Who will they think you are?

'You are the only one who gets to decide what you will be remembered for'. Taylor Swift.

Many people are interested in genealogy, and I agree, it is fascinating to find out about one’s ancestors. But while we can find out the facts, can we ever find out who they really were? What they thought and felt about themselves, and how they lived their lives? Their emotional autobiography?

This is my great grandmother Barbara. She was born in a wee highland village in Scotland in 1873. She was one of 16 children. Around 1900, when Barbara was about 27 years old, she went on holiday to Tunisia.

Barbara before her marriage, late 1890s.

While Barbara was in North Africa she met Albert, who happened to live just seven miles away from her in the Highlands of Scotland. They married three years later.

When Barbara moved into Albert’s family home, it had a dirt floor and needed a major upgrade, with an extension. While the work was going on they lived in an outhouse in the garden. It was a very well built outhouse, with a stone fireplace and chimney, but no insulation (in Scotland!). While they lived there Barbara gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Later, they moved back into the house, which now had wooden floors. Due to the high cost of wallpaper they panelled the main room walls and ceiling with readily available, cheaper pine.

The panelled main room of the family house.

A further three children followed. Albert’s mother had run a post office from the house, but the new extension to the house included a shop, to cater for the summer tourists. Albert and Barbara ran the shop and the post office, though since Albert was 24 years older, the main responsibility eventually fell to her.

This is a picture of Albert, Betty, Mary and Barbara, sitting outside the panelled main room. I sat on the same bench with my grandmother when I was a child.

In 1922 Barbara went to stay with her mother, who was ill. While she was away her daughter Mary became unwell. Nobody realised how serious her illness was, until her mother came home. Then they rushed Mary to hospital. Rushed was actually impossible at the time as there were few cars, so she either travelled the fifty miles to the hospital by horse-drawn carriage, or by steam train from the nearest village, seven miles away. By the time Mary arrived at the hospital her appendix had burst and she died, aged 10.

Albert died in 1933 and Barbara died in 1956. Their eldest son Albert took over the running of the shop and the post office.

If Barbara wrote any letters, or a diary, they have been lost. There is no record of her hopes, dreams or a personal viewpoint about the events in her life. She is emotionless, which I am sure she would not have been in life. Why did she visit Tunisia? Did she have dreams of travelling? How did she get the money? Was their marriage successful?

Sadly, I can’t go back and ask Barbara to answer my questions, to gain some insight into her life, or the lives of her family that grew up in the same house that I did. From my childhood bedroom window I could see the graveyard where Mary and all my family were buried.

All the evidence an ancestry hunter would find about little Mary would be a birth and death certificate, and the inscription on a gravestone. I have been told how Mary died, but I know nothing about her. The family tales about her character, and the small stories her family told about her as the consoled each other after her death, have disappeared on the winds of time.

But we can leave some insight into our own lives, and write our own emotional, personal narrative for future generations. Don’t let your ancestry hunters look at a picture of you and say, “who did you think you were?”

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I applaud you if you write a diary or start to write an autobiography. But you can also start by adding your personal views, your emotional narrative, to your photo captions and stories. Please do so, as future generations will love to know more about who you really are.

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This is a picture of me, at the back of the family house, aged about 15.

There are my personal views about this photo. My parents divorced when I was young and I was brought up by my grandparents, as my mother returned to Italy. I saw my mother about once every two years. This time she visited me at my grandparents’ home, and took this photo. Emotions were tense, since my grandmother disapproved of my mother and “her wild foreign ways”, and I felt my loyalty to both was being tested. My mother wanted to take a photo of me in the new top she had bought me. At the time I felt fat and ugly, as many teenagers do, and really, really did not want my photo taken. As a teenager I also did not think of my mother’s feelings, or how she may have wanted a photo of me, to keep when we were apart. Of course, nearly fifty years later, I can’t tell my mother I understand, because she died 14 years ago, but I can see that I looked better than I thought at the time, and I am glad to have the photo. Perhaps when my daughter grows up she will also like the photo, and learn a little more about me because I told this story.