This is by far one of my favorite tricks to get organized.
Inspired by the hall trays in Victorian homes for calling cards, I came up with Character Cards. Whenever I “add” a new relative to a family branch, I make up my own little version of a collectible edition trading card. I call them my Character Cards.
Each family has their own ever-expanding “Deck.” The Decks only get larger, because unlike real live families, no one gets discarded (buried). In most cases, I have figuratively dug them up :).
I have a specific list of info that I want to chase for each Character. These are the same old things one puts on an ancestry chart : dates and places of major life events, occupations, spouses, a parentage note etc. I also include on my hunting and collecting list an “image.” I really like having pictures. So, in some cases where none is (yet) available, I will opt for some other image to represent the person and their statistics. It can be anything I can connect to the real person. For one uncle I have a scan of a lock of hair found wrapped in tissue paper marked “Tommy’s first hair cut.” Eventually, I hope to find a photo, but until then he is represented as a little yellow curl.
I do not put original items on my cards. I only use scanned images and I simply tape them on with cellophane tape. I can pop a whole collection into my purse and head off to the cemetery, history center, or out to do drive- by house photos.
My family has a big laugh with this…they have always insisted that I don’t quite play with a full deck, and now, well…they have it in writing 🙂
For this post, I’m borrowing a piece I wrote for another blog. Hopefully this will give you something to read once your fingers are worn out from taking notes all day and basking in inspirations ! Hope your day will be / has been fab !
Your first grade teacher said it repeatedly…its only right to share. I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly. I have no tolerance for family researchers who refuse to share their discoveries. Some don’t blatantly refuse, they just never “find the time” to dig up what they’ve offered to share. Not only is it greedy and mean, it can be quite foolish too.
I’m telling you this as I sit in my cozy house in the heartland. Far away from the battered east coast and Atlantic shore, while my lights are flickering eerily and our giant oak trees are dancing wildly at the whim of Sandy’s winds. It hasn’t rained a drop yet here, but my knobby joints tell me the rain will start soon. The month is October. It means raking up leaves, planning haunts and wearing pink ribbons. I am a survivor, so October is like being tapped on the shoulder for me. These are just a sampling of the reasons I want to share our stories with the rest of our generations.
The most efficient way to preserve family history is to spread it around.
Here in Indiana, the summer news doesn’t go for long without reporting from a community devastated by storms. Inevitably, there is the interview with a distraught resident clutching a battered photo album and crying. At least we have each other. From knee-deep in rubble that used to be a home, they have fished out the pictures and been thankful to have them. We all need this. We need a shred of proof that somehow, someway, we belong and are connected.
And, I am writing this post as my regular weekly topic in October for its publish date in November because on the day I’ll post it, I am scheduled for a surgery. Nothing big or important, but one whiff of anesthesia and I tend to sail out the window for a couple of days.
Doing this little medical “time out” in the middle of my NaNoWriMo with a twist is pretty crazy. I will be doing the previously un-tried. I will be scheduling a post and not hitting the “publish now button.” So that in itself makes me nervous…what if…my post doesn’t post?
Maybe that’s only a bit of my own desperation to “share.” On a recent writing prompt, I mentioned that some of the stories I have.been privy to hearing will never see the light of day until a couple of generations have made their peace and feel distant enough from the event to hear the stories and not acutely feel the pain.
That‘s a huge reason to “share the wealth” if you will. So if you can’t bring yourself to share the fruits harvested for your tree, at least consider what you would personally lose in a similar event. There will be a Sandy, a Surgery, a Pink Ribbon or a “doing what is untried” in all our futures. Hopefully, when your turn comes, you will have shared enough that one of these inevitable life events will not land the memory of your family curbside for Tuesday’s pick up.
Every family’s “quirks” and traditions have to come from somewhere. Around the dawn of the 20th century, our Victorian relatives were into some weird stuff. Germans really enjoyed their mysticism, mediums and seances. Some folks dabbled in phrenology, eugenics, and even handwriting analysis. Granted, the handwriting thing has come to be accepted as a pseudo science, but some of the other stuff? Whew!
