Capturing Memories

I've tried to get family members to write about their memories without much success. However, I have noticed over the last few months, several relatives have written in emails, Facebook posts or blog comments about their memories of another family member or an occasion. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to capture those fleeting tidbits so I can easily access  them when writing about family history.

I’ve decided to use a word processing document in which I can record the following information:

1. Family member or event remembered
2. Name of individual who made the comment
3. Date
4. Actual text of comment (copy and paste)
5. Copy of photograph or other related documentation

Each time I come across a memory I can easily add it to the document. This should make it much easier to find those comments than trying to search through Facebook posts or email accounts.

If you have any suggestions about how to capture these kinds of memories, I invite you to share them in the comments section below.

Public domain image, via Wikimedia Commons.

© 2013 Denise Spurlock, Ancestral Trees Research

On Being a Better Ancestor - Memories

“Tell me about the olden days.” I can remember asking my parents to tell me what life was like when they were young. But now they are gone, and there are so many more questions I would like to ask.

Preserving memories is an important aspect of being a good ancestor. One of the methods that can be used is to write about them in blog posts. There are many resources available to use as writing prompts. Here are just a few:

• Lorine McGinnis Schulze of the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog has a weekly series called Sharing Memories: A Genealogy Journey.
• Amy Coffin of The We Tree Genealogy Blog has 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History prompts published each week at Geneabloggers.com
• Legacy Family Tree, as part of its genealogical software program, has an “interview questions report.”

I must confess I intended to start doing this at the beginning of the year, using Amy Coffin’s series. But I haven’t....and now must catch up! My plan is to write 7 posts per week including the prompt for the current week and several from previous weeks until I am back on track.

I’ve created a blog just for these posts—52 Weeks of Personal History—and published three posts. The posts are “dated” according to the week when the prompt was originally scheduled to be written. Once the year is over, my goal is to publish a “blog book” that can become part of my genealogy legacy.

© 2011 Denise Spurlock, Ancestral Trees Research