Turning Your Genealogy Into a Family History
These days, many people have become interested in genealogy-the study of their family history. Have you found interesting ancestors in your family tree? Perhaps you have a great-great-grandfather who prospected for gold in the California Gold Rush, or a grandfather who flew B-29s in World War II, or a great-aunt who was a vaudeville star in the 1920s, and you are thinking that one of them would make a great subject for a book.
Your first step is to select the most interesting candidate and start amassing all the information you can find about him/her. Much information is now available on the internet with a little searching. Hopefully, you have a family tree software program installed on your computer. It is the easiest way to keep track of genealogy. Use the "notes" feature to summarize your findings.
A couple of census records are not going to be enough for this project. If you have family records, you are in luck. Create a separate file on your computer where you can store all the information in one place that you find on this person. Into this file, copy all the genealogical records that you have found: censuses, birth, death, and military records, letters, family stories, pages from county histories that tell your ancestor's story, and photos. You can compare two or three good possibilities to see which one's life would work best. Read it all over and look for a possible beginning and end to a story, and not just birth to death. A particular era in history that can be illustrated by the life story of an individual who actually lived through it may find an audience.
Write down any family stories that have been passed down through the years, but take them with a grain of salt. You may find that the soldier who was proudly believed to have fought at Yorktown was actually in Georgia at that time.
The next step is to do some research on the era and event in which your ancestor lived. Many books are available online at Google books and can be searched for your ancestor's name. Get a feel for the historical time. Enter the state and county where your ancestor lived into your search engine and add "genealogy" at the end. Most areas have sites, and, of course, some are better than others. The site may have cemetery records, censuses, and information on the area.
As you write your story, try to make it sound natural. Outline your story and make it flow toward your predetermined ending: returning home from the Gold Rush, the end of the war, or one last successful show for a vaudeville star who is getting married and leaving the stage forever. Help your reader understand your ancestor's life and times.
Your story will be unlikely to be commercially viable, but you will enjoy sharing it with your family members as a treasured heirloom. In these days of easy self-publishing, you can have your story printed for use at family reunions, etc. Imagine handing out a professionally-printed book on Great-Grandpa Ed to his descendants who have never known him except through family stories! And if your ancestor played a part in the history of a particular area of the country, historical societies there may be receptive to shelving a copy of your book so others can use it for research. Have fun with your project!
A story written about an interesting ancestor can become a true family heirloom to pass down for generations. Start your family history now before more stories and legends are lost and forgotten. You'll find it to be well worth the effort you expend.
Donna Gruber Adair is a former teacher of high school English and creative writing with a degree in history. Her newest book, An American Odyssey, is a result of her discovering her own family history. It follows a real-life pioneer family in their journeys through Ohio, Indiana, and Kansas, finding adventure on the Santa Fe Trail, the Colorado Gold Rush, and the Civil War. Find it at Amazon.com in print or for download to Kindle or PC, or at http://www.createspace.com/3618194
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