Documenting family history

Poor Uncle Tom

Ok I need your honest opinions here.

My family's history is, like most others, passed down through the generations rather than being archived somewhere for easy reference. I want to put what I know of it on paper to, firstly preserve a record of some kind for future generations and, secondly, to purge my mind of this percieved burden. You see, the links of the generations are quite large (my grandfather was born 11 years after the Great Famine) and the stories are flowery and the means of telling them is quite primative. I don't know how accurate a lot of the events and details of the people involved are.

So I want to write my family stories and events down in a kind of story by story development of my family as I've come to know them carried forward with the development of our local area and other families and events of the area and times involved.

So I suppose it will be a patchwork of semi-fiction. What I am wrestling with is the idea that this would be wrong to portray family events as a work of semi-fiction.

What do you think, please be gentle, it's the first time I've aired this...:o

pickarooney

I'd say 'historical novel' is your best bet - primarily based on facts but with leeway for apocryphal anecdotes, embellishments and gap-filling.

Poor Uncle Tom

Thank you, that sounds exactly what I want. One of my sons is responsible for this, he's not the outdoorsy type and loves hearing stories so I'm going to do this as a long term project with him. I'm going to really enjoy this....:)