Narratives & Storytelling

Data entry at its best can only skim the surface of a family’s true history. Stories and the images they create truly bring the past to life. A series of short stories bound together capture the essence of someone’s life.  Key to every life are dates and places. Immigration, occupation,  war, and family size all lend a part in revealing who your ancestors were and how they lived. Even an account of your research can become a story in itself.

Use our Narrative Request Form to determine the type of narrative or story you would like to have written. Think of major historical events which might have helped influence  the course of your family. Choose a theme to show what life was like for an ancestor, example: "Life During the Depression". Jot down family legends to give direction to each story. Remember that it’s the bits and pieces of someone’s life that brings both summary and reality to it. Several small stories grouped together will form a good picture of who someone was and what they were like.

An Example of Our Service

Grave found by a 7 year old outside his pre-Civil War home. Research established her as Anna Glenn (1879-1908), Crockett Co.,TN, married William Walters (1897), mother of three.

Narrative / Story —

Anna Glenn was born near your home and grew up doing some of the things that you like to do, like swimming in the summer and playing with her dogs.  When she was 20 years old she married and had a baby girl right away. Her husband, William, was a farmer.  He worked for a man who owned a lot of land. He helped plant and harvest his crops of cotton and corn.  He also helped pick fruit from the orchard when it was ripe and loaded it on a wagon to take to the market in downtown Jackson. While William worked, Anna took care of their babies.  She helped cook lunch for her husband and other men who worked in the orchard and cotton fields.  And then, I don't know why or how, Anna died when she was a young mother with three little children.  I think that she was loved and missed by her husband, children and kind friends.  The people who lived in your house when she died must have loved and respected her enough to say, "Let's bury her here near us so that we can care for her grave and remember how nice she was".