In school they were known as “Pen Portraits”If you’re stuck at the “list” stage or if you want to take a “one step at a time approach” to something bigger then writing family history templates is the easiest, most stress free way to start. I began by using research recording forms but I found the final product was just a different shaped list! What I needed was something between a list and a short story. The better I became at finding information the more disorganized I became.
Unexpected stories turned up in Canada, ( Finding Hidden Stories In Military Records) and a family secret saw the light of day ( What A Tangled Web We Weave) The process I went through each time was chaotic and in many instances I lost and found important information many times over. Using the magic of ancestry research I accumulated a plethora of names, dates, occupations and roots in many English counties. It was simply my way of dealing with the belief that, as I could not write a novel I would write what I know about my family history as I found it.
The first post I wrote for this blog, (Not The Beginning) was not intended to be a cryptic clue.
