Write a family history from basic information

Genealogical research is exciting, and in the process we amass numerous documents, files, photographs, and notes. But sometimes I wonder what is the point of having all this information unless we have some way of telling the story, ‘what happened’, that interests and inspires future generations. How do you go from researching your family history to writing a family history?

Most of us will have delved beyond the basic details of birth, marriage and death, beyond the census, and tried to find the ‘deeper’ story of our ancestors’ lives. However, we all know that this is not always possible. With the best will in the world, sometimes all we have are a few dates and places, an occupation and little else.

How can you build a life story from such basic details? If you are writing your family history, perhaps for your children or as a gift to your family members, how can you make an ancestor’s life sound interesting when all you know are the details of their birth, marriage and death?

Like putting together a puzzle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Learn a bit of the backstory and things start to fall into place.

Take my own family as an example. I don’t have much information on most of them, except for the usual baptisms, census details, marriages, and deaths. However, by gathering known facts, researching history, and using pictorial devices, I have written a biography of my ancestor John Walker Bott.

The key point is to know the times in which your ancestor lived. One book I find invaluable is the Chronicle of Britain and Ireland, which details all the top news stories from every year in British history. The internet is also full of useful information, maps, and pictorial images that you could use to illustrate your story (beware of copyrights on images, and if in doubt, ask the webmaster for permission if you’re going to make your work public). Museums, libraries, and churches are also good sources of information about the history of the local parish.

Here is a small excerpt from my ancestor’s biography:

When John Walker Bott and his sister were born in 1814, the nation was celebrating the fall of Napoleon, Jane Austen had just published Mansfield Park, and the actor Edmund Kean had made his debut as Shylock at the Drury Lane Theatre.

While these bits of information have nothing to do with my ancestor personally, they set the context of the world he was born into.

Books on the history of clothing or housing are also very helpful, and again you can find websites on fashion through the ages, which can help you get an idea of ​​how your ancestor dressed.

Learn about the history of the places where your ancestors were born and lived, to provide a framework for their lives. Here I have found out what life was like where John was born:

At the time of JWB’s birth, Newcastle-under-Lyme was a well-equipped town, with good paving, gas lighting and a good water supply. It had two churches, the main one being St. Giles, where John would later marry… It would have been a very busy and bustling town at the time, situated on the main turnpike road from Liverpool and Manchester to Birmingham and London ….

Once you’ve discovered this kind of information, other things you know about them start to make sense. When I discovered that the new railway bypassed Newcastle and the coach trade was declining, it really made sense why John, a builder, had moved to Birmingham some time before 1851. The rapidly expanding city of Birmingham must have provided much more work than he. the now quieter town of Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Following him through the census, his life follows the usual pattern of the head of a Victorian family; the birth of five children, the death of his wife, Louisa, his second marriage two years later, and the birth of more children. By looking at the number of rooms and researching the addresses, we can see that his fortune increased as the quality of housing improved. He goes from ’employee’ to ’employer’, and at one point we learn that there were 10 people living in the household, including stepchildren from his second wife’s previous marriage.

Going back to the history books, and if we look at the history of education, we can see that the Education Act of 1872 made school compulsory for all children between the ages of 5 and 13, so it is likely that John’s children were students at the nearby school, the next one. to the Church of San Marcos.

In 1867, John would have been able to vote for the first time in his life when the Second Reform Bill allowed workers with an established place of residence to vote.

Here are some of the final words of John’s story:

John Walker Bott died on August 14, 1874 at the age of 60. For a hard-working man in a physically tough trade, this was a good age right now.

Throughout his life he would have seen many changes as the Victorian era grew and developed. He had survived the cholera epidemics of the 1830s and 1840s. When the young Queen Victoria came to the throne, she would have been a young man of 23… She experienced the rapid growth and expansion of the railways, and would have known about the Great London Exhibition in 1851. Did he, like many others, travel by train to visit this incredible international exhibition?

I hope you can see how I have used general and local history to establish the context in which my ancestor lived.

Therefore, writing a family history does not have to be just a chronological list of personal events. You can enrich yourself with all the information you can find that has touched your family’s life. Your family history then becomes a living, breathing tale of real people with real lives who will inspire the next generation.