Passing It On

Time for some mental exercise: Take your memory jogging

 

As you collect the stories of your life, it’s helpful to use memory joggers. A memory jogger is simply anything that evokes a response related to your life experience. Joggers are invaluable in fleshing out the details of your life story.

Now is the time to locate and collect as many of these memory joggers as you can. Here’s a list of things to look for:

• Scrapbooks. Remember, too, that others may have scrapbooks with information useful to you.
• Photo albums
• High school and college yearbooks
• Journals or diaries
• Baby books. These are very popular with mothers and grandmothers. Check yours.
• Report cards. Besides tracking courses and performance, they often include teachers’ comments.
• Other school items. Class pictures, class rings, programs, etc.
• Old letters and greeting cards
• Legal documents. Marriage licenses, birth certificates, tax records, property records, divorce decrees, adoption papers, military records.
• Church records
• Genealogy or family history work done by others
• Memorabilia
• Family movies or videotapes
• Family items that have been passed on from earlier generations

You’ll use these memory joggers extensively as you organize your life story.

Tomorrow: Examining the big events in your life.

This is Lesson No. 5 of a mini-course on how to write a personal history. The course will continue throughout May, which is Personal History Month. To get future lessons delivered to you, you may subscribe to our RSS feed or get e-mail delivery to your inbox. It’s easy. Details can be found in the column to the left of this post.

Flickr photo courtesy of  kingeswife.

This is a wheel. It's already been done.

 

Your life is unique. Throughout time, for all the billions of people who have dug their heels into this planet's bountiful soil, no one has been exactly like you. Or your family, for that matter.

But here's a news flash for you: You're not the first person to show an interest in preserving family history. Chances are, there's someone in your own family that's doing it right now. Researching family history is the No. 2 hobby in America, ranking right behind gardening and, according to some accounts, closing fast.

So, why not capitalize on all that interest by making your job a bit easier? As the saying goes, why re-invent the wheel? There are plenty of genealogy resources available on the Internet, many of them free. And there are hundreds of blogs on the topic.

Use your favorite search engine to find them, read them and learn from them. Here's one woman who's not afraid to admit she borrows ideas from others. We all do. That's called learning.

When you find a blog that you like (such as this one!), subscribe to it. It's simple. Details can be found in the column at the left on this site. Or you can check out this post on "search once and subscribe" by my blogging-coach friend Mike Sansone.

Then you can start preserving the unique details of your family history in a format you're comfortable with.

We'll be giving you a nudge throughout the month of May which is Personal History Month. Starting May 1, we'll be offering a free, month-long mini-course on how to write your own personal history.

Be here.

Flickr photo courtesy of Ana-Lin.

Who cares about ya, baby!

Sometimes you just have to wonder: Is it worth it? Does anybody else really care about what I'm doing?

This is a common lament heard by personal historians. Modern life is hectic, to be sure. Many Americans lead busy lives. Many families today are too wrapped up with coping with the present to fully appreciate their past. That extends to their children.

Even when a few minutes of down time pops up, kids are more likely to spend them watching TV, playing video games, visiting You Tube or myspace, text messaging friends or hunkering down with their iPods than listening to stories about grandma or great uncle Harry.

An interest in family history is rare in a younger person. It usually shows up later in life. Fortunately, most people develop an interest in their family history at some point. Sadly, that interest is often piqued after the death of a family member when the realization of what has  been lost sinks in. But, at some point, most people want to know.

Every family has an "alpha child," one who takes an active interest in preserving family history. At some point, your family's alpha child will emerge.

Remember, that person whose eyes glaze over now when you go off on a good-old-days rant today, may be the same person that will be asking questions about those days later.

So, for now, share details of your family history when the time is right, as is suggested here. Someday those seeds you plant today will bear fruit. And here's a poem in praise of those alpha children who have cleared our paths to family knowledge.

Reminder. To mark Personal History Month, I'll be offering a free mini-course in how to write a personal history throughout the month of May. Drop by this site beginning on Tuesday, May 1 for the first installment.

  Flickr photo courtesy of  thepalmtrees.

Hit a research wall? How about checking your DNA?

 

Interest in researching family history has exploded in the Internet age.

New databases are added to the genealogical soup every day, complicating even further the sometimes bewildering family research landscape. If you want to get right down to the nitty gritty of your lineage, you might opt instead for DNA genetic testing.

Granted, a DNA test won't tell you if your great great aunt Harriet really married that John Smith, but it can tell you if you're descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a legendary 5th-century Irish king, as are an estimated 2 percent of today's New York’s European males.

