Family stories: It's in the genes

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As I get older I am conscious that the storytellers in my family are all dying off. Aunts, grandparents and even parents are disappearing at an alarming rate and if I'm not careful all the wonderful memories that make up the tales of their youth, our family history, will be lost forever. It should be compulsory to make anyone over a certain age...60? 70? record every detail about their childhood for a family history. It's never been easier, they could all talk into the iPhone voice memo gadget or into a dictaphone, God know's, the old ones love to talk...they just need a bit of a prod and they're off, given a regular supply of sherry/whisky my lot could go on for hours. 

Once those storytellers are gone, that's it. Before he died, my uncle Fred was the best storyteller in our family, he used to spin fantastically exaggerated yarns around his brothers and sisters, including my dad, which had my sister and I spellbound. It was the best way to pass on family history, however inaccurate and glamourised. If only the iPhone was around then to record him.

I now pester the remaining oldies for every scrap of information on their childhoods and slowly, each time they come to visit, they bring a story or a bit of family history with them. Last time my aunt and my dad (her brother) came up, they brought two old coat hangers and amazed me with the information that my great grandfather, J H Beaton, used to own a couple of clothes shops in Somerset. He was a tailor, and the photo above shows the clothes hangers -the only remaining souvenirs - from the stores. The fact that they fold up is pretty neat.

So perhaps the love of clothes and sewing is in the genes? The older I get, the more I want to know, who knows what what else they haven't told me yet? Time to crack the family whip..... 

Comments

[Becky]

How interesting. My parents recently came to visit us and we were looking through boxes of old photographs - we were saying just the same thing - we didn't know who so many of the people in the photographs were and were regretting the fact that we didn't speak to the people who knew before they died. I, like you, would like to know as much as possible about our family before the knowledge is all lost.

I have been watching lost of Who Do You Think You Are on DVD recently and it seems to me that those celebrities who are short on the relative front have a much harder time tracing who they are - it's also interesting, what many of them say, as you get older you feel this inexplicable need to find out where you come from - when you are young and all your older relatives are around, you couldn't care less !

[jill]

Did you get to keep those lovely vintage coathangers? Oh the memories that we miss...
My whole family photo albums were lost, after a lifetime of my father taking shot of us all. Now all I have is vivid memories of me as a baby in a large Silver Cross Pram! My Grandfather (long since dead said were related to Abraham Lincoln! Now where on earth would a Norfolk farming family come into that equasion.... until I recently read that his mother/or grandmother was from... you guessed it Norfolk! Who knows.. keep talking to those relatives it's later than you think.
Jill

[R. Kellock]

Your mention of coat hangers prompts me to confess, many years ago my job required staying in hotels through out the U.K and at that time ,all hotel groups provided personalised coat hangers.Having "acquired" a great number my wardrobe is a constant reminder of my travels to exciting places such as Workington,Hull and Todmorden