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First Person

When writing your personal history, I would suggest that you write it in first person. It will have the feel that you are telling your life stories to your children or grandchildren while they are sitting on your lap. It will help connect the reader to you in a very personal way. If fact, you can just grab a recorder and record some of your stories as you tell them to your children or grandchildren. Then listen to the recording to get a feel of how to write it like a captivating story (instead of dry facts). Give it a try!

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Blogs

Blogs have become so common and easy to use that about 50,000 are started each day. One great use of a blog is to share family stories and pictures. You can make a blog for each of your different family lines and then post information about each ancestor that has that last name or that belongs to that ancestral line. WordPress and Blogspot are the two blog sites that are used the most, plus they are free. They have some great tutorials to help you get started and design your blog.

Here are a couple of blogs that I have made for two of my family lines. They are just an example of what you can do. I also have a private blog that just my immediate family can see where we share pictures and memories about when our children were growing up. (You can have your blog public so anyone can see it or private so only invited guests can see it.)

http://tuckerresearch.blogspot.com/

http://lerwillresearch.blogspot.com/

Go ahead and start a blog and see how it works. Experiment until you have it just the way you want and then you can make it public and tell your family about it. When it is public, other relatives can find it by searching for certain family names and will see what you have and could contact you and share information. It is a great way to share pictures and stories from your family.

Chris Stevenson   cs@sgenealogy.com    www.sgenealogy.com

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Write the Whole Picture

It is easy for us to write the good things about our relatives when writing a family history. It is much more difficult to write about the bad things and the mistakes that they made. It is appropriate to be very careful when writing about someone’s flaws so we don’t go too far and become distasteful to our readers.

I think that Dawn Thurston explains it best, “When writing family history, it’s difficult to create a realistic picture of people long gone. Genealogy data reveals little about how people looked, moved, or talked, or what strengths and weaknesses shaped their lives. Then there’s family pride. Absent any evidence to the contrary, we tend to idealize our forebears. We want them to be exemplary rather than human. I suspect the image that exists in our mind’s eye bears little resemblance to how they actually were.”

I think that we do our readers a disservice by only telling the good. A brief mention of the mistakes and bad qualities of our ancestors makes them more real. So, be brave and write the whole picture of your ancestors, then before you have it published have someone else read it over and make sure that you have handled it tastefully. You will be glad that you did.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Footnotes or Endnotes

As you prepare you family history, you may find that you would like to include some valuable source material but find that it bogs down the flow of your book. This is a good use for footnotes or endnotes. Most word processors can automatically number and track your footnotes or endnotes for you. I have found that footnotes in personal and family histories are distractive and detract from your book. Use endnotes instead. These can appear at the end of each chapter if you have a lot of them, or at the end of your book (just before your index) if you have just a few. Not only do endnotes look better, but they are easier than footnotes to format and control.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Holiday Time

I love being with family at Christmas time and on other holidays. We have several parties with different sides of the family and it reminded me that sharing family stories is a fun and important part of these family gatherings. I would suggest that you bring a digital recorder and turn it on when these stories are being told so they can be preserved and shared.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Chris Stevenson  cs@sgenealogy.com  www.sgenealogy.com

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Pictures and Captions in Word 2007, take 2

Last April I posted an article about connecting pictures to captions in Word 2007 (see April 14 post). Occasionally (I have no idea why) the captions and the pictures will not group together. So there is another step that needs to be taken when this occurs. Here are some detailed instructions that I found on ehow.com.

1 Insert a picture or shape by clicking the “Insert” tab at the top and making an image selection.

2 Insert text by clicking “Insert” and “Text Box” from the top menu, then typing new text into the text box.

3 Insert a new drawing canvas by selecting “Insert,” “Shapes,” “New Drawing Canvas” and resizing it to fit your objects using the sizing tabs.

4 Cut and paste your picture and text box or boxes, one by one, into the new drawing canvas. Select the items you want to group by clicking and holding the “Ctrl” key. Right-click in the canvas and select “Grouping” and “Group.”

5 Drag and drop your new group outside the boundaries of the drawing canvas. They can now be moved simultaneously anywhere on the document.

6 Select the drawing canvas and delete it, as you don’t need it to hold the picture and text grouping.

(Here is the link on ehow.com:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5943353_group-picture-text-ms-word.html

This is a good way to attach captions to pictures or group pictures together if the regular way doesn’t work.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Deadlines #2

This is a repeat of a post I did last December. It is so important that I feel like I should repeat it.

This time of year, I am reminded of the importance of deadlines as well as the lack of importance of deadlines. That my sound a little funny, so let me explain. First, I think that it is common knowledge that we need deadlines to push us over the top to finish projects. A couple of examples that I can think of is how many sports teams really push hard to get ahead in the last two minutes of a game. And how students study extra hard and long just before a final test. We definitely need deadlines to help us.
But there is another side of deadlines when it comes to publishing a family history. Every year I have some people ask me when is the last date that they can finish writing it and have it published for Christmas. We discuss the different deadlines and then I usually say something like this, "I just want to remind you that it is wonderful to have you book completed for Christmas, but your book will be around for a hundred years and so it is more important to have it just right than to meet a deadline." This is wisdom that I learned from my father. He used deadlines to help propel him forward, but he never cut corners. Maybe that is the perfectionist in him.
Keeping deadlines in their proper perspective is so important as we do these very large projects, like writing and publishing a family history. Use Christmas, a family reunion, or other occasion as a deadline to work towards, but remember that your book will be treasured for years to come. Make it a legacy that you will be happy with and not one full of regrets.
Chris Stevenson   cs@sgenealogy.com    www.sgenealogy.com

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Thanksgiving

I am so grateful to be involved with so many wonderful people in preserving and sharing personal and family histories. I feel very blessed to have the job that I do where we make people happy every day. I love my job. Thanks for making it possible to do what I love.

Here is something to think about as you spend time with your family. Last week, one of my good friends told me his number one regret is that he didn’t sit down with his parents and get a record of their life stories. All he has of his father’s history is three paragraphs that he wrote many years ago. As you visit with relatives during this busy time of year, take the time to ask about and record their stories. You won’t regret it. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Chris Stevenson  cs@sgenealogy.com  www.sgenealogy.com

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Hooks and Sinkers

Making the story interesting isn’t just for novels, it is important for family histories, too. One of the main reasons that we write and publish personal and family histories is so that others will read them. If they are dry and boring then few people will enjoy reading them. But if we go the extra step and create curiosity and interest, then others won’t be able to put the book down. One of the best ways to create interest at the beginning of each story or chapter is to write a sentence or two that will hook the reader. These are easiest to write after the story is all typed and you are reading through it again. Look for something unusual in the story that you can refer to at the very beginning. You can even put it in question form like, “Did you know that grandpa was in Paris at the same time as grandma, but they were both with someone else?” So, look to add a “hook” at the beginning of each story so they won’t “sink” to the bottom of the reading pile.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Family Photo Calendars

Each fall I start thinking about calendars for the coming year. Many years ago I started making photo calendars with family pictures and birthdays on them. Then I saw an idea that I really liked, it was to add the birthdays of ancestors to the calendar. That way I am reminded of my ancestors on their special days and I find that I think about them more during the year. Several genealogy programs can print out calendars with the birthdays inserted so all you have to do is add the pictures to the pages. (I use RootsMagic 4.) If you don’t like the formatting of the calendars that your software prints out, you can transfer the names to a preferred layout. We make hundreds of photo calendars each year for people and we would love to help you if you don’t have a source already. (click here)

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com