The Gift of a Family Tree

Tips on Creating a Large Family Tree Template as a Gift for Family Members

Suzie Kolber, creator of ObituariesHelp.org offered to provide my readers with some tips and templates for creating a large family tree to give as a gift. Here is what she has to say:

A large family tree framed and presented as a gift is a wonderful way to honor a person. It is the ideal choice for a milestone birthday or anniversary and has a lot of meaning. It can be difficult to choose the right template with so many options. The right one for your family may be different from what would work for someone else.

 

Consider Presentation

Since the family tree will most likely be prominently displayed, it should have a nice visual presentation. A circular family tree provides a continuous, symmetrical design that looks nice when framed. A fan is another option that appears like a piece of artwork when hung.

Another choice is the bowtie family tree chart if you want to include both sides of a family member. This is ideal for anniversaries where you would feature the married couple in the center and branch off for both of their families. Since there will be a lot of information or a long list of names, you want the shape to stand out even if someone doesn't take the time to read the words.

Consider Information

To choose the right template for your gift, you have to consider how much information you want to include. This will influence the selection as to which style works best. If you only plan to include photos or a name and birthdate, a family tree with oval spaces will look nice. If you want more information included such as birth, marriage and death dates, lines or boxes will be more practical.

The landscape and pedigree styles are the most traditional. They can hold a lot of information in a way that is easy to follow. If you are giving this gift to a couple who did not have children, you may want to use a partner family tree. It allows you to trace the history on both sides of the family with the couple as the starting point.

Keep these tips in mind when designing a family tree print as a gift:

• ·         Choose a template that doesn't have a lot of holes that are glaringly obvious – you don't want to highlight missing people or unusual circumstances that may make people uncomfortable

• ·         Remember that your family tree chart doesn't have to be an 8x11 piece of paper; it can be as large as you need it to be to fit the information

• ·         Consider making it vibrant with a colored background but choose a shade that doesn't take away from the information or make it difficult to read

• ·         Find free templates online and try out different ones – you only know when something works once you see it

A family tree chart is a fabulous gift that many people will appreciate. It is a gift from the heart and one that is personal to the recipient but that others can enjoy. Be willing to play with different styles to find the one that fits your needs. 

Suzie Kolber

Suzie created ObituariesHelp to be the complete online resource for “do it yourself” genealogy projects, where you can find printable templates of all kinds and sizes.

The site is a not for profit website dedicated to offering free resources for those that are trying to trace their family history.

Chronicling Family History

Great Great Aunt Mary

If you’re lucky enough to have a family association or members of your family who have kept archives and records, you will be able to dig up stories about many generations past. The following is based on information I found in a book written about my Parsons Family, on a narrative written by my Great Aunt Martha about her childhood, a journal kept by my Great Aunt Marion, and on the many stories about the “Olden Days” told to me as a child by my Grandmother and her two sisters, Marion and Martha. Perhaps this will inspire my readers to write their own, either for publication or for your great, great, great grandchildren. They will be grateful if you do.

Dateline: Worthington, Massachusetts, January 25, 1865, my Great, Great, Great Grandfather, Maurice Parsons, wrote: “My first nine children have all except one been teachers of primary schools, and I believe very successful in their occupation.” His Great Granddaughter and my Great Aunt, Marion Parsons, upheld the Parsons tradition in the years to come, turning a hen house in her father’s cherry orchard into one of the highest-ranking schools in New York State. (I would write a book about this 150 years after Maurice wrote those words and call it The Brass Bell.)

At the time Maurice Parsons wrote the letter, his eldest son, Edwin (my great, great grandfather) had left Worthington for Syracuse, New York, where he taught school for a while before taking up farming full-time. Having saved his money, he was able to purchase property and marry his love, Julia Armstrong, in September, 1846. They had six children, and as these children came of age, the farm grew in size. Their sons had inherited their father’s love for making a living off the land. Their eldest daughter, Mary Amelia, married James Schuyler Jerome, a cousin of Jenny Jerome who had left the country for England where she married Lord Churchill. They had a son named Winston.

