I’m always looking for examples of creative ways people write family histories that breathe life into ancestors long gone. I have posted a list of books I particularly admire in the Toolbox section of my website, www.MemoirMentor.com. I recently finished another family history I’d like to recommend to you, one that will surely go on the top of my list. It’s The Journey Takers, written by Leslie Albrecht Huber. I am impressed with the way Huber structured her family history and told her story, and I’ve picked up some ideas I’d like to implement in the Parrett family history I’m writing.

Huber’s narrative traces the lives of several families on her paternal line who made the brave choice to forsake their homeland–in this case, Germany, England, and Sweden–to immigrate to America. Hence, the title, The Journey Takers. This is an interesting focus, one that provides a unified theme to the varied individual life stories. My husband and I have frequently discussed writing a joint family history about all of our immigrant ancestors who came to America. Huber has beat us to the punch and provided a superb template to boot.

The Journey Takers is also about Huber’s own journey, actually several journeys, including research trips to her ancestral homelands to comb through archives, talk to the locals, and walk the land her people called their own. While researching for this book–a ten-year project, she tells us–her own young family is also in a state of flux. Educational pursuits and job responsibilities require the Hubers to move to several different states and spend a year in Spain. She recounts these different experiences in an engaging way, candidly telling us about her difficult pregnancies, parenting adjustments, and frustrations about being sidetracked from her research and writing goals. Her children are her top priority, she tells us, but she’s also ambitious and driven to complete this book. The worst thing she can imagine, she thinks, would be to lead an ordinary life. A woman so driven finds ways to fulfill her goals. I had to smile at some of her solutions: bouncing a restless toddler on her hip at the Family History Library, juggling babysitters, toting her mother and pre-school-age children with her as she navigates the Oregon Trail. I felt like I knew this woman and could relate to her conflicted desires. 

The sections about Huber are told in first person, of course, and are also written in the present tense, which makes them feel both personal and immediate. The ancestral narratives are told in the past tense and third person. Huber has done her reseach, in both primary documents and social history, which she combines in an interesting, seamless way, documented inobtrusively with endnotes that appear at the back of the book.

Here’s the best part, however. The book is full of scenes…and you know how I like scenes. The book is worth reading just to convince yourself that scenes infuse lifeless names and facts with flesh and bones–and a heart and soul. Huber does a fine job with this creative form of writing, inbuing her scenes with engaging detail, dialogue, and emotion.

I love the slick way she transitions into scenes. For example, after describing horrible conditions on board an 1861 immigrant ship bound for America from Sweden, she writes the following:

When I think of Karsti’s voyage across the ocean, one image stands out in my mind.

Karsti hurries down the steps leading below deck in the semi-dark as the massive, angry sea tossed the ship back and forth. Behind her, she hears the hatch door slam shut with a resounding thud. She reminds herself that this is to protect the passengers–to keep the water out, not to make them miserable. A few lanterns give off a dim glow, the only light available. She searches for something to hold on to in order to steady herself against the relentless motion of the ship. Around her, she sees other passengers gripping their beds, their faces white.

The scene carries on in this vein for several more paragraphs, helping us visualize what Huber clearly visualized from her reseach about that voyage. It’s all done to good effect. I include below several more  examples showing how Huber transitions from narriative to scene. 

Sometimes I imagine Karsti at Castle Gardens. She stacks her luggage, which represents all her possessions, around her. She rolls up a piece of clothing and places it under her head….

In my mind, I can see James stopping to knock on a door. A few seconds later, Elizabeth answers. Her long, brown hair is pulled up neatly on top of her head….

I picture their wagon bumping over the parched ground as John guides the horses along the dirt trail lined with sagebrush.

The book contains many other fine examples of this type. We can learn a lot by reading books similar to the ones we want to write. This is no ordinary book, written by no ordinary writer and genealogist. Leslie Albrecht Huber has nothing to worry about. 

Leslie Ann Huber, The Journey Takers, Foundation Books, 2010, 332 pages, 6 x 9, with appendix and bibliography. ISBN 2010924144, $19.95 (paperback). The book can be ordered through Leslie’s website, http://www.thejourneytakers.com/.

