Grandma has an exciting story to tell about her life.
Grandpa has told us how he walked three miles to school in the snow, uphill
both ways. Your Great-great aunt has passed on exciting stories about her
grandparents, who were born just before the Civil War started. These stories
have taken up a special place in your heart, and you want them to survive. Keeping
stories alive about someone in your family that was a witness to the Civil War
is so important to you, but the genealogy bug hasn't gotten to your kids yet, and in order for family history to survive, we need
to pass it on to the younger generations.
If you like classic television, you’ve surely seen The Andy Griffith Show. In one of my
favorite episodes, Andy gets stuck in a bind with his son’s teacher over
History homework. The teacher gets so frustrated with her students’ apparent
lack of interest in their History studies that she is on the verge of quitting
when Andy steps in and tells the boys that they don’t want to learn about all
that “dull stuff” anyway –about “Indians, and Redcoats, and cannons, and guns
and muskets and stuff.” The boys get all excited that Andy seems to be in
agreement with them, and then they pause, turn, and look at him quizzically.
Then one pipes up: “What about Indians and Redcoats and cannons and muskets and
guns and stuff?” Andy brushes it off, saying, “Oh, you know. Indians and
Redcoats, and you know…history.” And
with that, the boys are hooked.
Andy then engages the boys (and his deputy, Barney Fife) in
a heart-pounding rendition of the tale of Paul Revere, and with every word, the
boys’ eyes grow wider, their jaws drop further, and they are drawn more and
more into the story. “He says the British
is comin’, the British is comin’, get your guns, we’re gonna have us a
revolution!” When Andy is finished, they demand to know just where he got
that story! Andy just replies, “Oh, your history book.” But the bait is already
sunk. The boys have been won over. History has come alive for them through the
power of storytelling, and they wanted to know more.
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| Barney and the boys listening to Andy's story |
(If you want to see the entire episode, it’s called Andy Discovers America, and it’s on
YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zYFC0-f7Qs.
The excerpt I discussed starts at the 10:15 mark.)
Children need to know that their ancestors’ lives were a
series of stories. There were times your ancestors probably picked up their son
or daughter on their knee and told them the story of the time they did this or
that. Pa Ingalls in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little
House book series was an expert storyteller. Laura preserved those stories
in her books, always just as exciting as when Pa told it to her.
And that is what I want to challenge you to do with your
children. Capture your family stories in a homemade storybook. Write out their
stories in narrative form, with dialogue and action verbs and illustrations by
your child. Turn that story your grandpa told you into a storybook. Turn the
family legend of your ancestor’s crossing of the Atlantic into a storybook. Was
your 7th great-grandfather a teacher in a small town in Germany? His
story can be in a storybook. Was your 3rd great-grandfather a Union
soldier? That can be a storybook, too.
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| An illustration by my daughter, Ellie, about our ancestor Jesse Vawter |
Will you and your children join me? I’d love to create a
community of people turning their family history into storybooks with the help
of your children. Or you can do it on your own, and present the book to your
children or grandchildren as a gift. It’s up to you! Whatever you do, share it
with the rest of us! Use the hashtag #StorybookAncestor or simply comment on
this blog with your link. I’ll be sharing the storybooks I create with my 7
year old daughter and I'll check in every week to share everyone else's. I can’t wait to see what everyone
comes up with. Best wishes!
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