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Recording our personal history

S

streamboy

knowlegable brummie
What I like about this site is we can ramble on about our memories good,bad,funny and hopefully leave a record for those that follow,how I wish I had questioned my parents friends parents aunts uncles all the pre war people I came into contact with and kept a written record of their vast and varied experiences.
But alas myself like others being young then and knowing it all didn't think it was important and useful but we learn to late .
So everybody out there that have a few tales to tell so get telling folks our clock is ticking away at what seems a breakneck speed these days.
 
I am fortunate in that my Mother wrote down a lot of her stories in a few excercise-type books. Her writing had become quite bad (as mine has!) but I could read it and we made photocopies for some of the children etc. for if they ever want to know. Problem is, they don't really want to listen sometimes. One of our grandchildren likes to hear his grandad, especially when he says those immortal words "During the War" as in "Fools and Horses".
Maybe we should be writing even if it is in jotters like Mother did. I know people like to do everything on computers but when ours crashed we lost alot and the back-up hadn't worked.
I would add that not all those stories and family legends are always 100% correct!! Our family isn't from France as we were told...Certainly Brummies!!! At least nine generations now anyway!
rosie.
 
I sat down with my mom one afternoon and taped some of her memories , such as Sunday school trips on a coal barge up the cut, getting her front bike wheel stuck in the tram tracks and being marched home by a bobby and getting the strap off her dad, sitting down for a Sunday dinner and for a treat having a piece of meat then her older brother Billy pinching her meat and when she complained getting the strap off her dad and sent up to the attic and no dinner, working at the forge tavern cleaning when she was 12, going into service at 16 in a big house in edgbaston getting 1shilling and 9 pence a week then on Saturday evening walking to Rea street to meet her mom and handing over 1shilling and 3pence for house keeping even though she didn't live at home then walking back to edgbaston to prepare the supper for her bosses family .
Can you imagine our youngsters putting up with that.
Unfortunately I have not found that tape since and after lots of moving around the country its got mislaid ,but I will keep looking.
If I find it then I will call it Elsie's growing up in deritend between the wars.
 
Yes, public records don't tell you a great deal and the 1939 Register is generally the only document that gives you their occupation without buying birth, marriage and death certificates.. Electoral Rolls exclude everyone under voting age and tell you little else besides. So it is important to record everything you can, even if at times stories may be a little exagerated. And the other thing is photographs - never throw them away even if today you can't identify the person. At some point in the future someone may come up with an identity. Good hunting :)

Maurice :cool:
 
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