Next post: A bit about my glorious Baltic Cruise

More than two centuries ago Abigail Adams penned a letter to her husband, John, the future president, when he was then serving as a representative to the Continental Congress. She admonished him that while he and his colleagues were crafting new laws, “I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.” 

I recalled Abigail’s advice at the end of an aggravating day researching in libraries and archives this week. Men, Men, Men…that’s all I read about. Women were invisible, for the most part. If their existence was acknowledged, they were usually identified as Mrs. So and So. Didn’t they have names of their own?  

I know, I know, we genealogists know all about this. We shake our heads about the sad inequity of it all, but most of us continue to research and write about our male forbears–because it’s easier–and thus perpetuate the situation.  

Sometimes it just gets to me—like when I scour cemeteries for my ancestors and see women identified on gravestones as someone’s wife. Why aren’t men identified as someone’s husband? Or what about the many occasions when men have stones with their names on them and their wives aren’t mentioned at all? Where were they buried?

The incident that really got me riled this week occurred during a tour of a lovely mansion that serves as a museum and repository for the Ross County Historic Society in Chillicothe, Ohio. Our tour group, consisting entirely of women, entered the mansion’s parlor and our female guide pointed to a painting hanging over the fireplace mantel. She identified the man in the painting as the owner of the home and recounted his many achievements. The man’s wife was portrayed in another painting that hung alongside her husband’s. She smiled down at us from her place on the wall, but we never learned a thing about her. I should have piped up and asked, “Can you tell us something about the woman?” But I didn’t.

I’m as guilty as the next person. I’m here in Ohio researching my paternal line, writing specifically about the men in that line.

I supposed it’s partially the fault of society’s naming conventions. Our birth surname is part of our identity, and it’s natural for a researcher to trace the history of her birth name. If we inherited our surname from our mother, our research focus might be different. And, of course, there are the age-old culprits that keep women out of historical records–power, authority, sexism, etc.–making it virtually impossible to find out anything about our female relations.

I can understand why women aren’t mentioned in military histories. I really get bugged, though, when early church histories mention only the contributions of men. Come on, we all know that if women weren’t around, men wouldn’t set foot inside a chapel! Just kidding here, folks, but women do form the backbone of most churches. Why aren’t they mentioned?

Some people and institutions have been trying to balance the historical record by recognizing and publishing the accomplishments of women. I’m currently involved in a project directed by a friend of mine that involves interviewing and recording the life stories of women in our church. In the last nine months more than 60 women have been interviewed, providing a valuable archive for future generations.

After I finish my Parrett family history, I plan to do more to “remember the ladies” among my forbears by writing their stories. I also need to finish my own personal history.

I’d like to hear if any of you are involved in projects that honor your female heritage. If you, like me, have been busy chasing after the men, consider Abigail’s admonition. She was a wise woman. John thought so, too.

Beginning Wednesday, February 10, PBS will broadcast Faces of America, an inspiring new genealogy series hosted by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who last year produced the much admired documentary African American Lives. In this new series, Gates shows how the latest tools of genealogy and genetics helped trace the ancestors of 12 famous Americans, including actress Meryl Streep, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, political commentator Stephen Colbert, chef Mario Batali, director Mike Nichols, ice skater Kristi Yamaguchi, and many more. If you’d like to know more about this not-to-be-missed program, click here to see the promo trailer. Check your local listing for the broadcast time in your area. I can’t wait!

A few people who read my last blog post asked me how John Colletta determined the weather conditions on the day his 1860 Mississippi ancestors got married.  Answer: the newspaper. You can find all kinds of interesting details to flesh out your memoirs and family histories in newspapers—the smaller, more local these newspapers, the better.

For example, I’ve found my Iowa Parrett ancestors mentioned frequently in the Fairfield Ledger.  They were farmers, living lives that were not particularly newsworthy, but not much newsworthy happened in rural Iowa towns in the 1800s! So reporters went out and interviewed the locals about the number of hogs they were planning to sell at the auction and whether the rainy weather had damaged their crops, gathering human interest information that could illuminate your stories about your ancestors’ lives.  

