Just write it down: telling your family stories

Search the internet for how to write your family history and dozens of results will appear. Maybe you have toyed with the idea of writing and have never quite got around to it. Before you get completely turned off by this article, just know I am not going to browbeat you into anything. I will simply delve into why we have this need to write.

In 2015 The New York Public Library put together a list on why you should write your family history. [1] In it, the Library put forward 20 quotes from a variety of writers which I have now printed out and placed on my office wall. Why? Because these people “get” what it is to be a researcher and a family historian. I am sure you too.

For me documenting my life, my stories, my adventures are very therapeutic. I am putting down on paper items I want to remember, or I feel passionate about. It is my hope that in the future my scribbles and musings will enlighten a descendent, or fellow researcher, into the life of an ordinary person. Too often we only read about those who are famous in one way or another. There are not many journals from the common person showing what it was like to live during their era of history.

While writing the biographies of our ancestors is a goal for many genealogists I am always sad when I find that few of them take the time to write their own stories. I mean, honestly, who is the best person to write about your life? Your third great-grandchild or you? I hope you said you!

That being said, start small and simple as with any writing project. Many people feel comfortable simply keeping a journal and writing in it as important life events happen. Others like writing prompts to get them going. Whatever you choose, the important thing is to keep it going. For one, the more you write the better you will become. Two, the more you write the more it becomes second nature and it will feel off when you do not write!

In the sources listed below are several links to writing prompts to get you started. Of course, getting started is the hardest part for many people. I suggest you set aside a specific time each day or week where you can write. If you need a special pen or notebook, great. If you need to get away from the house and write at a special place, even better. Do what makes you feel comfortable and relax you enough to put pen to paper.

Now, get out there and leave a record for future generations of researchers. Just think how excited you would be to find these types of journals for any of your ancestors. So good luck and get writing!

More to Read:

Ales Honeysett, “Here’s Why Writing About Yourself is so Freaking Hard,” The Muse https://www.themuse.com/advice/heres-why-writing-about-yourself-is-so-freaking-hard

Carmen Nigro, “20 Reasons Why You Should Write Your Family History,” The New York Public Library, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/02/09/reasons-to-write-your-family-history

Emer McKeon, “Why You Should Consider Writing an Autobiography,” Bookstr https://www.bookstr.com/why-you-should-consider-writing-your-autobiography

James Hamblin, “The Power in Writing About Yourself,” The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/ew-feelings/383475/

Michael Gonchar, “500 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing,” The New York Times https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/500-prompts-for-narrative-and-personal-writing/

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[1] https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/02/09/reasons-to-write-your-family-history

Voting brings out family history stories

My father’s family was involved in politics for as long as I can remember.  Many of my ancestors were mayors, city council members, in state legislature, and heavily involved with running local elections.  Dad has always told all sorts of stories about growing up as part of a family heavy into the politics of the local area.

Which is why I did a double take this morning when I heard a brand new story.  Remember, I know all his stories, have heard them over and over again. So, to surprise me with a new story is a real gem. 

Standing in the cold this morning with my father, husband, and the youngest kiddo dad remembered a story about his brother, President Nixon, and a campaign dinner in his hometown.

First of all, President Nixon campaigned in our little bitty town?  Whoa, how did I miss that!?  I knew about FDR coming through by train on his way to the dedication of the George Rogers Clark Memorial in Vincennes, Indiana but that was the only presidential visit I knew about.

The event was the Lincoln Day Dinner and former VP Richard Nixon was the speaker for the event.  Just a few days before he had announced his run for President in New Hampshire, which made this event even bigger.  It was held in the new school gymnasium, which was medium sized for Indiana schools seating just under 8,000 people in the bleachers. 

It seems his brother, who was at the dinner with my grandparents, wanted to meet the President. 

Article from the front page of The Indianapolis Star

printed on Sunday 11 February 1968

Or, just prove how easy it was to jump up on the platform.  So, he ran up to the stage, jumped on it, slid across the floor, and stretched out his hand to Nixon.  Then was promptly tackled.

Dad was in college at the time and the day after the even classmates and his professors alike were asking him if he heard what happened in his hometown.  Well, no he had not heard, and he didn’t know it was his brother until he went home to visit a few weekends later and his father told him what happened.

Of course, my researcher brain was going crazy.  I HAD TO FIND THIS ARTICLE!  I mean, they would have put it in the news right?!  Well, I have not found a trace of it yet.  It seems in 1968 they only reported the news… no fun at all.

Which means I am still looking for proof of the family story.  In the meantime, I will just have to read the articles about the event which occurred on 10 February 1968 in Washington, Indiana.  If you find something, let me know!

