Did You Really Start With Yourself?

The following article was written by my good friend, William Dollarhide. Enjoy…

Dollarhide’s Genealogy Rule No. 11: With any luck, some of the people in your family could read and write . . . and may have left something written about themselves.

If asked the question, “How do you start doing Genealogy?,” most genealogists will respond with, “Start with yourself.”

Most genealogists will respond that way, but I’m not so sure that’s what they are actually doing. The fact is, we are more inclined to start with our parents and immediate family members. What we write down about ourselves is usually our name and vitals on a pedigree chart and family
group sheet. The information comes from our heads. After all, we know our place of birth, marriage, and all the dates.

Our first work in genealogy was to collect and record genealogical events for our brothers, sisters, parents, and grandparents. We gathered the genealogical facts in whatever form we could find, including the memories of our immediate family members, or from written notes and documents found at home. If we were lucky enough to find an old family Bible, we had written proof of dates and places of birth for people; as well as marriage and death information. If we
found a death certificate for grandfather, or a marriage record for Mom and Dad, we were off to a good start.

You have these types of written evidence for your ancestors. You have photographs, birth records, marriage records, and many other documents of the events of their lives. But what do you have for yourself?

The unfortunate fact is, collecting written documents concerning ourselves may not be given as much attention as for our ancestors. We work from the known to the unknown. Things that are known and established don’t get our attention, because we would rather work on the unknowns.

For example, do you have a copy of your own birth certificate? How about a copy of your marriage license? Or perhaps you have a copy of your confirmation record from church. How about a newspaper clipping that mentions your name on the high school honor roll. Where is that old high school annual, the one with that wonderful retouched photograph of you at age 17. Do you still have your college diploma? How about the newspaper article in which you were mentioned, the one about your team winning the championship? Where is that photo of the first car you ever owned?

And then there are your memories. The basic vital statistics have all been written down, and the family group sheets and pedigree charts have all the details. But what about the history of you?

You can write quite a nice biography of your great-grandfather. You have that county history in which he was prominently mentioned, giving some details about his life. And you have his death record from a county courthouse, a copy of his marriage license, and several other documents. You can prove what you say about him because you have the written documents. Can you do the same thing for yourself?

My all-time favorite ancestor is Julia Angeline Watkins, my grandmother. She is my favorite because Julia wrote about herself and her genealogy and I got a copy of what she wrote. In a few pages of handwritten script, she identified her pedigree for three generations. But she also wrote some words about her life. She spoke about the difficulties of being raised without a mother, who died in 1894 when she was 12 years old. She wrote about her childhood, as the youngest and only girl in a family with her father and four brothers. She told about a house full of men who thought she should do all of the cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, and everything else around the house. So, at age 15, she ran away from home and got herself a job as a maid in a hotel, where she got paid for taking care of people. At age 19, she married my grandfather, Elmer Wiles, and she told about her early life with him and the birth of her first child, Marjory, my mother. She told about the sudden death of her fourth child, an infant daughter, and how she blamed herself for the tragedy. She had a nervous breakdown, and took nearly a year to recover.

She told about her life in a simple style of writing. It was not glamorous prose, but it was writing that touched me deeply. I was 29 years old when I first read grandmother’s story, and it was a very emotional experience for me. I was reading the real words of my own grandmother, some ten years after her death. I was reading the words of someone who had died when I was 19 years old and who I barely knew, and at that time, had no interest at all in such things as genealogy. I learned more about my grandmother from those few pages of handwritten words than any contact I ever had with her when she was alive.

To my knowledge, Julia Angeline Watkins is the only ancestor of mine who ever wrote anything about herself and left something for her descendants to read. Of all of the thousands of genealogical events and historical facts I have collected about my ancestors, hers is the only first person account I have found. How I wish that there were other ancestors who would have left me something to read like Julia did.

Now, as in all Grimm tales, comes the moral of this story. What have you written about yourself that will be read by your descendants a hundred years from now? Will your descendants get anything more than your vital statistics on a pedigree chart, or is there something else you can leave them?

Some do’s and don’ts for writing about your life:

Don’t worry about what to write. All you have to do is remember something that happened to you in your life. Make it a vignette, or brief remembrance of some event in your life, such as the first thing you remember as a child; your first day in school; the Sunday dress you spoiled; or the time you fell out of a tree and broke your leg.

Don’t feel that you need to write everything about yourself at one sitting. Think of the writing project as an on-going endeavor made up of small pieces, and one that may take some time to complete. So, now you should be able to write without a plan or chronological order to the things you remember. One day you can write about last week, another day you can write about forty years ago.

Do write at least a couple of paragraphs at a time. When you recall some event in your life, write part of a page. Make the writing an easy thing to do at any time of the day, without interfering greatly with your time. Then, write by whim, or when a thought comes.

Do try to remember the names and relationships of people. Try to remember the places where the events took place, and try to place an approximate date to the events you write about.

Do treat each piece of writing as a separate item on a separate page (or pages). And, put the written pages in a special place where they can be retrieved and read from time to time (maybe even computer file folder).

Do try to date the pages for each event you are writing about, so that the pages can be put into a chronological order later. Dates can be approximate, such as “about 1955″ or “when I was in the 4th grade.”

Don’t worry about your writing style, grammar, or that what you write will be judged by your 11th grade English teacher. It won’t. And 100 years from now, no one will fault you for not spelling every word perfectly.

Don’t worry if you will ever finish writing everything you could write. If you have separate sheets of paper (or files) with stories; all dated; then anyone could take what you have written and make something of it.

Don’t think of the events of your life as unimportant. Your descendants will love reading about things you may think are mundane and uninteresting.

Do consider that what you write will become a legacy.

Do print out a paper copy, just in case your computer files don’t get passed down to your descendants.

Things to say about yourself

Here are some examples of things to say about yourself that any of your descendants will love to read 100 years from now:

• Your trip to visit your grandparents when you were 10 years old. What was grandmother wearing, and can you remember the great pastries she made on that old wood-burning kitchen stove.
• The time your brother scored the winning touchdown, but ran into the goalpost and knocked himself out.
• When crazy Aunt Ethel came to visit and brought your cousin Hector along.
• Your thoughts at the moment you first looked at your newborn daughter.
• A description of your first car.
• Your first date. Your first kiss.
• Relatives you remember.
• School teachers you will never forget.
• Family get-togethers. Friends of the family.
• Places you have been. Unforgettable travel experiences.
• Graduation day.
• Your wedding. Your honeymoon. Your first new home.
• Your first job. The worst boss you ever had. The best job you ever had.
• Great financial successes. Bad investments.
• The happiest times of your life were in . . .
• Service in the Army, Navy, et al.
• Going to War. Protesting the war.
• Your family traditions on Thanksgiving, Christmas, other holidays
• Favorite vacation spots.
• Your troublesome brother in-law.
• Growing up without television. Life before the Internet.
• Where you were and what you were doing the day John F. Kennedy was killed. 9-11? Challenger exposion?
• Your favorite movies.
• The people you admire the most, and why.
• Your hobbies. Your talents.
• Your accomplishments. What are you most proud of?
• Where you plan to put the words you have written.

Dollarhide’s Genealogy Rule No. 12: It ain’t history until it’s written down.

For Further Reading: Recording Your Family History; By William Fletcher – still the best book of memory joggers available!