One of the things I failed to talk about in the first chapter is the reason for creating a family history book. Some reasons are obvious. The book will document the history of the family and memories of your parents/grandparents. However, there are some less obvious reasons, including:
1. To learn who all those people are that show up at weddings and other family events. In fact, one of the greatest benefits to creating the book is the information that you will learn about your family.
2. To create copies of rare photos and documents. Treasured documents such as birth certificates, immigration papers, grade school report cards can be included for everyone in the family to share.
3. The book itself can become an heirloom to be passed on to future generations.
In the last chapter I describe the basic format and content of a Family History Book. One of the most important parts of the history are the autobiographical sketches prepared by the parents. The entire layout of the book will be designed around their stories.
So how do you go about obtaining your parent's stories? After all, not everyone has the writing muse. The following are some hints and suggested topics to help prod the parental memories.
- Where / when were they born?
- Where did they grow up?
- What was life like at that time? (the depression, gas rationing, WWII, etc.)
- How many siblings did they have? Names?
- Describe their parents. What were they like?
- Describe life growing up. What was important to them? Sports? Academics? What was school like? Were they a good student? Did they have a favorite pet? What person influenced them the most?
- What was their first job?
- How did your parents meet? Story of their courtship.
- Married life. Describe the birth and growth of their children. (i.e.: you)
- What has been the most important thing in their life.
- Much, much more.
The autobiographical sketches should be about 1000 - 2000 words long. This should be enough to capture the flavor and some detail of their lives without being too large a burden. If you simply can't get them to write things down for you then the simple alternative is to spend an afternoon talking to them about the above topics and writing notes or recording the session. Once their stories are written, give them back to your parents. They may remember more details upon reading their own words. And remember, try not to edit their words too much. For historical reasons you want the stories to be in their own words.
So how do you go about selecting the photos and documents to be included in the book? Ideally you'd like to have at least one photo of each ancestor in your direct lineage going back as far as you can. Where possible, include photos of married couples or families. As you move forward into the future photos will become more readily available so editing becomes more important. Include only those photos that tell the family story. No matter how great that sunset photo that you took in Hawaii is, don't include it unless it is relevant to the history.
The same advice is true for documents to be included in the book, although a little more leeway may be applied here. Some documents may be rare and you want to preserve them. In my family's case we found a birth list of all my grandmother's siblings in Finnish. This made the document unique. Old report cards are always fun. Perhaps even an old love letter from your parent's courtship. (Use judgment here) The documents are spice to the photos.
In the next chapter I will talk about some of the technical requirements for scanning old photos for use in the history book and briefly cover the topic of photo restoration.
Mark
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