Think about the Victorian fervor for the “language” of flowers. Then take a look at some old family wedding pictures. Do you find anything that went rather “unsaid?” Was Grandmama hiding any hints or scraps of wisdom in her bouquet? What did the lapel posy say about the groom? Coincidence?
In daily living and in researching with my family, I’ve found a few skeletons lying outside the closet door. Take for instance the skeleton that resided~ coffin and all~ in my second cousins’ front room for years. Somehow this branch of the family had “inherited” this unusual parlor piece when an aunt died. It seemed ol’ Aunt Luly was a high mistress / exalted poo-bah of some “unusual” lodge or another. So, she was the trusted keeper of the the “box.” I’m not sure who it was, or what the real scoop was…but I saw it. Often. And no one who lived there in the house with it seemed to be creeped -out. I assume that “Becky” as I will call her/ him / it, was eventually interred or placed with another family once the new cult leader...chairwoman was installed. For all I know it was plastic, but never the less it was creepy. They’re all gone now, otherwise, I’d ask.
You may want to bring this up in casual conversation and see where it leads with your family.
Chances are pretty good that you’ll hear tales of at-home wakes and such. They were pretty common in some areas through the second world war era. My Mom’s family held this tradition in the rural community where she was raised well into the mid 1940s. In one of my favorite movies ever, my beloved Gone With the Wind, Mrs O’Hara is laid out on the dining room table. In a more contemporary vignette, the opening scenes of Sunset Boulevard feature Norma Desmond’s beloved pet chimp awaiting the undertaker in her posh Hollywood bedroom. I’ll admit that it didn’t seem as weird in the Civil War setting.
My Balkan relatives had a gruesome insistence on a photo with the dead family members. When a loved one passed, their casket would be propped up on the church steps as the poll bearers held the departed in place. A formal portrait would then be taken with all the close and extended family, and various Club and Union delegates posed carefully around the deceased. To this day, I know some older folks still want one last photo of their brother, spouse, whoever in their final rest. Now-a-days though, this is usually arranged in private before other family and friends are let into the room for visitation.
Funerals and death aren’t the only time our ancestors got freaky, but usually these are the traditions that sort of stand out. If you are ever going thru an attic or antique shop and run across a portrait of a sleeping baby…you guessed it…the baby is dead. Another one you will see occasionally is a picture of a willow tree with a lock of hair in the frame with the picture, same thing. A big family gathering photo with a funny looking blob on the wall in the back ground is probably a shrouded mirror, and you guessed again, a funeral gathering. Sometimes the photo is taken outdoors and if you peek behind a head or two you’ll spot a black crepe wreath on the front door. This is a signal to passers by that the family is in mourning, so it would be rather respectable to slow the horses and remove one’s hat.
But like I said, it’s not always death that brings out an unusual tradition. My Grandpa Farmer was a tea-totaling Methodist who had a disdainful and queasy feeling around Catholics and their “idolatry.” But he made a pretty tidy income on the side “witching” half the wells in Boone county for a fee. Grandpa would cut a switch (thin flexible little branch) off of a weeping willow tree. He always selected one with a sturdy “Y” shape for divining wells. The plain switches were for swatting the be-hinds of unruly grandchildren. George the Methodist would then hold the top Y ends in his hands lightly in front of him and walk about on the property of the neighbor he was witching for. When he found the underground well spring, the switch would twitch and that’s where they were instructed to start digging. In 1965 when my parents built their new house, Grandpa came over and witched the well. We never went without water.
Yesterday while out-of-town on a kid errand (our youngest plays a travel sport) we found ourselves near a sort of long-lost relative. The soccer team was celebrating with a pool party at the hotel, so my husband and I ventured out for a happen-stance visit.