DNA testing has been used in paternity tests for years, but has only recently been touted for genealogical work. Proponents say the test is as simple as brushing your teeth. You swab your mouth, drop the sample in the mail and wait for the results. Testing kits are available on line and in a growing number of retail locations.

The Zalewski family has embarked on its own DNA project to validate research or to fill in gaps where documentation has been lacking. Among the companies offering DNA testing are GeoGene, GeneBase and Family Tree DNA.

  Flickr photo courtesy of  herve.

Oh me, oh my, oh mio...should I do books or video?

 

Ah, yes, the old which-format-do-I-use question.

This is often the second question I get as a personal historian, right behind "What is it you do exactly?"

As a writer by trade, I'm partial to the written word. Books, after all, have been around for centuries. Your ancestors are much more likely to deliver their stories in the form of old letters, diaries, journals, documents and articles clipped from publications than as audio or video records.

The written word, even though most of it is currently produced on computers, is less prone to succumb to the advance of technology. Music in my lifetime, for example, has gone from shellac (78s) to vinyl (45s, LPs) to magnetic tape (reels, two-tracks, four-tracks, eight-tracks, cassettes) to CDs to PCs (MP3s, WAVs, etc.) to iPods. Video has followed a similar path (remember Betamax?).

The truth is, though, that there's nothing quite like hearing a familiar story told in the familiar voice of a parent or grandparent. Even if you've never met a person, hearing their voice or seeing them on video, gives you a perspective that is simply unavailable in print.

Fortunately, most of my family history work involves interviews, which are recorded, transcribed and given to the client. In addition, I'm working with a local videographer so that we can provide the best of both worlds: I create a written work that provides the detail and depth that only a written work can while my video friend records the interviews and edits them into a professionally done 20-30 minute video.

In any personal history project, recording stories before they are lost is the No. 1 priority. Just about everyone has a sad story of how they always meant to record so-and-so's story, but they were gone before they could get it done.

So, what are you waiting for?

Flickr photo courtesy of  xanadubijoux.

Cruise looks into his roots; wants to buy them

Actor Tom Cruise spent some time around Roscommon, Ireland, a few  years back, researching his Irish roots. He apparently became quite attached to the old family farmstead, a 33-acre plot in Kilteveen.

Now he's in negotiation to buy it, according to the Athlone Advertiser newspaper.

The land was once owned by the actor's ancestors, the Mapother family. He was born Tom Cruise Mapother IV in New York in 1962. His great grandfather Thomas is believed to have come to America in the early 1900s.

"We're the house with the Viking out front."  When Carrie Heiser of Duvall, Wash., started tracing her family roots several years ago, she had no idea where it might lead. When she discovered that her family's Icelandic roots stretched back to fabled Norse explorer Leif Erikson and beyond, she knew what to do.

She commissioned an artist to create a 6-foot-tall, 800-pound bust of Erikson's grandfather, Olafur the White. The concrete creation now guards the family driveway.

Heiser told the Seattle Times that her three children, ages 13, 17 and 26, didn't initially share her zeal for family history.

"They make fun of my Viking things," she said. "But now, with Olafur out there, they're intrigued. It put a face to this story I've been telling them."

She said it. "The older I get the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball–the further I am rolled the more I gain." ~ Susan B. Anthony.

  Flickr photo of Tom Cruise courtesy of  Nancy Reimond.

What's in a name? Plenty

 

About 30 years ago, my youngest brother, Dave, and our Dad got bitten by the "Lehmer roots-hunting" bug.

Their painstaking research in those pre-Internet days produced a family tree that extended back to 1700 in Wettereau, Germany. Among the many family details they uncovered was the fact that the family split along three general lines, each with a different spelling of the surname - Lehmer, Leamer or Lamer.

While many family researchers are savvy enough to know that a family's generational lines frequently are cluttered with misspellings and other variations of the family name, I had never previously considered the fact that I may be related to a Leamer or Lamer.

I have since learned that the name means "worker of clay," which I choose to believe means that there's an artist (rather than brickmaker) down deep in the roots of our family tree.

Keep these spelling variations in mind as you research your own family history. You may be able to uncover pertinent family details that would otherwise go undiscovered.

Here are a few places where you can learn more about names:

• Is your name James, but your mother calls you Petey? That's the situation in this post that points out how your legacy is tied to your name.

• These people will create a book for you on the history of your name.

• Want a beer stein with your family crest on it? These folks can do that, and much more.

• What does your name mean? Go here to find out.

