Writing Your Ancestors' Stories

It's now been 31 years since I began researching my family's genealogy. I've become quite an adept researcher during this time and genealogy has become a passion for me. Though I've long had a genealogy software program (FamilyTreeMaker) in which I've recorded all the names, dates and locations, I realized that there's something missing.

As I've talked to older family members during the years, the stories told to me by them exist largely in my memory store. One of my uncles, in addition to giving me family information, had a noted career as a musician. He has told me many stories about the places to which he traveled during his career and of the many entertainers he met and played with along the way. An older cousin has told me many stories of her visits to my great-grandmother's farm "down in the country." My mother has shared many stories of her growing up in Pittsburgh. Another relative told me stories of the "unofficial" Jim Crow in Pittsburgh. All of these stories cannot easily be recorded in genealogy software programs. Yet, these tidbits, these stories, are also part of my ancestry and I realized that these stories should be recorded, somewhere.

Our history, our ancestry, our story, is just not about the places our ancestors lived and the jobs they held. It is also about the great-grandmother who smoked a pipe, the uncle who was mentored by Count Basie, the other uncle who played with the Ike Cole Trio, the aunt with the red hair who drove the big car, another aunt who passed economically in order to find and keep a job, the grandmother, born in slavery who went on to become a successful businesswoman - and oh, so many stories. It is important for the genealogist/researcher to also record these stories so that these stories will be passed on and be told.

Whether you type these stories into your computer, write them with pen and paper or record them on a micro-cassette recorder, the important thing is to record these stories so that they live on once we, the current researcher has transitioned.

Blessings,
T