Preservation: Writing the Story Preserves it for the Future

The best way to preserve your genealogy is to write about your family. There are many ways to accomplish this:

• Writing vignettes on a blog.
• Having a private Facebook group.
• Creating photo scrapbooks, especially if stories are added.
• Putting together full-length books on a family.

I have done all three and the more that is done, the more I am ensured my research results will live on. I write weekly on either of my two blogs, this one and Mam-ma’s Southern Family. Some posts are due to memes that others have thought up, such as this 52 Ancestors theme. Other posts I write when I have made an interesting discovery

I have created family photo scrapbooks and calendars that I have given to the family for Christmas. These are fun to make and are well-received.

Finally, I have created book-length works on portions of my family. My first work was in 2004 and I created a book about my Gleeson family, as I had these wonderful photos I wanted to share. I wrote paragraphs about each person and when I look back on that, I see I could add even more now because so much has become available online since then, especially digital newspapers. Below is what I wrote about William and now I know so much more that I could write a whole page about him at least.

A page from the Gleeson Family History written in 2004.

My second book was in 2010 and was about my husband’s Swedish immigrants. It was a three-generation study with a chapter for each person in each generation. As with the Gleeson book, since the twenty-plus years that have gone by, more records have become available and their stories could be even richer.

A page from the Nilsen Family History written in 2010

So, it sounds like I’m saying to wait to write until you have all the records, however, I will not advocate that. Write now. Write as you research. Record the facts and in another document, start writing the story. Document as you go. Writing in a word processing program makes it so easy to add new information when you find it and do any editing you need.

Even if you never finish the genealogy book, what you have written will be more worthwhile to your family than a stack of genealogy documents that they don’t understand. What they want is the story. Writing that story preserves it for the future.

#52Ancestors-Week 40: Preservation

This is my fifth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe. I write each week on one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

Copyright © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.