The Adventure of Writing My Family Memoir

The unexpected lessons I learned from writing my family memoir & how a few curious questions led to a published book.

Are you ready?

Does the thought of writing your family memoir excite you?

Does it thrill you and chill you at that same time?

Are you planning to sell it for profit, or contribute it to a historical society as regional history?

Do you simply want to preserve your family’s story for you and your relatives?

Whichever the case is for you, writing your family memoir is both a unique journey and a fulfilling experience.

How many people do you know who can say they’ve written their family memoir? Very few, right?! It’s a rare yet valuable thing, and something you should be very proud of pursuing.

Perhaps your situation is similar to mine was when I first decided to write my family memoir. If you are confused, frustrated, or overwhelmed, that’s normal.

Hopefully what I’m about to share can help calm your nerves and show you it can actually be fun!

A humble beginning.

I’ll admit the opportunity to write my family memoir kind of dropped into my lap. I was eighteen and I’d been writing short stories and poetry for many years.

I’d never thought about how to get my work “out there,” though. Most of my writing sat in stacks of notebooks, files on my computer, and … dare I say, in the trash. 

I was a typical insecure teenager and writing was one of the few things I felt “good” at. It was a comforting hobby. Writing an actual book, however, had never truly crossed my mind.

My grandma and I both loved history. Throughout my life, we’d spoken about her childhood and family life. One day I wanted to know more, and she showed me a file box filled with papers.

She had newspaper clippings that described how the ship her parents had taken from Italy to America got stranded. There were also handwritten notes of ancestral details, family memories, and old photos.

I had heard vague stories of my great-grandparents’ journey to America, but for some reason, I had never pursued it. On this particular day, however, I was suddenly fascinated by my family’s backstory.

The adventure and intrigue of this historical event suddenly captivated me; it was directly related to my heritage and it had been recorded in the New York Times! I asked if I could borrow the files and she readily handed them over. 

Getting started.

As I later sat at my desk and pilfered through the documents, I knew there was a story. One of adventure, courage, determination. One that, simply put, could not go untold.

If I was just learning all these details of my family’s history, how many of my other cousins, and even aunts and uncles, were unaware? 

I called my grandma and told her I wanted to write a book about our family history. She excitedly supported my efforts to officially document our family heritage. No one in our family had done so. She had always supported my writings and was proud I was taking on the challenge.

But I honestly had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what the process would entail. But we both knew one thing: I would accomplish this goal no matter what. 

The first task was sifting through her files again with greater diligence. I drafted a timeline of dates, people, and locations as I flipped through the papers.

I wrote down various details related to all of those things and more. Having more clarity of the big picture gave me a good starting point from which I could work. 

Digging deeper.

When I exhausted her notes, which sometimes left considerable holes, I reached out to my great-aunts, great-uncles, and distant cousins and gathered all the information I possibly could.

I drafted blanket questions such as “What do you remember about the tenement housing in New York City?” and “What is your favorite story your parents–my great-grandparents–told you about life back in Italy?”

I also drafted specific questions applicable to each individual like “How did you meet Uncle John?” or “What were family holidays like when you were growing up?”

Sometimes the stories and memories shared by various relatives conflicted and grated against each other. I didn’t know what to do about that! Who should I believe? How could I reconcile the blatant inconsistencies?

I decided not to worry about that as I focused on gathering my research. I decided I’d simply listen, record, and take notes on all and every piece of information I could get my hands on. And then I’d figure the rest out later.

Even before I had a “complete story,” I began imagining, envisioning, and writing. And I learned writing your family memoir is not always done in a linear fashion!

You may have random stories, details, and scenes that you can extrapolate on well before having all the nuances of the complete story. That’s okay!

Details are invaluable.

For instance, one scene various family members repeatedly mentioned was about my great-grandfather, Raffaele. He came to America alone in the late 1880s to earn extra money for his family back in Italy. Years later, he brought my great-grandmother and their children to join him in New York.

He was often bullied while working in the factories in New York City. Prior to work one day, he stuck a fire poker up the leg of his pants and later used it as self-defense when his bully approached him at work that evening. 

At the time I wrote this scene, I didn’t have a place in the book to put it. Because I hadn’t even written the book yet! However, I went ahead and wrote it because I had the necessary details available, and there was no reason to save it for later.

I stashed it in a file on my computer and let it be. It was much later in the writing process that I found an appropriate place to insert the scene. That’s normal!

Dealing with conflicting memories from relatives was challenging. But I tried to blend, rather than choose one over the other, as many of the different memories as I could so each family member who contributed their piece felt heard.

Let’s use a fictitious situation as an example:

What if one family member recalled that there was a two-burner potbelly stove in the kitchen in the tenement housing in New York City? And another family member stated that it was actually a one-burner cooktop in the living room?

Perhaps something like “dinner for the family was cooked on the fire top” would be a sufficient summary of the two memories. Bottom line: sometimes generalizations are key to family peace!

The value of historical documents.

Navigating my relatives’ conflicting memories was not the only challenge I experienced. On top of that, getting to the bottom of what actually happened to the immigrant ship was a task all its own.

Each of my great-aunts told stories about how the ship hit the sand bar, how long they were stranded, and how they were rescued. Thankfully, I had the New York Times articles to aid me in deciphering the dizzying event! 

Above all, even though the New York Times clippings my grandma gave me were incomplete, they gave me plenty of details with which to get started.

And I got started with fervor!

I wanted to learn every detail about how their ship got sand barred off Long Island on its way to Ellis Island. And about how they were stranded for days and had to ultimately be rescued off the trapped ship via tugboat during bad weather.

In addition to all that, I wanted to know what events actually took place prior to them hitting the sand bar. How did they come to be stranded? What was it like to be stranded on a ship so close to their destination?

I visited the Hartford Public Library and accessed their microfiche machine.

My research produced all the files published around the dates of the ship’s arrival from Italy. And I printed out every single one of them and took them home to learn more.

The reporters at the New York Times did a terrific job outlining all the dramatic details. The Prinzess Irene was captained by Frederic von Letten Peterssen (shown on the right). His ship was actually sand barred off Fire Island, a smaller island southeast of Long Island.

My great-grandparents and the rest of the 1,720 passengers were stranded on the ship for three days. After that, amidst very rough seas, they were finally ferried off by lifeboats, tug boats, and a sister ship, the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, before finally arriving on Ellis Island.

The more I wrote, the more I became enamored with my family history. In conclusion, it took me over a year to research and write the entire family history based on the information I was able to find, but it was well worth it. 

The end or the beginning?

Even though my grandma passed away before I completed and self-published our family memoir, I knew she was looking down on me with a smile. Additionally, I also knew that she proudly watched as I gave copies to all my extended family so our family legacy would live on.

And now, almost 20 years later, family members still reference my book to check the dates and details about our family. Even though I never tried to market and sell it much, it was fulfilling enough to know my family has it for generations to come. 

Writing your family memoir is not as daunting as it sometimes seems, and the process is nothing short of an adventure!

If you want to share information about your own family memoir, or need help getting started, please feel free to email me.