In the spring of 1890, my Great Grandfather, Willis Parsons, the youngest of Edwin and Julia’s sons purchased a sixty-some acre farm just up the road from the family farm. The road back then was a dirt turnpike connecting Eastern and Western New York State. Over time, Willis added another 138 acres to his holdings and became one of the most respected fruit growers in the state. All along the Turnpike there were the farms of cousins, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, creating a widespread community of Parsons and Jerome relations. Though Willis dedicated his life to farming, serving as long-time President of the New York State Fruit Growers Association, the family regard for the importance of education was intact.

Children and grandchildren—including Willis’s three daughters, Grace, Marion, and Martha—attended school every day, in blizzard or sticky heat, at a small one-room schoolhouse donated by cousin Guy Parsons. Though the school eventually became part of the local public school system, the day came when the old school could no longer hold the children or keep them warm during the frigid winters. Several of the Parsons and Jerome families opened their parlors for classes. When the Parsons girls finished school, Willis Parsons insisted his daughters attend college, become teachers.

By and by, the people of the farm community that came to be known as Westvale were wise enough to look into the future and see where the industrial revolution was heading. They knew that in order for their children to be successful in the changing world that lie ahead—the two-lane dirt turnpike had been paved and horse drawn buggies were replaced with fancy buggies that motored themselves—only the best of educations would serve their off-spring and save their community.

Marion Parsons returned to Westvale after college and after teaching for a year in a rugged frontier town in Washington State, and people in the community came to her and asked if she would consider starting a new school to serve their growing numbers.

Though she had loved her travels out west—the trip back home on the train through California, her voyage to Catalina Island on a glass-bottom boat—Marion recognized and honored her duty. That summer she approached women who were picking fruit in her father’s orchards and asked if they would help her clean up an old chicken coop near the cherry orchard

A local judge and an attorney joined Willis and other members of the extended family to form a school board. They helped raise money, donated property, and lay the legal and financial groundwork for what would become the Cherry Road School. On its first day of school, Marion was presented with the brass bell from the old schoolhouse. Tears sprung to her eyes as she held the bell whose resounding clang had once signaled her and her sisters, cousins and friends to the long wooden benches in a tiny one-room school. As she raised the bell for the first time, she could not have imagined that nearly 100 years later, Cherry Road School would be the alma mater of thousands who would remember her fondly as Miss Parsons, their first and greatest hero.

If you would like to purchase a copy of The Brass Bell, it’s available through Sahalie Publishing:

http://www.sahaliepublishing.org/Brass-Bell-order.html

Mining Your Family Stories

When I was researching and writing The Brass Bell, my richest and most interesting stories about the “Olden Days” came from those who are still alive and willing to share what exists only in their memories. I talked to cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends of the family.

Here is a sampling of the precious and fertile stories that contributed to the narrative non-fiction account of my great aunt, my family, and the community in which they lived ordinary extraordinary lives:

“My father, Uncle Bob and Aunt Sara were all sent home from school one day because they smelled of skunk. Seems that the muskrat trap line that they had out had caught a skunk instead of a muskrat and the kids got sprayed when checking the line before school. My grandmother got the kids clean up and soaked in tomato juice, but they couldn’t return to school until the next day.”

“I was born and grew up on my family’s 60-acre farm. On the 10^th of September, 1897, a crew came with a steam engine to fill the silo with ensilage….There had been a long, dry spell, so when the steam engine blew up for lack of water, the flames shot into the hay-filled barn; the fire spread rapidly. Soon the house caught fire, and in about half an hour both buildings burned to the ground. The County Fair was being held that day, and many people on their way to it hitched their horses to the roadside fences and rushed to help. There were no volunteer fire companies, no telephones to summon them had they existed; no water except what was pumped from the well by hand, or had accumulated in cisterns from rain running off the roofs.”

