Review: You Can Write Your Family History by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack

You Can Write Your Family History by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, Genealogical Publishing Company, 2003, 245 p. Reprints: 2009, & 2013.

I recently rediscovered this gem of a book in my library and felt that it merited a review, even though it was originally published eighteen years ago. I was looking for a book that would provide guidance and, perhaps more importantly, the inspiration I needed to begin work on a long thought about family history book. This is one of the best books on genealogical authorship I have found.

Sharon DeBartolo Carmack is probably best known for writing the accessible and useful Carmack’s Guide to Copyright & Contracts: A Primer for Genealogists, Writers and Researchers. Here, she has produced another no-nonsense guide for genealogists, one that will enable readers to write that engrossing and well-documented family history book or journal article they’ve always dreamed about.

Carmack guides would-be authors through a writing project with a step-by-step approach, by devoting each chapter to an important point in the process. She begins by asking the reader, “What type of family history will you write?” and then discusses how to define the scope of that project. She addresses the questions that most researchers will have on their mind, including the inevitable, “Have I really found all I need to write a decent family history or do I need to research more?”

More than the usual how-to-write-family-histories guide, this book provides techniques and approaches to incorporate overarching themes into the story, and how to build suspense, humour and romance by using some of the same elements that might be found in fictional works. The author also discusses ways to use social histories to set your ancestors accurately in time and place, and how to settle on a particular narrative style to tell your unique story in the most appropriate manner possible.

She also explains how to use scenes and summaries in a work of creative non-fiction. “Scenes allow your readers to feel like eyewitnesses to the events you describe,” Carmack explains. “Summaries, on the other hand, simply tell the reader what happened in a way that moves the story along in time more quickly.” Helpful examples of various styles, narratives, and approaches can be found in the appendix.

While most of the book focuses on the gathering of information and the actual writing of a book, it also addresses post-writing concerns, such as marketing and promotion.

You Can Write Your Family History is a comprehensive, easy-to-follow guide to writing a family history. It might be just the book to inspire you to finally tell your ancestor’s story.

 

Review: Tracing Your Poor Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians by Stuart A. Raymond

Tracing Your Poor Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians by Stuart A. Raymond, Pen & Sword, 2020, 196 p.; indexes, notes, illustrations, photographs.

If you are a genealogist, you have probably identified several ancestors in your tree who were poor. In this guide, Stuart Raymond sets out to help genealogists and local historians locate information about their poorer ancestors who lived in England or Wales. He begins by providing a general history of the poor in that geographic area and introduces the reader to the institutions and systems created to address the issues of poverty, such as Poor Law, Prisons, Charities, and later, the formation of the Welfare State. 

The discussion around charities is extensive and comprehensive. The author looks at the many specific types of charity, including almshouses, apprenticeships, education, orphanages and children’s homes, hospitals, and other places of refuge. Wherever online databases exist for the records of these institutions, Raymond provides the URL along with pertinent details about the database. 

An entire chapter is devoted to the documentation of paupers during the time of Elizabethan Poor Laws, and another for the period after 1834 when the New Poor Law was adopted. The management of the poor during each of these eras left behind many records, including settlement certificates and examinations, removal orders, pauper apprenticeships indenture records, overseer accounts, vestry minutes, pauper lists, inventories and letters, workhouse documents, relief lists, bastardy records, vaccination records, school lists and more. 

Other chapters contain specifics about the lives of vagrants, criminals, and debtors and provide information about the types of records available for research. Each chapter includes a bibliography for further reading. 

This information-rich guidebook is just the thing to help genealogists understand the rules and societal expectations that the working poor, the unemployed and destitute were forced to live under in England. It also describes the many types of records that were created to keep track of the poor, and where these documents may be found today. Many are online, but the author makes a point of encouraging readers to do their in-person, on-site research, as well. This book will be extremely beneficial to the genealogist who wants to better understand their less-advantaged ancestors and the challenges faced in their day-to-day lives. Highly recommended.