The marriage of a young couple in mid 19th century England.

How difficult it is sometimes to write in great detail about my ancestors! I wrote my paternal family history with relative ease, so why am I struggling with my maternal family history? I have researched them reasonably thoroughly and there’s plenty of data to work with. There may be many explanations for this apparent literary lassitude. My ancestors were average people and very few of them had extraordinary lives. I am older, elderly in fact and the creative juices appear to have thinned out somewhat. I have a cousin, also interested in our family history but unfortunately unable to work collaboratively. Yes, I know, they’re all feeble excuses!

The difficulty seems to be, how to structure and present their stories. Initially, I had a very ambitious plan. I considered starting with all the research that dates right back to the 18^th century, and I would attempt to tell the stories of each family that lived during that time simultaneously. I thought I could perhaps set their stories against a backdrop of events occurring during that period of time. This would provide context to their stories. Then I could work forward to the 19^th century and eventually to the 20^th century, repeating the process of telling the stories of all the maternal families during their respective timeframes, again within the context of events occurring at local, national and international levels. Like I said, an ambitious project! I started to feel overwhelmed at the enormity of such a task. After some thought and time, I abandoned that idea and so it was back to the drawing board.

My next plan was to relate each individual’s story and to present it in movie format. I have enjoyed making family movies for several decades and the idea of using this medium had many attractions. Making movies about family history is very different to writing their stories.  Whilst a good script is required, oodles of relevant photos (video footage is preferable) are also needed and for obvious reasons, that tends to be a definite obstacle.

Image of a typical industrial centre of 19th Century England.

The storyline and script need to be moulded together in a meaningful way and movie making tools are needed to maximise visual appeal to your audience. Careful selection of background music is required to enhance the mood. Despite all these requirements, I commenced on this project which was enjoyable and was applauded by the younger members of my family. They loved it especially after I discovered and added AI generated voice and images.

This was a great boost to the whole production. Instead of my familiar voice, I was able to select an AI voice that was suited to my ancestor. For example, I could use a British male voice when needed and instead of worrying about copyright images I was able to create a required image using ChatGPT, ensuring that there was a watermark to indicate the use of this wonderful technology! Plus, it was fun…for a while. Perhaps it was the writer in me, but I started to have doubts about the movie making industry. My own brother (bless his cotton socks!) complained, “But it’s not authentic. It’s only in your imagination”. I started to think, “Is this really how my family want to learn about their family history”? Even though, my motivation has waned a little, I remain interested in developing this medium as a way of informing younger generations about long forgotten stories of past family members. Besides, it is fun!

Image depicts coal miners labouring in a coal mine of 19th Century England.

Yet another idea has occurred about how to record and relate the stories of my maternal ancestors. Instead of writing a lengthy saga as required for method number one, this idea involves presenting the lives of each individual in a timeline. A consistent timeline structure would be needed and all pertinent information completed. Having completed that task, my next aim would be to search for any event or incident that is unique to each individual.

This may include an item of oral history, an anecdote or folklore tale about each ancestor. In other words, I need to find something unique and remarkable about each person, in order to produce a story authentic to each individual. Perhaps this story could be different to those events recorded in the timeline. This approach does seem to be more realistic and doable to me. Maybe when completed, this approach could become the basis for a movie production, or I could then write the full story using method number one…if I should live so long!

Thanks for reading this unravelling of my thoughts and problems. It has been a cathartic exercise and has definitely helped me to know how to proceed. I will start with my last idea and method so wish me luck! Perhaps you have experienced similar issues and maybe my ramblings have assisted you as well.

This image depicts a woman with several children whose ages range from 12years to a few months.