From the category archives:

Writiing FAMILY HISTORY

Rhona Villanueva’s “Gypsy Baron” Gets the Details Right

by Memoir Mentor on March 15, 2010 · 2 comments

If you’ve been reading regularly, you’ll know that I’ve been preaching DETAILS in my classes this term–encouraging my students to move away from general, forgettable descriptions to more carefully crafted, specific portraits. This week’s story was written by Rhona Villanueva, who was born in Estonia , fled with her family to Germany at the outset of [...]

Tagged as: autobiography, Family History, Genealogy, life-story-writing, memoir, personal-history, Rhona Villanueva, The Gypsy Baron, writing tips

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Don’t Miss New PBS Series

by Memoir Mentor on January 31, 2010 · 0 comments

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 [...]

Tagged as: Faces of America, Family History, Genealogy, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

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Extra! Extra! Read All about It!

by Memoir Mentor on January 22, 2010 · 1 comment

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 [...]

Tagged as: autobiography, Batavia, Fairfield, Family History, Genealogy, Iowa, Jefferson County, John Colletta, Ledger, life-story-writing, memoir, personal-history