I found one article that reported wooden sidewalks were being installed in downtown Batavia, Iowa. That meant an end to the aggravating dust and mud that dirtied the long skirts of ladies who came to town to shop! Now that’s an interesting detail I can use in my description of the daily life of my Parrott folks.

Some newspapers post the minutes of City Council meetings. These are great sources for ”gossip” about local problems and planned solutions to situations that may be troubling to your relatives.

I enjoy looking at the advertisements in small town newspapers, enjoying the descriptions of job offerings and sure-fire cures for mysterious ailments. You can learn a lot from these ads about the culture and commercial opportunities available at that time and place.

Newspaper Archive Sources

So, how do you find newspapers from the locales that interest you? It used to be you had to go to that location and dig through the archives at the newspaper office, local library, or historical society—which, frankly, is how I accessed those Fairfield Ledger articles. But that was over a decade ago. Now those same Ledger articles are posted online! I discovered them just the other day when I was looking at what new had been added to Iowa’s Jefferson County website. Of course, not every county has as many historically minded volunteers as Jefferson County. (They’ve been good to me over the years!) But it’s worth checking outyour county through www.usgenweb.com to see what’s posted.

Both Ancestry and Footnote have searchable newspaper databases—Footnote covers over 300 local newspapers—but both respositories require paid subscriptions.  GenealogyBank provides an extensive searchable collection of old newspapers for a fee–$9.95 for a 30-day trial. After that they offer a variety of subscription packages.

I recommend checking out the National Digital Newspaper Program, an ongoing project formed by a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress, and state projects to provide enhanced access to United States newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. The database is growing.

Cyndislist is another good place to start. Her newspaper link provides a long list of tantalizing resources.

Memoir Writers Can Benefit

This is not just for ancestral research. Those writing your own personal histories could benefit from researching newspapers from the locale where you grew up. Most of us were too preoccupied about “kid things” to be aware of what was going on in the larger community. Reading local newspapers from your time period will likely spark ideas for stories you can include in your memoir or flesh out and enrich with local color the stories you’ve already written. Maybe you’ll even discover what the weather was like that Christmas you got your Schwinn two-wheeler!

If any of you have discovered useful online newspaper sources, please let us know.

I attended a most interesting conference this week, the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. I enrolled in John Colletta’s course, “Producing a Quality Family History.” It was relaxing to be a student rather than a presenter for a change, and I so enjoyed learning from such a charming, capable teacher. I read Colletta’s laudable Only a Few Bones several years ago and admired his creative approach to family history. Several of my students have taken his classes in the past and raved about him, so when I saw that he was speaking in Salt Lake, I jumped at the chance to take his course.   

Like me, Colletta stresses the story aspects of family history, and his lectures focused on ways to turn biographical facts into a readable and compelling narrative. In one interesting exercise, he demonstrated how he took a brief newspaper wedding announcement and used census records, real estate records, local history resources, contemporary drawings, and a variety of maps to turn dry facts into a story that put real people into an authentic setting and historical context we could visualize. He even calculated the weather conditions on the marriage date! It was a clever teaching tool.

In another class, Colletta discussed the importance of finding a theme in the events of our ancestors’ lives and shaping our narrative around this theme. We discussed typical story themes—ambition, hardship, nonconformity, migration, sacrifice—and examined potential themes in the lives of Colletta’s ancestors.

 It’s important that our stories have a theme, whether we’re writing a family history or our own life story. Many personal historians merely narrate a succession of events—this happened, then this happened—without considering whether there’s a theme that ties them together. All stories have a theme and, likely, several sub-themes.  Look at the events in your life or your ancestors’ lives and try to identify trends that you can develop into a theme that shapes your narrative. If you’ve put together a life chronology, as I’ve suggested in previous posts, it’s fairly easy to scan through the events of your subject’s life to look for potential themes.

Then, of course, you have to plan how your theme will drive  and shape your story–a topic I’ll discuss in a future post.

 In the meantime, I will focus my next few postings on other valuable ideas I learned from the SLIG conference.

–Memoir Mentor