Scrapbooking DOA: Anecdotal Tales

Anyone working on family histories or scrapbooks knows that "interviewing" people and getting stories about the past can really add personality and depth to the stories you're trying to tell.

If the person is speaking of their own past, you assume that a lens of time and emotion is applied to their stories whether they know it or not, but the essence of the tale is almost certainly true and worth noting.

When they speak of their contemporaries, including their parents or grandparents, a larger lens of refinement is applied depending on what relationships with those people have been.  These stories are valuable for inclusion because they help paint a larger picture for future readers, but you need to note somehow what these relationships are, or have been, so anyone would know it isn't necessarily an eyewitness account of events.

Anytime the person is speaking of someone from the past who they didn't really know or interact with themselves, I think marking these stories as anecdotal  (a short usually amusing account of an incident, esp a personal or biographical one...Free Dictionary) lets everyone know it is just a story passed along down the years.  As you're writing your own section, you might want to make things pretty clear, so your tale doesn't get enlarged or modified.  Could work.

As I'm going through old photographs, and getting birth and death and whatever other information is out there, I know I can't really bring the previous generations to life.  I do have anecdotal tales of some of the way back folks.  It seems to me that what survives as anecdotes is often not the everyday things in a person's life, but the out of the ordinary or borderline scandalous stuff.

Did this couple really have a line drawn through the center of the house and one side was his, and one was hers?  And did he "have a woman on the side"?

Even more Dept. of the Wierd...did this woman have such a strong constitution that she survived her Atlantic crossing in a barrel?  Did she use her iron will to arrange marriages, possibly including the unhappy one above?  Was there an opportunity to follow some love to California (which would have brought considerable relief to the locals) which she turned down?

I'm wondering if I should keep some of these stories in my own notes, or should I include them in just my own book and give everyone else just the facts?

Throwback Thursday, Friday Edition

Facebook, where I mostly seem to post these days, (I have such a nice community of people I know and wish I knew) has an informal "Throwback Thursday" where you post some picture of yourself from another era and everyone goes, "ha ha weren't you always the bozo, though!"

I missed it yesterday so from the archives, and because my spouse mentioned once again he likes my posts but I never write any...

The old farm where my mother spent some of her very early years.  Taken from inside my car before the BIG DOG came running up to let us know we were interlopers.

My spouse and I are going to do a day trip this spring to the southern part of the state to walk the ground where my other side of the family lived.   I've been in the area twice I think and could not find the cemetery where my rellies rest, but nobody is better at Google maps than Mr. DOA so I think we've got a shot. 

I have zero pictures of that side of the family for my scrapbooks so maybe something snuggly like their gravestones will bring them to life, isn't that so silly.  You need visuals though, of some kind, to awaken the past.

Black Transparent Dress

One of the pleasures of going through old newspapers is that they really bring the life and times of people you wish you had known to life.   Although all my near ancestors were farmers, you can imagine the women in the family looking at the latest fashions and copying them for themselves (I suspect many were able to make their own patterns, maybe even most). http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Drafting-Lingerie-Sp%C2%ADortswear-Fashions/dp/1936049007

I can't sew of course, we'll blame this ever and always on my high school Home Economics teacher, and on my mother who could do everything in the universe but had no patience to teach, and my inability to control the wild thing that is a sewing machine.  The bobbin always went whacko, the foot pedal was impossible to hit just so...    I can hand sew, but ah, the demon sewing machine and I just never got along.

Anywho,  I thought I could use my camera on my iPod touch to photograph some of the fun things from newspaper microfilms as I came across them rather than printing them.  Glare on the white surface was a real problem, so it is really a no go.

I forgot to use Firefox again instead of IE, doh.

The DOA Scrapbook: Ask Yourself the Questions You Wish You Could Ask

I had a conversation with a colleague one day who is a really avid family history researcher about making sure we let our children know some of the things about us that we wish we knew about our parents or grandparents. 

I've been thinking it can be easy enough to sketch in a life of someone else using facts, figures and mementos because we're just providing an overview. 

We assume somehow that our children know us well and that they won't have any questions about us they wish they could ask when we're gone.  Of course they will.  They don't ask for the same reason we never asked.  Because our parents were going to live forever and we could always talk to them any old time.  If only.

For your children's sake, make a list of questions you wish you could ask a parent, grandparent, or other ancestor no longer with you.  Just basic stuff that makes them a real knowable person.  Write down your own answers to those questions, and tuck them in a nice pocket page or on a journaling page in your family scrapbook.

That is why I like scrapbooks, they present a nice visual summary of people and events.  Each page can be a discovery or a fond memory.  You can see a whole person from photographs, memories, letters, notes.  Write your own page, because who knows you better than you?

HCL's History Fair

One of my goals has been working on our family history, just going back a few generations, but really making those folks come alive.

I attended the 4th annual Hennepin County Library Family History Fair a week or so ago, hoping to get back in the groove, so to speak.  I learned some new things and it put me in the mood to start organizing and putting it all together.  Here are some highlights.

Using Religious Records in Genealogical Research with Trudi Campbell gave me ideas for looking at religious documents and records as a way to flesh a person out a bit.  Some of the ideas:

These records can substitute for Civil Records when you have gaps in information.  Perhaps someone wasn't a citizen right away but they got married or baptized a child. 

These records can be considered as primary sources of information and may have names of other family members you've been missing.  Think of birth and baptism, faith confirmation, marriage, death, church activities, vocations and ministries.

Check family Bibles for information, church bulletins, newsletters and membership directories.


Your ancestor may have lived in a rural area and they attended a church that was nearby, perhaps not of their chosen denomination.  Look at maps and directories of churches where you know or think they may have lived to locate their records.

Going Beyond Online Databases with Alice Eichholz

Get a map of the area where your ancestors lived.

Learn about the background and history of the area to get a feel for what life was like.

Write down everything you find and its source.

Gather official and original vital records for the whole family.

Get Census records for the whole family across as many years as possible.

Look at land, probate, court, church, cemetery, military, immigration records.

Do not rely on indexes or transcribed versions of documents, find the original.

Avoid skipping generations.

Make a chronology of the time and place.

Where did they live? Who else was in the neighborhood?

When you get stuck on a direct line of ancestry, look to collateral and allied families--aunts, uncles etc--usually someone is a chronicler of family history.

Look at histories/experiences of what immigrants would have gone through in their time.  What was the cost of a journey to America?  How long would the trip have taken?  What would the shipboard experience be like?  Could they read or write?  Note most were listed with the occupation of "laborer".

These were the sessions where I took the most notes.  I'm sure I'll go back next year. 

National Day of Listening

It's always something, isn't it? Today is the National Day of Listening.

Because I've been trying to put together a sort of mixed media approach to family history for my family, I appreciate finding out that today is a day to interview and record people in your family to keep and playback in years to come.

As we all know, we often grow up listening to our parents and relatives tell stories about when they were growing up, and their families and experiences. We think we'll remember and if we don't, we can just ask that loved one.

The older you get, the more you realize that these people, no matter what a solid rock they are in your life, may just not be there for all the time you might wish. So photograph them, put them in movies, and do some sort of reminiscence about those important stories from their lives so you capture a bit to keep through the years.