How are you telling your family stories?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Katherine McArthur on July 21, 2009 at 11:06am

Trudy,
That is exciting! Congratulations!
Kathy

Permalink Reply by September McCarthy on July 24, 2009 at 4:53am

Congratulations, Trudy! It is those moments that make this so worthwhile, isn't it!?!
It sounds like you may have a book in you for just that one ancestor -- something to consider.
It great to hear that others are struggling with the same issues as I am in getting started writing about their family histories.

My particular challenge is having many lines that intertwine as well as lived in the same areas, so there is the risk of repeating information. I am considering taking a generational/time period approach because what I am finding fascinating is that many of my ancestors in different lines seem to have actually known each other, and there are instances where generations later these lines merge (through marriages of course). Has anyone considered this or seen it done?

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 24, 2009 at 6:40am

I would expect that if you go back a couple of centuries you would find that quite common since people didn't moved around much. My Doolittles originally moved near Wallingford NY soon after they came over around 1638, The first I show them moving away was about mid-1700, and at that they only moved to Litchford Conn.
So there had to have been an awfully lot of Doolittles in that area.

I think your approach is an interesting one and I bet that will work quite well.

Permalink Reply by Eric K. Schweer on August 10, 2010 at 8:37pm

I have that happening with a couple of my lines. One in particular, in Germany, seems to have married within the same families often, very often. One Great Grandfather 3X's, married two times. The interesting thing is, he married within the same family. one child by the first sister, and eight children by the second sister. His father was married three times, but to different surnames.

Permalink Reply by Karen Rhodes on August 19, 2009 at 7:34pm

Trudy, for the transcription of the pension file pages, you might want to take a look at a little freeware program called Transcript: http://www.jacobboerema.nl/en/Freeware.htm . This program puts your scanned document in a top pane, and opens a bottom pane for transcribing the document into .rtf Rich Text format, a format that most word processors can open.

Transcript is so perfect for doing the job of transcribing, I have it on both my desktop and my laptop computers.

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on August 19, 2009 at 10:39pm

Thank you. I've downloaded it. Will try to work with it this weekend. Have you tried it with the census reports?

Permalink Reply by Eric K. Schweer on August 10, 2010 at 8:28pm

Wow, I'll have to check that out. A few of my ancestors were in the civil war. One of them even has the unit he served with and his rank on his tombstone. I would love to see if there is any records of battles he participated in.

Congratulations for the find, and thanks for sharing it.

Permalink Reply by Abigail Grunst on July 23, 2009 at 11:11pm

This is an interesting discussion. There are so many ways to do it. I have taken a couple of courses in writing your family history. One instructor broke it down into surnames. He would write about one line and then publish it. That way at least you can get something done. So he had several little books about his family. I suppose when they are all done you could combine it into one book. I started with the ancestor that goes back the furthest and am working on his line down to the present. I've researched social histories from the time they lived to get an idea of what their lives were like. I also found a article about the jouney on a ship from Liverpool England to New York in about 1850. My ancestor came over on a ship from Liverpool, England to New York in 1854. So I can image that his jouney was much like the one in the article. This has helped me add more to the history of ancestors when there is little known about them other than born, married, died. It still takes a lot of time. I find that citing the sources take so much time. I can not decide if I should include at the bottom of each page or at the end of the book.

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 24, 2009 at 6:51am

I recently bought three books off of Amazon. Two I can't recommend. However, the third seems to be a pretty good book on writing Family History. It does NOT go into genealogy, there are other books that do that. I beleive that a good "How To" book should show you step by step, have a good index and a good Table of Contents. It should tell you the alternatives and how to address the various issues you'll face, live when have you done enough research to write that book. This books has all of that.

You Can write Your Family History by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack
Genealogical Publishing Company

If your interested you find out more about the book on Amazon.
Trudy

Permalink Reply by Gail Evans Tilton on July 25, 2009 at 11:18pm

Trudy, I'd be interested to know the titles of the two books you do NOT recommend. That may keep some of us from ordering them without looking at them "in person" first.
Gail

Permalink Reply by Trudy Doolittle on July 25, 2009 at 11:31pm

the first book is "For All Time" A complete Guide to Writing Your Family History - Charley Kempthorne. This book. My problem with this book is that it's written in prose. Not enough white space for me. Hard to find what you are looking for. That's not to say that it's not a good book, but if you were going to buy 1 book, I don't think this is the one.

The second book is "How to find your Family Roots and Write Your Family History" by William Latham and Cindy Higgins. This book is also written in prose. It spend the more than the first half of the book on research techniques. This isn't bad, but I was looking for a book on the approach to writing the family history.

Trudy

Permalink Reply by Gail Evans Tilton on July 25, 2009 at 11:38pm

Thanks, Trudy. I agree with you about the format. When I buy a book I plan to use as a reference, I want to be able to find something quickly. The first book you mentioned might be a good one to check out of the library for a one-time read through, but not to spend your hard-earned money on!
Gail

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