Sharing your stories in the digital age

I am a story teller, and a talker.  Sometimes it is hard to shut me up.  I also love to hear and read stories about what other people have done or seen.  I think that is one of the reasons I love being a genealogist and I bet it is what drew you here too.  However, we shouldn’t just love to immerse ourselves in others stories, we should be trying to get ours down to.  So, that is the question.  How do we save, share, and keep our memories in a way that others in the future can enjoy too?

For many people the old standbys are perfectly fine.  You can write your experiences and stories down in a journal.  Even type them on a computer. Put them in a blog! Or, whatever mode works best for you.  Some of the tried and true methods however are starting to fall by the wayside because the technology that they were made on is no longer available.  For example, all those reel to reel home movies or VHS tapes.  How many of you would have a way to play those today?  I know our VHS player broke 2 years ago and we haven’t replaced it.  Thus sentencing all those tapes on our shelf to sit there and glare at us in dust coated silence.

To bring yourself into the 21^st century you really need to try new tech and new toys.  These will make it quicker, faster, and easier for you to capture your life in real time as well as record your memories for the future.  Think about how you feel every time you uncover a family letter or a piece of writing that was made by your ancestor.  What would you give to hear a family member’s voice again?  You have the power to make that dream come true for the future researchers in your family.

Below are a few websites, apps, and resources that I think you might find helpful.  Check them out, you won't be disappointed!

Websites and Apps

Create Your Life Story 

Record Their Stories 

Reflect and Record 

Saving Memories Forever **Won the developer award at RootsTech 2014** 

StoryCorps 

StoryKeep 

StoryWorth  

Resources:

DoHistory.org  

Oral History Association 

Smithsonian Guide to Oral History 

Further Reading:

“What Kids Learn From hearing Family Stories” online at The Atlantic, by Elaine Reese 

Catching Stories  by DeBlasio, Ganzert, Mould, Paschen, and Sacks

Doing Oral History by Donald A. Ritchie

The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith

The Oral History Workshop by Cynthia Hart

Memories and phone calls

Ruth Eleanor Brennan Combs
mid 1940s

This past week my mind has repeatedly gone back to my Grandmother Combs.  Things I have done, seen, said, and listened to have reminded me over and over again of her.  We lived with my grandmother until I was in Kindergarten.  When we moved away I would spend summers home with her and my other grandmother as well as many school vacations. 

I wanted to take dance classes when I was little.  Across the street from my dad’s store was a dance studio.  I watched the other little girls in their tights and leotards going to class and wish I could be one of them.  Once, dad and I sat in on a class.  I remember grandma teaching me basic ballet positions in her kitchen after that.  It amazed me that she knew so much and I practiced in her kitchen holding on to the kitchen counter as my bar.   Those lessons have stayed with me.  In college I started to take belly dance lessons and for 5 years.  Recently I have taken it back up, and grandma’s stretches, feet positions, and walking techniques are still there.

So, I called my dad.  He has a better memory of my childhood that I do after all.  He is always full of stories, and I was not disappointed.  He told me about how his mom taught square dance for the local 4-H and girl scouts.  She also enrolled his sister in dance classes at the YMCA and then made him be her practice partner.  Dad learned tap and ballet at home with grandma watching and correcting them both.
 
The memories and the stories didn’t end there, for either of us.  It was a wonderful conversation about all the odd things that I did growing up, how everyone acted, antics my dad got in, coaching sports, and so much more. 

My first sports picture
taken 1981

Here are some of the highlights:

•  Dad telling me about karate drills when he was learning in Hawaii
• Him coaching women’s softball teams
• Me learning to play soccer, but not ever being able to pitch or hit a ball with a bat
• His PE classes in school teaching dance to reluctant teenagers.
• His memories of playing collegiate soccer
• Me walking with a book on my head learning proper posture so grandma would buy me my first pair of pumps

We tend to talk for hours on the phone, and this time was no different.  Dad is in his 70s and living several thousand miles away now with mom.  I will take all the long phone calls that I can.

Oral History to the rescue: Next FTF post is up!

My next Family Tree Firsts post is up, so run on over there and check it out.

This was such a neat experience for me.  I have begun to fall in love with personal accounts, stories, and biographies as a window into the lives of my family.  This was one of those moments that I will never forget; reading the life story of my dad’s great aunt to him over the phone.  It was almost surreal at points when he would fill in information for me about where places were and other people mentioned in the manuscript. 

As a recap, Eliza Jane Combs was the baby sister to my great-grandfather, Everett Combs.  Their parents were Willis Franklin “Frank” Combs and Mary Margaret Hall.  Frank and Mary had 9 children who were: Ira, Jennie, Homer, Ada, Everett, John, Margaret, George, and Eliza.  Frank's parents were James Combs and Mary Jane Hayden.  Eliza married first Everett Emmons and second Otis Kinnman.  By the time she gave the interview in 1973 she had done genealogy research for about 20 years the best I can tell.

