How to show and not just tell about your ancestors
In today's digital age, images are essential for family history. Here's why they matter and some examples from my own genealogy writing.
One of the big reasons I’m moving away from “professional genealogy”, is the enforced scholarly writing style. It’s dull and unfulfilling for me to read, and similarly dull and unfulfilling for me to write.
My desire is to write engaging stories of my ancestors that my family can not put down. These stories published in books become treasured family heirlooms. So treasured that the book spines are broken and pages dog-eared. I want to hear my cousins repeat the chronicles I’ve co-created with them at family gatherings, grounding us to our shared past.
I believe the key to move from flat, unemotional, scholarly writing to writing my family will want to read, is to show, not just tell. Typically “showing” means elegant descriptions of people and places. In today’s digital age, showing can simply be done through images.
Why “Showing” is better than “Telling”
Humans love images.
This is why video and memes are much more viral on social media than text posts. You are much more likely to ask your friends “Did you the see the footage of that bridge collapse?”than “Did you read that 3,000 word analysis of possible causes of that bridge collapse?”
It’s not that we don’t care about the details of how bridges collapse, it just that our days are full and spending hours reading about civil engineering, isn’t a priority. It’s enough to see the image, read a few sentences, and go on with our day.
Family history is similar.
Genealogists will produce generations of family trees with names, dates, and locations, backed up with document images and thrust them at family members expecting rounds of applause.
The receivers immediate reaction is “Why should I care about this?”
For family to understand why they should care, each person must read the documents alone, analyze original records (often in handwriting) and examine the tree charts. Then they have put it all together in their brain to create some sort of cohesive story of what it all means.
What a huge effort to expect family to make! In fact for most people, it feels like a school assignment (especially if you include DNA analysis) and so it gets put aside.
Family tree charts, timelines, and even original documents are telling about ancestors, not showing the lives of those ancestors.
What “Showing” is
Showing your ancestors’ lives involves writing with an images -first mentality.
Imagine you have hired Ken Burns to tell the story of your great great grandfather. Ken Burns is a documentary film maker and would use five to ten images to illustrate where the man was born, the work he did, how he traveled, and other such details. He would show the images and have the narrator tell the story of your great great grandfather as they go by.
Showing means allowing the photos, maps, and artwork to carry as much as the weight of the story as the words do.
What can you use to “Show”?
In the digital age, images are everywhere. And anyone can annotate (draw on), crop, enhance, or even generate their own images to illustrate their family history.
Here’s some examples from my own family history writing of images I’ve used and created:
Aerial photographs
As soon as man went up in airplanes, he started taking images of what was on the ground. Often government agencies did aerial photography to plan roads, adjust zoning, or assess land use. Government photographs are free to use with no copyright restrictions so seek these out first. State archives, the National Archive, and the Library of Congress are great places to look for these.
This aerial photograph of the Alan Wood Steel Factory in 1922 is annotated to show the location of the Wilmer family’s dairy property. While maps of the time show the farmland surrounding the factory, this photo makes the closeness really hit home.
Crowd photographs
If you do not have family photographs, you do not want to deceive your family by including photographs of other random people explaining how they could have looked like your ancestors. But you can include photographs of crowds of people from the time and place of your ancestors to illustrate how your family could have looked.
Examples include military units (either your ancestor’s or one similar to it), city street scenes, factory workers or miners at their job, children at schools, or farmers working the land. Often these crowd photographs are taken from a distance and the people in them cannot be identified, making them perfect for illustrating what you are telling.
This wide shot of an Union Army camp from the Matthew Brady collection at the National Archives can go along with the story of any Pennsylvania Civil War regiment.
Family photographs
These are obvious to include if you have them. Consider adding both the original and enhanced, colorized versions for readers. Providing an analysis of the clothing, uniforms, background, hair styles, and any accessories being held or worn, will also be valued by your readers.
The oldest family photograph I own is of my great grandmother, Anna Mae (on the left) with her sister, Verna, and her mother Rebecca (Lauck) Heberling. Rebecca died soon after this photo was taken and I wonder if she knew she was ill and that spurred the portrait. These were her only two daughters with her second husband, William Heberling. I wish William was in the photo too, but he was shot in the cheek and jaw during the Civil War and possibly did not want his photo taken.
Drawings and paintings
Before there were photographs, there were drawings and paintings of our ancestors and the world around them. This art was made both in cities and the country, and always of the wealthy who paid to have themselves painted. Art historians note the time and place of each work making it easy to find pieces to use for family history.
The Year Without a Summer, 1816, is something rarely mentioned in history books. A volcanic eruption turned the skies orange and dimmed the sun so much that it snowed in June and we had a hard frost in July in Pennsylvania. Crops failed, people starved, and there were significant migrations of people across Europe and the Northeast United States. We only know of this event and its impact from a few newspaper mentions and some family letters. The effect of volcanic eruption was obviously worldwide. This painting done at the time shows how weird the sky was.
Maps
A map showing a migration route is better than listing the place names or telling the number of miles traveled. Even maps showing where an ancestor lived is better than just listing the name of the town and county.
My grandparents lived at 10 Gallagher Road, Plymouth Meeting. The house is no longer there (along with the road itself), but I found it, along with the 10 other homes for employees of Lavino’s on this Sanborn Map. The story goes that the homes were all kit homes and shipped to the site for workers to build themselves. There were supposed to be 12 homes, but the final home did not have all the pieces, so they only built 11.
I’d love see your examples of images you’ve included in your writing. Drop them in the comments below!
How many images do you need?
My suggestion is to plan on using one image on every page when using 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper size. For books printed in the typical trade size of 6 x 9 inches, an image every 2 page spread is sufficient.
This sounds like a lot, but remember these images will not just entice your family to read the text, but will also help create the mental images as they read to get the most of the facts you do you share. Think Ken Burns!
Writing by genealogists does not have to be done in a scholarly style. Yes, the facts of the genealogy need to be sourced and accurate, but that does not mean having cited facts, page-after-page. Showing family history by adding images produces engaging writing family member will love to read.
I love the idea of using the Sandborn maps. Several of my ancestors' homes were caught up in the urban renewal craze so nothing is there except buildings and concrete. I know so many people think genealogy is about dates and names. There is so much more. Great article!
Love this! My family was heavily affected by the year of no summer 1816 when they moved from Ohio to Illinois. I have all of the details of their journey but no photos of course. What a great way to illustrate the year in paintings of red sunsets. I'm stealing this idea!