Family History: Has it inspired you to write?

Family History: Has it inspired you to write?

Researching family history is about finding information on our ancestors, discovering relatives and hearing new stories, not heard before, about all these people.

Recording and collating this information for your family tree – and ensuring that your family and descendants will have access to it in the future – has far-reaching effects, not the least of which is improving your writing skills.

This article in the Sterling Observer describes how Marianne Wheelaghan (Edinburgh, Scotland) caught the “genea-bug” and how it led to writing her debut novel, The Blue Suitcase. It’s about her mother’s and aunt’s experiences growing up in Germany during WWII.

Marianne said she had very limited knowledge of her mother Gertrude’s background. She knew her mother was born and raised in Germany, and came to live in Scotland after the war.

One day, a suitcase filled with letters and diary pages was discovered by a family member. The documents were written by Marianne’s aunt (Gertrude’s sister) who immigrated to Argentina after the war. Translated, they provide insight into their lives during war-time Germany.

Marianne – thanks to these documents – become very interested in her family history, and began to write her book.

Has finding information about your family inspired you to begin a new hobby (family history), or even to start a new career?

Let us know in the comments section below.

Comments

The email address is kept private and will not be shown

  • Anne Marie Hoekstra

    August 22, 2012

    Yes, finding information about my family inspired my to start a blog: . There I write to my great-grandmother in the year 1912 en she writes to me. Very often we are surprised about each others lives and stories. My great-grandmother Plonia Loeve was 22 years old in 1912, just married and pregnant. Everything in her life is different: her work, her clothes, her traditions, her church… I think about writing a book about her life and her era. I already did a lot of research by interviewing family, reading books, visiting museums, etc.

  • julie verhage

    August 23, 2012

    i have a wonderful mother! whom i know very little of her side of the family and had not seen much of them as children and sick-ness came. so one day i’d started a venture to learn and have not regretted hearing of the rohde/rhode family ,they are all around me! and might even be 4th cousins , so to approach them is my next step; sir how are you related to..? is this the right approach? my title is the singing von trapp family. even my grandfathers step mother is a {‘luther’ }Domke,so that’s another story! and oh how i want to approach ,yet be safe.

  • Tracy

    August 23, 2012

    I have only just opened my tree and started putting people in but am already inspired to get everyone I know on and start looking for lost relatives!!!!

  • Ronit Treatman

    August 23, 2012

    I researched and published the following article:

  • Anne

    August 24, 2012

    Started with what was going to be ( so I thought ) a brief page for my daughter 8 years go. Got hooked and loving the family history writing. Who would have thought that one would write one day about cement of all things and railways. ( some of these on the internet as family history has also been history of an area. A family reunion saw a small newsletter type format being written for those who came and those who could not because of farming. I joined a small family history writing group and we all encourage each other – those special stories of something done while growing up recorded so rather than lost over time is there for future descendants. My self I always remember the story my mum told me called ” The Woofle Bugs” about her life on the farm. Wish now she had written it down