Shaping an ancestor's story

 

                                        Lottie Trip Gilchrist, full skirt and sleeves make for a solid looking silhouette

Writing about family history is difficult at times. There's the initial fumbling about for something to write about, gathering information for the story and casting about for photos to use. Pictures are always needed and not always easy to come by given access and copyright issues. So why bother to write?

I find that pulling all the information together, whether it is for a one off story or an ancestor profile, clarifies my thoughts and brings interesting insights. These insights in turn generate more ideas. The danger here, of course, is that those ideas often take me haring off down some research rabbit hole. But they can also be helpful.

As part of my writing journey, I joined the masterclass of the Family History Writing Studio a year or so ago. It's fun to meet with other writers also working on their family stories. The tips and resources available through that site will, no doubt, help flesh out the tales I write about my family. I've just started working my way through the modules that are a part of the masterclass. To do that an ancestor is needed to work through the materials. I decided not to use my maternal grandfather whose story I had already begun. That's why I wrote about kitchens in my last post. They would have played a large part in my great grandmother's life. She will be the ancestor I will explore through the masterclass modules.

But before tackling the discipline of prescribed writing through the masterclass, I had an article to write for the BCGS newsletter. Strangely enough, kitchens and my great grandmother, Lottie Tripp Gilchrist, featured in that as well. But I also touched on stories which would have been talked about in her family. Those stories were about large life changing events, like deaths in the family. They would have affected Lottie profoundly.

Come to think of it, I started writing about my grandfather, Harold Strange Chambers, in much the same way. I explored the history of tuberculosis through what happened in his direct family. The story I am working on about him grew out of that. Now that I've started on Lottie's story, it's similar; outside forces at work shaping her life. It's a reminder that we are not only a product of our own history but of the times that we live through.