Remembered Stories ...

And the importance of documenting oral family history and personal memories ...

Oral family history is an important part of family history research because it provides us with insights into our ancestors beyond what we can find in the paper trail. It is important to try to preserve these stories for future generations.

Because oral family history stories are often passed down by word-of-mouth from generation to generation, changes inevitably creep into them. The fewer the number of generations family stories pass through before being documented the better. More often than not, these stories have their basis in fact but the detail tends to change in the telling. The more distant the story gets from the person at the centre of it, the more embellished it may become. For this reason, we should seek them out and preserve them in some way.

One way to preserve oral family history is to record older family members in an audio file as they tell their stories. Unfortunately, in many cases, we don't think of doing this until after they are gone and it is too late. Another thing we can do is to write their stories down, as best we can remember them, so that they become written remembered stories available to future generations.

Similarly, our own personal memories of family and our own experiences have the potential to be important to future generations and to play an important part in their family history research in future years. We need to document our own stories in a way that preserves them.

Posts I have written that include oral family history and/or personal memories are:

My Needham Family 

Left Behind in Dunedin - Emma's Story 

Warts and All - A Little Bit of Magic?