I think my generation, baby boomers, is the last to practice and embrace this tradition. When we say to each other ” hey, don’t be a stranger!”We actually are extending anopen invitation. Its something I really miss in our daily modern life and family. We were in the neighborhood ( only a 45 minute drive from the hotel) so we did “drop-in”
Unannounced, as that is the custom of my fellow “Boomers.”
After some winding around and false recognition (we had probably been lost that waybefore) we pulled up to the house of uncle Charlie.
Our plan had been to say a quick hello, or to stay for an hour if we weren’t interrupting something. But the 6 years since we had last visited melted away in seconds and we sat on their beautiful long front porch scanning the crop laden horizon for hours. While big city newspapers boast of all the news that’s fit to print, we sat in the shade swinging back and forth with cold tea and long-winded updates and re-visitations of all sorts of matters.
This is what I miss and want to hand down to my grandchildren. Unfortunately, it is lost and likely will be gone forever. This seamless feeling of acceptance, of connectedness and of belonging to a family. I know it can’t always be like this. It’s just a fact of life that some of us will never get along and “play nice” with all of our relatives. In truth, if we had not been “in the neighborhood” we probably wouldn’t have made the effort. But on that porch, on that hot afternoon, with those lovely people who look like my husband, and whom my children half resemble, that was bliss.
Once the stories start flowing and your paper ghosts are wriggling with life, you may find yourself with a lotof volunteers. Now is the time to be extra creative. Use all the help that is offered ! Rather than seeing enthusiastic volunteers as “Johnny-Come-Lately-Bandwagon-Jumpers,” consider how their eagerness to help could add to the richness of the ultimate end product. Collaborating this way will make your work an “of the people, by the people” sort of outcome for your family tree.
Think about a special talent aunt Susan can contribute. She might well be the biggest gossip in 3 counties…so use that! You can always debunk / confirm later. But for now, pull up a chair, turn her on and let her rip! Don’t stop with the volunteers who step forward ! Everyone knows there is an unwritten code of honor among thieves, however that code pales to the closed -community of cooks who hold the family recipes! When buttered up and coddled. cooks may be moved to show heart and dig out family recipes to share. They could also be put on the task of beating secret recipes out of others within the inner circle of the kitchen. Artsy types could be put to work designing a cover for the finished product, or Illuminating pages. The scholarly would enjoy collaborating with each branch to create a representative family crest (see a later posting for info on this). The hoarders (God bless us everyone!) can be assigned to photo finding, or heirloom display.
Get them all working together as a team . Once your dear hoarder has unearthed Grandmama’s wedding china, perhaps there’s a shutter bug just waiting to document those very heirlooms from every angle. Clearly, there’s no reason to pass over your clan”s computer geek! They could join forces with the children in a google scavenger hunt of mapping and street viewing ancestral homes. And, if the Saints are smiling upon you, may you find yourself in the fortunate position of being related to one or more retired couples who just loveto travel. If you can engage their enthusiasm and wunderlust they may become the boots on the ground you’ve always wished for to find and photo far away monuments or records.
The more the merrier… really ! However you scheme (or choose to use) the willing participants, don’t hesitate when they offer. Really pull out all stops to let their experience count ! If several family members become truly vested in this work (with a very specific task assigned) the hype will be bigger and the end result will have broader appeal.
You and I both know that there has to be an invisible lid on this “doling out of jobs” in order for it to work. Play your hand a bit close. Be sure to explain that in order for you to be an effective writer and compiler of your collective story, you will need certain things from all of them. Timelines, confidentiality, steadfastness of the untiring persuer…and all suggestions in written form and sent to your email or mailbox. You’ve got to be able to focus on the big task and trust that as the adultsthey are…they will keep noses to the grindstone and complete their mission! Independent of you. Ask your mother. .. don’t bug me to death… tend to your own knittin’… implied but unsaid 🙂
It’s always a fine line when families are called to work together. Delegating fairly and effectively without being seen as bossy is a dance on the tightrope. But if you can stand to let them help, you will be rewarded in the end. After all, families are like…well you know…everybody has one !
This is by far one of my favorite tricks to get organized. 
Maybe someone should write that down... 