Writing biographies on ancestors?

[benny1982]

One of my hobbies is writing a biography on certain ancestors including bmds, census records and any workhouse records plus maps of where they lived and such. Have any of you done this or wrote a book on a family lines?

Ben

 

[JMR]

Hi Ben,

Yes I did this, when I very first started researching my family history. I bought twin cabbage patch dolls with red hair for my Granddaughter and because she loved researching our tree, she wanted to call them after a set of twins in our tree.

We went back and looked at all the cases of twins, picked the prettiest, named the dolls and then started to look at who their family members were and what jobs they did. We ended up writing a childrens story together, which looked at the issues of children in the mines and common diseases of the time, which shortened children's lives. It was great fun for both of us and we learnt such a lot. Imagine our delight months later when we made contact with other family members around the world and found out that this family, was actually a family of red heads!

Jill

 

[duckweed]

My son was doing victorians at school so I helped him write about Victorian life using our ancestors lives as illustration. Now I'm expanding this into a history not just of the ancestors but the world around them, looking at the probable reasons why they left Lincolnshire, what the working conditions were like in their chosen occupations, their change of religion from Anglican to Methodist, photographs of where they lived when possible, what kind of area they lived in, etc. It's about 70 pages so far and the research has been fascinating. I know so much more about the Victorian era now. My husband says I should take it up academically.

 

[Ellie]

That sounds really interesting Duckweed, I bet you've learnt a great deal from that.