HATCH, MATCH & DISPATCH
Research and write about
births, marriages and deaths
W16
Hatch, Match and Dispatch
Research and write about
births, marriages and deaths
When I started tracing my family history, my focus was the "hunt": tracking generation after generation back through time. Soon I started turning my research into prose — just the facts at the start, then my analysis of the evidence when the connections proved obscure, then my attempts to turn those facts into interesting prose. Later, I used my research and writing skills to tell internationally acclaimed true tales of murder, mystery and mayhem. Now I'm teaching those same skills to a new generation of genealogists.
In this course we explore the basics: the birth, marriage and death information that is so vital to our ancestral research.
For those still in the "hunting" stage, we look at the difficulties we can face in attempting to find or confirm our ancestor's birth connections and at strategies we can use for solving those problems.
For those who have moved into the "evidence analysis" stage, we explore ways to document our analysis and resulting conclusions for the benefit of our future selves and anyone else who might be interested.
For those in the "communication" stage, we explore styles we can use to craft interesting family histories, focusing on descriptions of our ancestors' birth, marriage and death details. Our birth descriptions, for example, can be used to set the historical, political or social scene, while our death descriptions offer a vehicle for concluding a biography in a way that brings us back to the historical context.
Course contents
General
1. Overview (coming)
Research lessons
2. Birth Traps: Insights from a Professional Transcriber
3. Birth Tricks: Strategies for Successful Searches
Writing lessons
4. Crafting Intriguing Birth Descriptions
5. Crafting Engaging Marriage Descriptions
6. Crafting Moving Death Descriptions
Currently, completed lessons can only be accessed by Annual Members.
Lesson 1
Overview
Our ancestors' lives are bookended by their births and deaths. We exist because they had offspring, mostly within the legal confines of marriage. Thus these "vital records", as they are known, are the most important records for genealogists to locate - and to write about.
This video provides an overview of information contained in this course.
Video duration: ? minutes (not yet prepared)
Handout: No
Lesson 2
BIRTH TRAPS
Insights from a Professional Transcriber
Professional transcribers see it all: the ordinary, the odd, the unreadable ... and the errors.
It's important that we assume that the entry documenting our ancestor's birth is correct. But occasionally, it isn't.
Mistakes can be made by the parents, the clergyman or clerk, and/or by anyone who has made a handwritten or typescript copy of the register or entry, then or now.
It turns out that the same types of mistakes are made over and over again in birth records and baptism registers. Why? Because we're all human and human behaviour follows patterns. Thus, the repetitive nature of these types of mistakes can assist us in our research.
Some errors will create huge problems for those trying to locate an ancestor's birth — unless we know what to look for.
That's the point of this lesson.
Video duration: 66 minutes (3 videos)
Handout: Yes (17 pages)
Lesson 3
Birth Tricks
Strategies for Successful Searches
Finding a birth entry for our ancestor is usually the most important vital record we require if we're to successfully trace our ancestry back another generation. Yet birth entries can be surprisingly difficult to identify, often because of mistakes in the entries themselves.
Think how many of our ancestral lines have reached a dead end even though the evidence suggests that our ancestor came from a particular place — or even a particular family.
This lesson expands on the Birth Traps lesson, offering tools we can use to overcome these frustrating dead ends.
Video duration: 80 minutes (3 videos)
Handout: Yes (18 pages)
Lesson 4
Crafting Intriguing
Birth Descriptions
No doubt you've all read biographies that commence with sentences such as "John Smith was born on [...] at [...]" or words to that effect. Not only is this boring for our readers, it’s a waste of an incredible opportunity.
Why?
Because our ancestors didn't exist in a state of limbo. They were born into a historical, regional, political and social environment. Thus, our birth descriptions provide an ideal vehicle for setting the ancestral scene at the start of our biographies.
The bigger the backdrop in terms of its historical importance, the more we can use our birth descriptions to engage and intrigue our readers so they’ll want to keep reading.
Video duration: 103 minutes (4 videos)
Handout: Yes (21 pages)
Lesson 5
Crafting Engaging
Marriage Descriptions
In the previous lesson, Crafting Intriguing Birth Description, we explore ways in which we can write about the births of our ancestors or other biographical subjects. In this lesson, we look at the relationships that produced that next generation of the family.
Most parents gave birth within the legal confines of a marriage. When describing these marriages, genealogists often write: “John Smith and Mary Jones were married on [...] at [...].” Unfortunately, these types of descriptions are dry, formulaic and clichéd so they fail to engage our readers.
While this lesson is called Crafting Engaging Marriage Descriptions, it’s much more than that. Some of our ancestors enjoyed relationships that were “without the benefit of clergy”. Some couples were betrothed but failed to walk down the aisle with their affianced.
This lesson communicates ways in which we can craft descriptions of all of these relationships, descriptions that will engage our readers and motivate them to keep reading.
Video duration: 85 minutes (3 videos)
Handout: Yes (25 pages)
Lesson 6
Crafting Moving
Death Descriptions
The deaths of loved ones are among life’s most difficult experiences. Yet most genealogists ignore this suffering – both the suffering of the dying and that of their family members – and merely write “So-and-so died on [...] and was buried on [...].”
Additionally, in the same way that a birth description can be used to set the scene – to offer a broad introduction to our ancestor’s life story – a death description can be used to conclude our ancestor’s biography, to round up their life story and close the door on their world.
In Crafting Moving Death Descriptions, we also look at how we can craft prose that is poignant, that moves our readers in a way that fact-filled descriptions cannot do. But we don’t do so by telling our readers what our ancestor or their loved ones were feeling or what we should be feeling. We show the reader through our choice of words.
Video duration: 85 minutes (5 videos)
Handout: Yes (27 pages)
Other links
