

Trudy, what two books are these? I've followed this discussion and I was going to look at the books for some organization ideas and such and then I realized that I don't know what books they are lol

I want to do all the descendants bc I want to be able to share the information with anyone else in family. I have received a lot of help from people I feel they all need to be completed. Never know when a fifth or sixth cousin might want to see their genealogy and someone tells them I have it. (-: Plus, I also talk to a few second and third cousins. My second cousin and I each have a daughter and they're only 15 days apart. I'm in Pennsylvania and she's in California, but we're talking about meeting up at some point so the girls can meet. That big extended family is something I always wanted and never had. (I'm an only child, my mother has one sister whose two children are 17 and 11 years older than I, my father only has one sibling with children and we don't even know each other) Maybe that's what I'm determined to include as many people as possible, as many descendants as I can find.

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 21, 2009 at 11:01pm

Ok, I was talking about me writing two books, one for my mother's side of the family (Horn) and my Dad's side of the family (Doolittle, etc.). I also mentioned books about the Doolittle's.

However, I just got three books I ordered from Amazon. If you'll give me a few days I'll skim through them and see which is the best book to help in writing our family histories.
Trudy

Permalink Reply by Myra Vanderpool Gormley on July 23, 2009 at 8:26am

What I've discovered is that the presentation of genealogy and family history in formats that others will read and/or appreciate is a challenge. The larger the project, the bigger the challenge. If you go with traditional genealogy, there are basic templates/styles to follow and many of the genealogy software programs will create these, but all I've ever seen require quite a bit of editing and enhancement. You can add narrative and graphics, such as pictures and maps, to the information about some ancestors, but what I have discovered is that there are many ancestors, especially the women, about whom I have little information other than basic genealogical data. And, the further back I've traced, the less information about specific individuals I have.

Another factor to consider is that only your children have the same family lines and only you and your full siblings have identical ancestral lines. This limits the amount of interest in a large compilation. This also leads me to believe it might be best to prepare such material in genealogical format (with enhancements) plus pedigree charts or Ahnentafels so the families can be followed more easily by nongenealogists, and separately to focus on writing just narrative family histories in smaller segments, perhaps by surname or for each couple in the family tree.

The challenge for me is aside from the genealogy, I want to include biographical material about family members that the next generations will find interesting (and accurate). I am still playing around with ideas and formats and look forward to learning how others are dealing with these matters.

Permalink Reply by Patrice Houck Schadt on July 18, 2009 at 2:32pm

My situation is somewhat different in that all my relatives in the United States have been in the same areas. Some of them back to the 1700's. Even my husband's family came from the same area where my mom grew up.

I had a heck of a time deciding how to limit and present my research. I think I am going to do an expanded alphentafel (sp?) and go down only 1 generation as I go back. For example, when I get to my grandparents, I will do their children and grandchildren and stop. That way it gives a person some information to connect into the line. The other books will include more history of the areas rather than specific information as to the dates of particular family members. For example, a history of the Minisink area it would mention any ancestors that lived there as well as others.

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 18, 2009 at 2:42pm

My family were movers (maybe not shakers). So one of the things I'd like to do is show how they traveled west. They started in Wallingford MA, and ended up in the Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 20, 2009 at 7:24pm

The more I think about it, I think I'll write stories of each person independently like squares in a Quilt. Then I'll sew them together into the final piece.

Permalink Reply by Karen Rhodes on August 19, 2009 at 7:30pm

"The more I think about it, I think I'll write stories of each person independently like squares in a Quilt. Then I'll sew them together into the final piece."

Trudy, that's pretty much the way I'm doing it. Part of what I'm doing is writing down my own memories of events I participated in, and of memories of others who have told me stories -- my grandmother's stories of the family or of growing up in late 19th century Indiana; my mother's stories about my father, who died when I had just turned 7 years old. I write these down as they pop forward in my thinking. So I have a bit of a quilt, too.

I have also done a somewhat long "ancestors and descendants" of one of my ancestors, Richards Packard, my 4x-great grandfather. I distributed copies of that to my family, and to the historical society in the locality where he lived (Georgeville, Quebec, Canada).

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on August 19, 2009 at 10:34pm

That sounds great. Also you have something tangible to show for your work and gives you an uplift when you need it. Trying to go for the whole enchilada could take a long time and you wonder if you'll ever finish it.

I like the idea of sending the story to the local historical society. I'm doing my Patriot from the Revolutionary War. He was one of the first settler in Rushford NY. I think they would be very happy to have the information since I have more than what was put into the Centennial book on the town.

Permalink Reply by Eric K. Schweer on August 10, 2010 at 8:26pm

I like this idea. It might make it easier to follow through, breaking it into little chunks of work, then "quilting" it all together. I know my own project has grown to proportions I had not imagined at all. With each new discovery, it automatically gets bigger.

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 20, 2009 at 10:56pm

I would like to share something exciting I found yesterday. I was searching footnote.com and found 52 pages of documentation on the Revolutionary War and my Patriot. One specific document was 8 hand-written pages of his Deposition for Pension from serving in the War. It starts with where he was born, where he lived, how he enlisted, and then went on to tell a little about the battle he participated in. It also lists all the officers he served under. Included were witnesses of his character, one by the pastor of his church. I'm in the processs of trying to transcribe it to Word. There are some words I can't figure out, but I'm not really missing much.

Once I finish this, I can then research each of the battles he talks about and get a pretty good idea of what it might have been like for him. This is really a treasure.

Trudy