uk-family-history

How to write about your Family History

Following my own experiences let me provide you with a few suggestions to help you create the atmosphere or environment for your writing, and help with some simple tools:

• Physical Context - Where did the family live?
  This is the most important question for you to answer before you can begin your writing. You will have collected and documented records and sources, but you should also examine the geographical location.
  It is important to learn about the physical environment and how it would have been for your relatives and other inhabitants. You may want to study detailed topographic maps to support your study and determine exactly where the people lived. You will want to understand the appearance and how it ay have changed so you can describe it.

• Historical Context
  What events will have affected your ancestors, locally within village/ parish, or the county, or changes across the country? What were the politics at the time? Were there wars or conflicts affecting people at the time or involving your ancestors? You will want to read historical accounts of the period to understand what will have affected them and decisions they made in their lives. Everything from a birth or death in the family to international wars will have influenced them, and the influences differed depending on where and when they lived.
  

• Photographs
  Photographs and portraits are very important to help illustrate, and understand your family and their history. Look deeply at all images and get an idea of how people looked, their physical features, their clothing and how they arranged their hair? Where did they live, what animals did they keep and what transport did they have?
  Try to find photographs of the community, postcards and newspapers? What other possessions did they own? What items may have been listed or described in a census or probate?
  

• Writing
  Following on form the above examples choose an ancestor or family member you have researched and study a photograph of them. What is their name, when, where and why was the photograph taken, and what is it of. Consider the events that are either depicted in the photograph or study local, national, and international history a bit to place the photograph into historical perspective.

Now write a few paragraphs describing what you see and what you have learned. For example describe the appearance of the person or people in teh photograph; are they big or small, hapy or sad? are their clothes well tailored and clean - suggesting their affluance and the formality of the photograph. Can you draw any other assumptions from the photo about the stage they were in in their life?
Do you have other photographs of him or her and their family? Can you describe these without considering the history you intend to write about?

Also factor in the historical events of the time that would have affected the area. What influence did the Wars of the time or the arrival of motor cars or the railways have on their life and that of his family? Do you know his political party affiliation and his thoughts on world events and politics?
Were their any epidemics such as the spanish influenza of the 1920's or Cholera or TB?

Once you have written a detailed description around this try to understand whether the reader will be able to picture and grasp what you are writing about without seeing these photos. If it is not clear you need add more information or research the subjects more closely. The purpose of a written family history is not simply to document names, dates, and locations but to bring the accounts of their lives into focus as if they were still alive today.
If you follow this task you may find you also will get to know more about your ancestors!

posted by uk-family-history @ 2:52 PM