Every family history has a story to tell

Writing about your discoveries transforms skeletal family trees into living histories by relating to the personal struggles and successes of previous generations. Such narratives can be emotional, exciting, engaging, and entertaining for your family. Family history is always educational, as it peels back the layers of time and memory that shroud people, places and periods.

Finest family legacy

My ancestors were a mixed bunch: There were tinkers, cheese-makers, gardeners, millworkers, retailers, soldiers, a sailor, an airman, a coal miner, and a runaway teenage bride (my mother). Her nuptials were probably the first of the 475,000 UK weddings during World War Two.

Great-grandparents fled to England, pursued by the Russian Czar’s Cossacks.

Here are some early questions to ask:

How did my ancestors fare in their lifetime?
Where did my family come from?
What have I experienced in my lifetime?
Record the lives and times of ancestors for future generations?

Write it all down… and search for pictures and mementoes in the attic, then ask relatives what they remember. Research the times in which they lived. Soon, you should have a story so memorable that it will resonate with your family now and for generations to come…

After 60 years of writing for millions of readers around the world, I decided to write about my lifetime of adventures and the people who have marked my life as an international journalist and editor. That was 2020 and 2021, as Covid-19 raged. New Government travel restrictions meant family members were socially entrapped in deepest Costa Rica, Essex, Devon and Northumberland. Worldwide flights were curtailed, and millions of people became isolated from family and friends.

Trapped in Costa Rica, my son, Ben, shared a treetop cabin in the rainforest with a colony of howler monkeys and iguanas. Another family first. So it was a good time to prise open the family history cupboard and reveal any skeletons inside…

I summoned up all my journalistic experience to probe my family’s past. I discovered clues and relatives in South Africa, America, Russia, England, Wales and Denmark. Soon, I was reeling from the startling revelations about ancestors in my rapidly assembled family tree…

Mother, a runaway teenage bride

Ancestral stories hang naturally on any compiled family tree as they bring the “names” to life. Sometimes fine deeds or misdeeds, moments of magic or madness or even a shared moment in history with a famous personality. Ancestry-Stories.com offers a growing library of short, easy-read stories. They take, typically, around seven minutes to read: on journeys, work breaks or when it’s time to hit the sack.

To produce a strong family history story should be your family’s finest legacy and inheritance — pages to be read avidly and added to by future generations. If published online, “My Family Story” can be easily updated with new adventures, achievements, and heartaches. Good news and bad news echo down the ages and helps descendants to find their place in the Family Tree.

Stories need to be told

New family sagas can often attract attention and fans worldwide, and they deserve to be shared with as many readers as possible. Social media is one obvious channel, but with relevant links to specialist short story websites like Ancestry-Stories.com, “lost” or “misplaced” family members can easily share their newly discovered history.

The stories and actions of those who came before us often influence successive generations, including current descendants. Let’s also celebrate what our family is achieving today. Because every generation adds a new chapter to our shared history.

If you are itching to write and gain an appreciative readership for your work, can we suggest 2026 as the year to fire up your creative talents? Maybe, like Don Quixote, the inspirational hero of the 17th-century Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes that has intrigued, inspired and challenged authors and artists for centuries, you can tilt at a few windmills of your own. And they do say the pen is mightier than the sword?

A great-grandfather revealed as a military draft dodger fleeing 19th-century Cossack press gangs in White Russia. A great-grandmother producing the first of nine children when she was just 12 years old… And still we are digging in the closet…

1915 was evidently a very frantic year for my Jewish granddad, who joined the British army, revealed he had fathered an out-of-wedlock son, and then married (in a Bethel Baptist Chapel) a woman who was not the mother. In the same year, he managed to get shot and was then invalided out of the army. For which he’d volunteered despite being in a wartime reserved occupation as the first recorded Jewish coalminer in Wales.

Historic Hard Day’s Night

After a start like that, I added my own adventures around the world, and my memoir quickly grew to book-sized 80,000 words, entitled My Life, in Words.

Even as I wrote down the stories, more of the participants took their leave of us. Sir Harold Evans, acknowledged as “The finest journalist of all time” – and my mentor over the years – left his own version of a story I had already written for My Life, in Words. The story of the historic Hard Day’s Night we shared, together with John F. Kennedy, John, Paul, George and Ringo, became the most popular read in The Times tributes the day after Harry Evans died in 2020. I was happy to have been its author.

We have published both versions of that momentous day here in Ancestry Stories. Budding family history writers may find many helpful pointers in the Hard Day’s Night stories and in the many other entertaining factual short stories in our library. Plus, we have more lined up for publication.

Terry Walker | Editor | North Essex, England | January 2025