Fact or fiction
I began searching my family tree in the early 1980s, and back then I sent hand-written letters to strangers who happened to have the same surname as me. I found their details in telephone directories and wrote speculative letters, asking them whether we might possibly be related.
Many of the letters I sent went unanswered, and the replies I received varied between a straight ‘no, I don’t think we are related’, to those with a full history, stories of their family members, and hand-drawn pedigrees (family trees). I particularly loved receiving letters that told me a bit about the lives of the people in those trees – where they used to live, what they did for a living, or what they were like. There were stories about grumpy grandparents, descriptions of villages, houses, jobs people did, childhood memories and details of how people used to live. Family information was fleshed out, and I received more than just the facts in those letters – I learnt about people, their lives and their personalities.
In those pre-internet days, writing letters was one way of linking your ancestors to the ancestors of others, and it was the only way I could begin to research my family. I visited the local library and found addresses in telephone directories. As far as I knew, it was the only way of carrying out research. In my teens, I wasn’t aware of local record offices, archives or depositories, so my early research was very much limited to the information sent to me in those letters.
I did not know whether the information sent to me was fact or fiction, but it didn’t really matter at the time. I received a lot of replies, and I was able to formulate a rough family tree from those replies. Some trees linked to each other and some linked to my tree. It gave me a starting point.
Facts, facts and more facts
By the early 2000s I had created my online family tree. The paperwork I had accumulated over 20 years was pushed to one side, and my online tree became my go-to for family research. Since then, my tree has gathered facts – specifically, dates. Dates linked to births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials in the main, and occasionally other relevant dates, such as when someone started school or university, or when they joined the armed forces. Facts gathered from national censuses are useful – I can see where an ancestor lived at the time, who lived in the household, their ages and occupations. All facts, written down every ten years, tied to a specific date in time.
My tree is a collection of facts, with original records attached to people in the tree which confirm those facts. When I studied genealogy, one of the most important aspects taught was to gather proof – original records prove a fact, and guesswork or hearsay do not count as proof that something happened at a particular time. This is, of course, the correct path to take when researching a family. Facts and proof are the golden ticket – this is why I spend hours sat in an archive looking for elusive proof. When the needle in the haystack is found, it is an affirmation of proof, particularly when that proof was searched for on a hunch that a person must appear in a certain record.
However, are facts enough? I can create a pedigree from facts, and I can prove that the details are correct, because a record exists to prove that fact. To me, pedigrees are quite cold – I am happy with the facts, and a pedigree full of dates is informative, but I want to know more.
Diaries
Personal diaries are a fantastic resource for understanding the lives of ancestors. Hand-written diaries have existed for centuries. They provide an insight into the day-to-day lives of our ancestors, and they can reveal detailed and intimate information. Diaries are personal – a diary written 100 years ago was not written with the future in mind. A diary records facts – what the writer did on a particular day. It also records reasons – why they were doing something on a particular day. More importantly, a diary contains personal thoughts and feelings; how the writer felt that day, or why certain things happened on that day.
Old diaries were not written with anyone else in mind – they were personal records, and in the main, the writer put pen to paper to make a record of their own personal events and feelings. They did not expect their diary to be read by anyone else, and it is unlikely that they thought their diary might be read in 100 years’ time, by a genealogist researching their ancestors.
This is where the value of a diary comes to light – it gives character to a name in a pedigree. A diary changes a name into a person, and the written record tells a story of the person’s likes, dislikes, interests, activities, work, home life, relationships, fears and anxieties. A character is formed from the written word and, as a researcher, it makes me feel like I know about the person, rather than just knowing about their facts.
Today’s diaries
Do people still write diaries today? Some do, and others do so in a different way – by using social media. Many people post daily on Facebook or Instagram, for example, and their content ranges from details of days out or birthday celebrations, to the minutiae of what they had for dinner.
Social media is exactly that – it is media written and made available to the public. The writer always has the reader in mind, whether it’s a select group of friends or the wider community, a post will always be written with awareness of others.
Posts are written to create an image of the writer – people who post about every night out, every concert they go to, every pub they visit or film they see at the cinema are consciously showing the reader an image of an active social life. They are portraying a life of excitement and adventure, and of course, this is absolutely fine, but it’s only part of a person’s story. It provides an image of a great social life, for example, but it does not tell the reader any more than that. Awareness of public image means that social media posts only portray what the writer wants you to see.
The future?
I have friends and family who post on social media, and it’s great to read about their adventures. The posts are short-lived. I might read about a great night out, but am I going to remember it in a year’s time, or even next month? I doubt it – social media posts are here-and-now, and it is unlikely that anyone is going to trawl through posts to see what someone did five years ago, for example.
A written diary is different. It is physical, tangible and will last for years. Perhaps we should go back to writing diaries – the only problem is, the genie is out of the bottle. People are too aware that others may read their diaries, and perhaps that might steer the way entries are written. In 100 years’ time, what would a researcher look for? What will a fact look like? Will social media be considered factual? Will researchers trawl through your social media posts, or will they find a diary you have written? Will they see your public image, or will they learn about the real you? It’s food for thought.
Thanks for reading!
Sarah
