SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING YOUR PERSONAL HISTORY

Offered by Everton Publishers

1. Your Birth: when, where, parents, surrounding circumstances and condtions.

2. Your childhood: health, diseases, accidents, playmates, trips, associations with your brothers and sisters, unusual happenings, visitors in your home, visits to grandparents, relatives you remember, religion in hour home, financial conditions of parents.

3. Your brothers and sisters: names, date of birth, place of birth, accomplishments, names of of spouses, date and place of marriage, their children.

4. Your school days: schools attended, teachers, courses studie3d, special activities, associates, achievements, socials, report cards, humorous situations, who or what influenced you to tkae certain courses or do things you might not otherwise have done.

5. Your activities before, after and between school sessions: vacations, jobs, attendance at church, other church functions, scouting, sports, tasks at home, fun and funny situations.

6. Your courtship and marriage: meeting your spouse, special dates, how the question was popped, marriage plans, the wedding, parties and receptions, gifts, honeymoon, meeting your in-laws, what influenced you most in your choice of spouse.

7. Settling down to married life: your new home, starting housekeeping, bride's biscuits, spats and adjustments, a growing love, making ends meet, joys and sorrows, your mother-in- law, other in-laws.

8. Your vocation: training for your job, promotions, companies you worked for, salaries, associates, achievements, your own business.

9. Your children: names, dates and places of births, health of mother before and after, how father fared, characteristics, habits, smart sayings and doings, grown up, accomplishments, schooling, marriage, vocations, sicknesses, accidents, operations.

10. Your civic and political activities: positions held, services rendered, clubs, fraternities and lodges you have joined.

11. Your church activities: as a young person, through adolescence, churches attended, church positions, church associates, church certificates, answers to prayers, necessity and power of love.

12. Your avocations: sports, home hobbies, dramatic and musical activities, reading habits, genealogy, travels, favorite sonts, movies, books, writings, poems, etc.

13. Special celebrations or holidays you remember: Easter, Christmas, national and local holidays, vacations.

14. Your plans and hopes for the future.

15. Your ancestors: your impressions of those you knew personally; a general sketch of those you did not know; father, mother, grandparents, great-grandparents, other relatives.

16. Your encouragement and counsel to your descendants: carrying on in family traditions and activities; their obligations to their country, church and family; your suggestions to your progeny and others on honest, humility, health, diligence, perseverance, thrift, loyalty, kindness, reverence, the Bible and other religious and edifying books; service to fellowmen, your belief regarding God, etc.

17. Hints on writing your life story: tell your story plainly and with directness; write truthfully of uplifting, refined and honorable occurrences and experiences. Humor helps to make for easier reading. If you can give the whys of your decisions and changaes in activities, it may help others. Illustrate with as many pictures as possible. Make several copies, or better still print and give to each of your children and grandchildren. Place copies in local and national libraries and/or historical societies.


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Page Begun 27 Sep 2002
Page Updated 2002
Page Updated by J. A. McClung