I have to give my heartfelt thanks to Jill Larson who is a librarian and archivist at the Lewis Historical Library in Vincennes, Indiana.  She was great to work with while I was locating this document.  The staff and the library is a real gem with so much to offer historians and genealogists who want more information on southern Indiana.  Oh, and cheap too!  They only charge cost of paper for copies ($0.10 a page!) and mailed it to me with no problems.  Check them out!

Finally, I wanted to share with a couple passages from this interview.  They really struck me, and made me feel like I was right there with her and my family. 

In the summertime and in the fall we would go to fairs and things, but they didn’t have too much going on.  We used to get out with our brothers and pitch horse shoes.  I still love to pitch horse shoes.  It was regular boys’ activites, bit I was a regular tom boy.  My brother was four years my senior and we used to just love to climb trees.  In the tall cherry trees we had these old fashioned black cherries.  I would climb to the top of the tree with him and pick cherries to eat.

When we lived up in the hills – that was when I was a smaller kid of course – it was before I was ten years old.  We had an orchard and he only owned 80 acres, but we romped all over that.  We made our own sorgum.  We had mulberries, chinquapins, beechnuts, and everything else on that old hill.

 

We didn’t suffer, but I thought that we were dog poor.  We didn’t have much money.  We raised our own beans and potatoes and dad kept a pretty good herd of calves and cows and he always had a lot of hog running around through the woods.  They ate a lot of acorns from the oak trees.  My older brother wasn’t married until he was 28 and he had a great big bunch of calves and cows running around there.  They didn’t have too much farm ground.  I forget just how much my dad did have cleared.

My dad and his dad were mean horse shoe players too.  I guess I now know that it is a family obsession!  She talked for almost 10 pages about growing up on farms and the life that she had as a child in the country.  Priceless information to me.

 

Image from the Library of Congress

Oral History to the rescue: Next FTF post is up!

My next Family Tree Firsts post is up, so run on over there and check it out.

This was such a neat experience for me.  I have begun to fall in love with personal accounts, stories, and biographies as a window into the lives of my family.  This was one of those moments that I will never forget; reading the life story of my dad’s great aunt to him over the phone.  It was almost surreal at points when he would fill in information for me about where places were and other people mentioned in the manuscript. 

As a recap, Eliza Jane Combs was the baby sister to my great-grandfather, Everett Combs.  Their parents were Willis Franklin “Frank” Combs and Mary Margaret Hall.  Frank and Mary had 9 children who were: Ira, Jennie, Homer, Ada, Everett, John, Margaret, George, and Eliza.  Eliza married first Everett Emmons and second Otis Kinnman.  By the time she gave the interview in 1973 she had done genealogy research for about 20 years the best I can tell.

I have to give my heartfelt thanks to Jill Larson who is a librarian and archivist at the Lewis Historical Library in Vincennes, Indiana.  She was great to work with while I was locating this document.  The staff and the library is a real gem with so much to offer historians and genealogists who want more information on southern Indiana.  Oh, and cheap too!  They only charge cost of paper for copies ($0.10 a page!) and mailed it to me with no problems.  Check them out!

Finally, I wanted to share with a couple passages from this interview.  They really struck me, and made me feel like I was right there with her and my family. 

In the summertime and in the fall we would go to fairs and things, but they didn’t have too much going on.  We used to get out with our brothers and pitch horse shoes.  I still love to pitch horse shoes.  It was regular boys’ activites, bit I was a regular tom boy.  My brother was four years my senior and we used to just love to climb trees.  In the tall cherry trees we had these old fashioned black cherries.  I would climb to the top of the tree with him and pick cherries to eat.

When we lived up in the hills – that was when I was a smaller kid of course – it was before I was ten years old.  We had an orchard and he only owned 80 acres, but we romped all over that.  We made our own sorgum.  We had mulberries, chinquapins, beechnuts, and everything else on that old hill.

We didn’t suffer, but I thought that we were dog poor.  We didn’t have much money.  We raised our own beans and potatoes and dad kept a pretty good herd of calves and cows and he always had a lot of hog running around through the woods.  They ate a lot of acorns from the oak trees.  My older brother wasn’t married until he was 28 and he had a great big bunch of calves and cows running around there.  They didn’t have too much farm ground.  I forget just how much my dad did have cleared.

My dad and his dad were mean horse shoe players too.  I guess I now know that it is a family obsession!  She talked for almost 10 pages about growing up on farms and the life that she had as a child in the country.  Priceless information to me.

 

Image from the Library of Congress