“My Uncle Ned delivered milk out of his car during the early days of his dairy farm. It was a 1930s Studebaker. Aunt Betty’s sister used to walk to the farm to get raw milk in a container. She tells about drinking the whole milk and the wonderful taste compared to pasteurized. Then they had a milk wagon and horse. Folks wanted it delivered by breakfast and they would be up long before sunrise. The milk was kept in the milkhouse at the farm.”

These are simple accounts of life during a time when children played in fields and streams, when life was lived without modern conveniences, when amenities and services we take for granted today were all but unimaginable. Future generations will never know what came before without the humble stories told by unworldly people whose lives will be lost with the passing of time.

Use your writing skills and your curiosity to excavate and write the stories from those who will soon be gone, those whose childhoods exist only in their memories.

If you're writing a family story, your memoir, a novel based on a family member or members, one sure place to begin is with photographs. The box of family photos is a goldmine for every writer in any of these genres. The more you study those pictures, the more the story will come to light. And don't limit yourself to your own stash, ask other family members if you can look at theirs, have copies made. Don't stop there, ask neighbors, family friends, and distant cousins. Search old newspapers on newspaperarchives.com. They have searchable articles back as far as 1753. Not so long ago, both city and small-town newspapers considered local happenings at schools, churches, and the town square to be news. They carried stories about community events and included lots of pictures. Many states also have their own searchable small-town newspaper databases. If you live in New York State, or are from New York State, Fulton History is an archival site containing small town newspapers from all over the state, and other states, as far back as the 1700s. They also have a section on old postcards, images that reflect the culture and society of various eras in American history. 

How do you find story in pictures? Well, you can connect people you know with people you don't know, providing a seed for your detective work. Pictures show us how people lived, who they loved, where they lived, how they dressed, what cars they drove, if they had cars. Pictures of my grandmother and her sisters in their youth reveal that there were no cars. People got from one place to another on foot or in wagons. That got me thinking about how long it would take to get from Uncle Jim's farm to town, and what that would mean to their lives. What if a house caught fire? How would they put it out if there were no automobiles, no way to speed up the highway with sirens blaring?

Several years ago, my father gave me a photograph album my grandmother had put together long before he was born. My father had an older brother named John who died at the age of six. I had known about this event, but not the story. As I turned the pages of this handmade album, covered with care in a fine dust jacket cloth by my grandmother, I was pulled into a story of love and heartbreak. Each page displayed images of a young boy's childhood and his devoted and loving parents: afternoons at the lake, John with his dog, picnics in the woods, a pony, a birthday party, a ride in grandfather's new Franklin automobile on the boy's 5th birthday. Great Grandfather Willis is beaming in this picture. His topless car is filled with children who may be riding in a car for the first time. The album ends with a handwritten note next to the boy John's picture, "John Parsons Cole, b. 9-12-1914, d. 12-22-1920." I still can't look through the album without crying, but now I know the story of John, and my grandparents....the young boy who was adored by his parents, the sad grandparents I remember. There was something beneath the surface I sensed as a child that felt like sadness, but I never knew what it was about. I didn't know the story until I looked at those pictures as an adult, even though my great aunts had told me that there had been an older boy, an uncle who had died.

If I chose to write about that story, the next step would be to examine newspapers and other archives and history books to find out everything from the weather conditions in that city on the day of his death, or the day of his birthday party, and so on, to what was happening in the world at the time. John was born at the beginning of the Great War. And so the story began.

"A Happy Fourth"

Guest post by Author, Teacher, and Blogger: Hope Clark!

Author, Hope Clark

Make It Read Like a Novel

By C. Hope Clark

I ran to the gym this week, was pushing up 45 pounds, wondering if I could venture up to 60, when a lady came by.  “I heard you were an author,” she said. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Sure,” I said, dropping the weights and settling in. Any question that started with those words was not going to be quick.

“This older gentleman in his eighties has asked me to write his story, and I don’t know where to start.”

I told her like I tell so many folks writing biographies, memoirs, and historic nonfiction. Write it like a novel.

