What Were They Thinking?




What Were They Thinking?

You’re well aware by now of the importance social history plays in writing your family history stories. However, I’m not sure the family history writer is sensitive to the depths social history can participate in establishing a characters thoughts and actions.

When we have little knowledge of an ancestor’s life, social history plays a pivotal role in developing the habits and actions of that ancestor. While it is important to identify and understand the habits and activities of your ancestor, you must also define the world in which they made those decisions. In combination, you can observe what influenced their habits and actions and how those influences affected their daily life. It is in understanding these forces that we understand the decisions they made and therefore their motivations.

There’s that word again, motivations, the heart of our story. Understand their motivations, and you’ve gotten into the head of your ancestors. You’ve taken your reader beyond the surface and placed your reader not only into your ancestor’s world but inside their head, where the reader can make an emotional connection.

In her book Bringing Your Family to Life Through Social History, Katherine Scott Studevant defines social history as, “The study of ordinary people’s everyday lives.”

Few of us have exceptional people in our history, those people, who accomplished great things, so much so their lives, actions and thoughts are well documented. Instead, the majority of our ancestors were average and ordinary but it is in being common that we can place them within groups to help us understand their actions and decisions in life. It is in belonging to these groups that we can learn such things as their behaviours, beliefs and customs. Your ancestors can be placed in any number of groups, from the obvious religious groups; ethnic groups to their gender, age, occupation, those are but a few. By identifying the groups that your ancestor belonged to, and studying the habits of those groups in a greater context you can piece together a picture your ancestor’s everyday life. We can also come to understand the ideas and thoughts what prompted their decisions in life.

Social history looks to a variety of sciences to help us understand group and individual behaviours that include psychology, sociology, anthropology and geography. For this reason, when I say ‘look’ at social history to understand your ancestor, I don’t throw this idea around lightly. While social history research can help you identify the clothes your ancestor wore, their hairstyle, it can also help you to go deeper than just their physical appearance. Social history can put the food on their table, the dirt under their fingernails, the Bible on their night table and the x on their ballot.  Social history can help you identify an ancestor where the only thing that existed is a name on a document. It can assist you in turning an unknown ancestor into a character in your story. By studying group behaviours you begin to understand your ancestor’s actions, you start to shape a life that you may have never seen before. You begin to create not only a visual image of your ancestor, but you put thoughts and purpose behind their actions.

Below is a brief list of groups you may want to consider when researching the social history of an ancestor. We discuss social history and its relationship to profiling an ancestor in great detail in Authentic Ancestors. This list is very general in nature. Hopefully, it will be a launching board for more specific histories you can consult. There will be many different groups to consult based on your individual ancestor’s make-up. Look at your ancestor and create your own list of particular groups that he or she would have belonged to based on their age, occupation, culture, sex, religion, etc. The more specific you can be the more detailed and precise a profile you can create. The more precise the profile, the closer you become to understanding the thoughts and motivations behind your ancestor’s actions.

Local History

Rural and Agricultural Histories

Community Histories

Women’s History

Black’s History

Economic History

Labour Histories

History of the Family

Oral History

Folklore History

History of Childhood

History of Science and Technology

Sports History

History of Leisure

Military History

Immigrant History

Ethnic History

History of Education

 

 

Related Post

5 Ways to Describe Your Ancestor in a Story5 Ways to Describe Your Ancestor in a Story

 

When we write our family history stories one of our primary goals is to bring our reader and our ancestors closer together. Our goal is to help our reader to emotionally connect with our ancestor. There are five ways we can help make this happen in our family history stories.

 

The 5 ways we are going to cover involve both interior and exterior characterization. If you try to merge all five into your story when describing an ancestor, you’ll have a three-dimensional ancestor.

 

What is a three-dimensional ancestor? This is an ancestor that comes to life on the page for your reader. It is an ancestor that appears alive and real and standing in front of us and not lifeless and flat. It is an ancestor that your reader can connect with, through physically being able to see them in their mind’s eye, but all being able to connect with them emotionally. It involves using both interior and exterior characterization to bring our ancestor to the page.

 

Exterior characterization is achieved by showing your ancestor’s behaviour towards other people, their attitude to their surroundings and their physical characteristics.

 

Interior characterization involves using their thoughts about themselves and other people to help us to understand who they are.

We can tell or show the reader about aspects of our ancestors’ personalities and lives. We want both. We do this by showing them interacting with their surroundings, their body language and with dialogue.

 

1. Telling: Tell the reader who your ancestor is and what he or she does.

Example: Henry loved to wear a cowboy hat.

 

 

2. Showing: Allow your ancestor’s actions to show the reader their character.

Example: Henry headed out the door of his 5th Avenue Manhattan apartment. He grabbed his white cowboy hat from the table by the door. Pushing his sandy brown hair from his forehead, he eased the hat on his head and checked his reflection in the mirror.

 

 

3.Thinking: You can show an ancestor by allowing the reader to see the thoughts behind their actions and words. What an ancestor thinks about can help explain a great deal about them.

Example: Pushing his sandy brown hair from his forehead, Henry eased the hat on his head and checked his reflection in the mirror. Although he had been in the city for more than a year, he just couldn’t part with his cowboy hat. Besides, the ladies loved it.

 

 

4.Others: You can show us who your ancestor is by how he or she treats other people and the way others treat him.

Example: Your ancestor may be treated with reverence, fear or even hate. She may be treated with gentleness or insignificance. His or her prejudices and beliefs will also affect the way he or she handles others. Perhaps they show hatred for others different from themselves, religion, appearance, their class in society.

 

 

5.The Outside World: We can use the way our ancestor looks at the world around them to allow us a glimpse into their state of mind.

Example: A content ancestor sees the first winter’s snowfall as beautiful. An unhappy ancestor may be depressed by the freezing cold temperatures and being confined to indoors.  The images and words you choose to create the world around your ancestor can help shape your ancestor’s mood according to his or her viewpoint.

 

 

When you incorporate showing, telling, thinking, how your ancestor treats others and how they act and react to the outside world you have a better chance of bringing your ancestor to the page.  As a result, your reader is more likely able to get to know your ancestor, seeing them in their mind’s eye but also emotionally connecting with them.

 

 

What were they thinking? 

Painting a Picture with Characterization

Authentic Ancestors Workbook – Bringing Your Ancestors to Life through Characterization