This week I have a suggestion for EVERYONE to write—whether you’re a writer or not, whether you have writing aspirations or talent or not…no matter who you are.
You see, recently my granddaughter asked me a question about the family, and that led to a recitation of some facts about some of her ancestors, and THAT led to a request: “Draw a family tree for me.”
I haven’t gotten around to it yet, and, being short on artistic talent, I probably won’t ever literally draw a family tree. I’ll probably just set facts down on paper: Who married whom, what the names of their children were, and so forth. The “so forth” is where you can get more involved if you’ve a mind to.
If you’re still in your 20s or 30s, odds are that your parents and perhaps your grandparents and maybe even some of your great-grands are still alive. Wonderful! You may not yet even have children of your own to pass this info to, but likely one day you will, and even if you don’t, if you have one or more siblings, you’ll likely have a niece or nephew or several. Take your rightful place as the family historian. And interview your parents and grands and so on for all the info you can get from them about their ancestors as well as their own history.
If you’re in your 60s or 70s or 80s, odds are good that your parents are no longer on this earth, or if they are, their memories may be fuzzy. All the more reason to get the family history down on paper (or on disk) before you, too, are gone, and—if you don’t have living siblings—the family history is gone with you.
What you write can be anywhere from less than a page to a whole book. Don’t worry about style or whether your spelling is perfect. Just get your facts straight. This isn’t for publication. It’s just for family.
The bare-bones facts you want at minimum are who married whom and what the names of their children were, whom these children married, and what the names of THEIR children were.
If you can add dates—at least the year if not the month and day—for the marriages and births and possibly deaths, so much the better. If you know what those who are now gone died of, that’s a plus. I’ve been asked about the health issues and causes of death of my ancestors in several different doctor’s offices recently. (I’m now at that age when a lot of the names in my address/phone book and my smartphone begin with “Dr.”)
Those are the basic facts, but you can add to that as much as you have time and energy for and knowledge for. From what country or countries did your ancestors emigrate, which generation was it that “came over,” and why did they leave their homelands? Was there anyone famous or noteworthy among your ancestors?
If you’re divorced or widowed, but the person you’re no longer married to was the parent of your child(ren), it would be good to add as much info as you possess on your former spouse. Although I was divorced decades ago and my ex is now deceased, I plan to add to the info for my granddaughter as many of the facts of his family as I possess. After all, he was my granddaughter’s grandfather, even though she never met him. She should know as much about him as I can tell her.
Even though I’m a writer, I don’t plan to write a whole book, but I do plan to add tidbits and factoids, like the fact that my three aunts (my father’s sisters) were all writers, even though none of them was ever published.
Well, you have your assignment. Whoever you are, whatever age you are, and whether or not you have children yet, you have a family history, or the bare facts of one, to get down on paper or disk.
Get busy!