  Flickr photo courtesy of  Luke S..

Jottings from the world of personal history

 

Ethical wills have been much in the news lately.

For those unfamiliar with the term, an ethical will is a specific form of legacy letter in which a person passes on hopes and beliefs in much the same way that a legal will passes on material goods. An ethical will is a non-legal document.

Of all the people killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it is estimated that less than a third of them had a legal will. Even fewer had ethical wills. While the financial details of a person's estate can be sorted out after that person's death, their hopes and beliefs are gone forever without an ethical will.

These newspapers have carried articles on ethical wills recently: Philadelphia Inquirer, Orange County Register (reprinted in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel), the Chicago Tribune and Montgomery Advertiser. (Caution: Newspaper links are notoriously fickle; these may not work by the time you read this.)

Nice job, Kathleen. Lots of people try their hand at writing for the Internet. Some are good writers; most are not. It's a particular joy when you find a site that's a delight to read. Kathleen Bell has just such a site. She writes a lot about her family - past and present - and she does it with such style and grace that you feel as if you've been invited to a chat in an old friend's home. I'm sure she won't mind if you drop in.

He said it. "If we want our stories to be known, we need to do it ourselves. We can't wait for other people to do it for us." - Wilbur Howard, founder of Lansing (Mich.) Area African-American Genealogical Society.

Just for fun. Click on over to www.anagramsite.com and plug in a few family names to come up with some interesting combinations to spring on folks at your next family gathering. (Example: Actor Tom Cruise comes out "So I'm cuter). How about you?

Flickr photo courtesy of BugMan50.

Cemeteries: Where history lives

 

"Once More Around the Crypt"

That was the headline on a story I wrote in my sportswriting days about a high school track team which, since it didn't have an all-weather track at the school, did its early spring training in a couple of nearby cemeteries.

I found it ironic that young, healthy athletes would prepare their bodies for grueling athletic competitions by winding their way through the final resting places of many of their community's founders and civic leaders. Cemeteries truly are fascinating places.

When I was doing research for my book on the last tour of singers Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, I used cemetery records to track down the family of one of the long-lost musicians from that tour.

As I prepared to visit Holly's grave in Lubbock, Texas, I was told that fans often showed reverence for their fallen hero by leaving guitar picks stuck in the ground surrounding his modest grave marker. What I found instead were shards of broken beer bottles, which I had to carefully remove before shooting a photo of the site. Such is the nature of many celebrity graves.

For most of us, cemeteries are more than tributes to our personal pasts. They offer an enduring record of our collective histories as well.

It's possible to do some cemetery research online, but many of us prefer to stand on the ground of our ancestors. If a personal visit is in your future, here are a few tips from genealogist Annita Zalenski of Totowa, N.J.:

• Make your visit in the afternoon. Many cemetery staffers are busy with funerals in the morning.

• Bring a spray bottle to help you see fading inscriptions on tombstones.

• Bring garden clippers to remove overgrown weeds.

For more tips on how to do cemetery research, go here.

Flickr photo courtesy of RL Johnson.

Of cruising, holidays, grandpas...and more

People have long spent vacations in family pursuits - visiting relatives, taking in sites important in their family histories or doing research in such genealogical hotbeds as Salt Lake City or Fort Wayne, Ind.

One area that's been growing in popularity is genealogy cruises. RootsMagic Inc. - producer of popular personal history programs RootsMagic, Personal Historian and Family Atlas - has scheduled a Nov. 11-18 Caribbean genealogy cruise.

Besides stopping in the Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten after starting in Florida, many of the nation's top genealogy experts will make presentations during the cruise portion of the trip aboard Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas ship. Details can be found here.

Is that Santa I hear? Thinking about the holidays yet? If you're thinking of presenting a loved one with the gift of a family history product in December, it's not too early to start planning. Personal historians tend to get quite busy after Labor Day, so it's better to get started today than to be disappointed later. If you need some help in putting together such a project, drop me an e-mail and I'll be happy to give you some suggestions.

Put Google to work for you. You can now take advantage of Google's book-scanning project of millions of books in the public domain and others made available by rights holders. World Vital Records has teamed with Google to offer text searches of millions of books from around the world.

He said it: “A story is like a star. It is born in the past, illuminates the present and will shine in the future.” – J.R. Carroll.

Just for fun...take a spin over to Jennifer's blog and follow the link to an entertaining remake of Lonzo & Oscar's convoluted musical tale of twisted genealogy, "I'm My Own Grandpa."

Flickr photo of Mariner of the Seas courtesy of  Haole Punk.