They always raise a brow when I tell them this, because they aren’t writing fiction, they say.  Their stories are factual, based on reality, talking about something that really happened. To that I shrug and say, “How is that different than writing a novel?”

1)    Novelists do research.

A novel has a setting, whether fictitious or real, and the author does legwork to determine the personality of that locale, often visiting to note the details. My mysteries are set in real places in rural South Carolina. I travel there, taking intricate notes of the simplest items so my story reads genuine. And when I use fictitious buildings, addresses, and businesses, I have a real place mind, so my mind’s eye has an anchor when I write. But I never, ever use all my research. Research is to ground you, make it easy for you to write in that world. Do not use all those intricate details, just the ones that pop, snare or give great flavor.

2)    Novelists open with a lapel-grabber.

What’s the point in writing nonfiction if it’s not a gripping tale? So someone lived and died. Why does anyone want to read about them if they didn’t have an eye-opener of a story? That means starting with action, an anxious moment, an intriguing dilemma, or even a dead body. Draw the reader in. What compels him to turn a page? Open in the courtroom, on the edge of the cliff, when someone’s life went to hell. Textbooks are dry. Novels are supposed to be juicy, beautiful, or suck-you-in overwhelming. Which do you want to emulate?

3)    Novelists avoid backstory.

Your nonfiction story has to flow, the story always moving forward with purpose.  Author Elmore Leonard is renowned for his ten famous rules of writing, one of them being, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Novelists fight to make every word leave its mark, which means avoiding backstory. A memoir, biography, or historic tale is all backstory. However, your job is to make it read as if it is taking place . . . like you’re writing mystery, fantasy, romance or women’s fiction. You don’t have to explain an entire life. We endure a lot of boring moments between birth and death. Leave those parts out.

4)    Novelists develop characters.

Novelists cut characters open and spill them all over a page: the nasty and the gob smacking, the loveable and the despicable, the pretty and the horribly disfigured. Your nonfiction has characters, too, though you may not think of them as such. Novelists draw out character charts, noting all sorts of traits, answering questions about these people, so the author know their flaws, their loves, and where they are most fragile and vulnerable. It’s in those tender places that stories are born and characters become worth reading. Real people need to be split open, too.

Writing about real people and real history may sound simple, but it can be harder than fiction. You have the genuine deal to cope with, and that can often detract you from being creative. Envision your plot, theme, characters, voice and flow just like you would a novel, and your nonfiction can take on a remarkable 3-D life. Not to mention your book becomes more marketable.

Oh, and yes, you are allowed to embellish.

BIO

C. Hope Clark is author of The Carolina Slade Mystery Series, published by Bell Bridge Books. Her new Edisto Beach Series released in September 2014. Hope is also editor of FundsforWriters.com, reaching 40K readers each week with her newsletters for serious writers. www.chopeclark.com

The latest in Hope's mystery series

 

Who Should Participate in Researching & Writing Your Family History?

Armchair Genealogists: 

Turn your family history into an interesting life story.

Memoirists: 

You have many stories to tell. They all begin where and from whom you came. The history of your family begins before you were born and that's the beginning of your story.

Narrative Non-fiction writers: 

It's often said, "You can't make this stuff up!" True stories are the best stories. Mythology is based on the lives of real people, life stories that repeat over the ages and change only with the times and the technology of the day. Someone related to you who you never met made a decision long before you were born that determined where and to whom you were born.

Novelists: 

Why should you make up characters when your own family is rich with personalities and reputations who have become the mythology on which you came to life? There are eccentrics and every-day people in your family. You may know nothing about many of them. But you can mine these people and their stories with a little effort and the knowledge of where to look. There may have been a great great uncle who fought in the civil war and never came back, but turned up later to the shock of his remarried widow; a great grandmother who disgraced the family, but turned out to be a heroine in the history books; a distant cousin might have been the consort of a king; an ordinary grandfather most likely lived an extraordinary, yet conventional life.

Take this day-long workshop and go home with the tools and inspiration to get started, ready to put together the pieces of your past, to write the story.