Using Memoirs and Oral Histories in Writing Family History

Remembering Mammaw

While many of us earnestly research and write of ancestors long buried, the family history writer can leave a legacy of stories to future generations through memoirs and oral history woven among the dry facts of name, place and time. Years ago, I began started this work as a genealogist. However, it was soon apparent to me that more depth of my family’s history was what I most desired from my efforts. So my research evolved into the work of a family historian.

My own experience at family research has been a challenge because my remote ancestors left few records detailing their lives. Only those born in the 20^th century acquired literacy. One of my ancestral lines eschewed the broader community of city or town, remaining isolated along the Blue Ridge Mountains of the western Carolinas, where the outside world ever ventured. I can use generalities from circumstantial evidence to imagine the content of the daily lives of these ancestors, but I cannot know it. Thus, their stories are necessarily perforated by gaps within record, the remainder being imbued with uncertainty and disclaimers.

However, from my long interest in oral history and its methodologies, I recognize that I can give my descendants a first person account of their ancestors as told in the ancestor’s voice or the voice of an eye witness. So over the past several years, I have collected the “his” stories and “her” stories of my generation. Slowly, I hope to compile these accounts into a family’s journey through generations. I do this because I discovered during the process of family oral history research what it means for me to be the person that I am. I would like to teach my children how to understand themselves through their origins.

Not all these accounts, whether first person or memoirs, are easy for me to write. Facts are easy enough to collect, but the interpretation that weaves these facts coherently into an understanding of events are difficult and sometimes painful. The story about my maternal grandmother is one example. So much of her life was entwined with my mother’s adult life. It was difficult to write about my mom as a major character in Mammaw’s story. Each time I wrote “Mother” or “Mom,” I could feel my grief surface and my objectivity as an historian dissolve with the tears. When I began using my mom’s given name, the one by which my grandmother used, I was able to distance myself enough to allow Mammaw’s voice to more clearly come through. It helped me enormously to examine that period from someone else’s perspective. It added dimension to my knowledge and understanding of both women who were so prominent in my life.

An earlier version of Mammaw’s story was originally published in The Dallas Journal (2007).

Family Oral History Projects

I have been lecturing recently on the topic of “Oral History for the Genealogist.” When I get the opportunity, I like to ask my audience to give me their definition for “oral history.” I explain that lexicographers (dictionary compilers) generally create definitions from how the word is used in speech and writing. So, I tell the audience, they either can offer up a dictionary-like definition or give me an example of a genealogist, like themselves, engaging in “family oral history.” In social science research, this kind of definition is called an operational definition. Whether or not formally stated (such as in my little exercise), operational definitions greatly influence how we interpret our sources and our data.

I have received a variety of definitions, one which I want to discuss here. This definition is simply stated as: “Oral history is what you get from family when you ask them to tell you about your ancestors. It helps you find records.” What is interesting about this definition is the embedded assumption that family “oral history” is part of your early research, but has little additional value as your research matures into looking at written records.

I hope to correct a misconception about the “starting with family” advice given to most beginner genealogists. It’s not that I disagree with that advice. I support approaching family early in your research. However, the manner in which this advice is communicated suggests that once you have visited mom, Grandpa Jones or Aunt Mayzie—once you’ve gotten elders tell you the names and vitals of all the ancestors that they can recall—you can contentedly consign your living relatives back to holiday visits and the periodic phone call to catch up on current events. The fact that they might know more about the family genealogy than they initially provided just does not get the attention that I am convinced is warranted.

For me, this “single shot interview” advice is analogous to using a starting pistol in a race. Once the gun is fired, the runners surge forward and the race begins. The pistol is never fired again. The oral historian within me knows how false that underlying assumption is. Contemporary research in psychology argues against it. We can never tell all that we know in one session, even if “telling all” is our intent.

Moreover, many of these stories told and re-told by our relatives will sometimes take on the air of old TV reruns. So familiar, we feel that we can lip-sync the narrative as Uncle Joe describes the magic of that high school touchdown in 1957. Why would we deliberately subject ourselves to hearing him tell it again so that we can audio or video record it?

Why? Because, oral history is more than the traditions passed down through generations. Within social research it is “history told in the first person,” eyewitness accounts of history. Someday the traumas of events, such as 9/11, Katrina, the assassination of the Kennedy men and Martin Luther King will be gone from human memory. The same will be true for those more wonderful events, such as the landing on the moon, the Shoemaker-Levi crashing into Jupiter, and wedding of Charles and Diana, their latter public separation. Someday, the people, who rose to prominence as a result of those events, will be footnotes on an historical page. However, not every story will be so enduring. What was the impact on these events in the lives of your relatives? What was the impact in your own life? What were some of the events within your family that changed how you perceived your life? Those are the stories to collect for the generations to come.

I try to keep a private journal of my life, the mundane as well as the important. Recording my reactions, my thoughts about those events have produced a remarkable source for my family oral history. How did others in my family perceive those events? Collecting and recording the different perspectives help me personally, but from an historian’s perspective, they will provide future family historians, something new to study, an historical record.

Being a genealogist, I can appreciate how much better my research would be if only I could resurrect ancestors for an hour or twenty hours of conversation. You may feel the same as I do. Ask questions about when, how, and who—and why? With technology, you can give that gift to future generations, by recording the stories of the lives around you.

Maximizing Research & Time at the Library

Maximizing Research & Time at the Library

The strategy recommended in the above link is a 5-step process. It parallels, in concept, the strategy used by professional researchers whose expertise focuses around a specific area of knowledge, whether it is in history or science.