How to Write a Family Biography

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Laura and today I'm going to talk with you about how to write a family biography. This can be sort of a daunting task of course if you have a big family. You're going to want to start off by thinking about where you want to start. Once you have that nailed down, you know, do you want to start with great grandmother, great great grandmother, once you have that nailed down you'll know exactly how much research you need to do. You're going to want to probably start off by making an outline, like a family tree which will help you greatly in figuring out you know, if I start up here with a great grandmother and I go trickle down to where I am at the bottom, you'll have this sort of guide for yourself to go off of as you're writing. And then you can start to gather information about these people. So you could sort of you know, branch out in to you know, branch out from your family tree in to different documents to sort of keep all this stuff together. You're going to probably want to interview other family members that are you know, still living who knew these people or who know more about them than you do if you don't know about the older ones that have long passed, so you can get as much information as possible. So try to get information about their childhood, their adulthood, and their major achievements in their lives, so you can really create something that is rich and useful for people in generations after you. Also think about collecting family photos. It may seem like a given to collect family photos but it'll also help you go remember what people look like and to remember and to sort of connect a face with the name of the family tree. So just, again go to different relatives, get those photos, get the details of their lives, and really make sure that you give everyone as much weight as you possibly can. Of course if you don't know a lot about a particular cousin, you know who moved off to Alaska and did all these things that you don't really know about because they didn't contact the family. Well, there's nothing you can do about it. but include them in there, you know, say, there was this other person who was in the family, so that you really have this rich family history with all the mysteries included in it as well. So, have fun making your family biography."