Recently, our Indie Scriptorium group was invited to speak at a memoir group led by our new member, Berenice. A challenge facing writers of real life, people and experiences is how to tackle situations that are not perfect and may bring embarrassment to those mentioned in their life-stories.
So for this week, we are revisiting a post by Mary McDee who gives some advice on how to tackle those thorny issues.
[I have spent hours reading the diary of my Great Aunt Dora. The story begins all full of the hopes of a young 18-year-old first-generation Australian girl whose parents had migrated from Germany to South Australia around 1877. I know her story, I knew and loved my great Aunt Dora. She will never marry. One of many women of her time, when, after World War 1, there were not enough men to go around. I imagine this is what life in the 1920’s was like for her, a maiden aunt caring for her parents.]
She had one once. Before the war.
He came from Hamburg. A distant relative from the family.
But the Great War intruded. He was the enemy.
Interned. Never to return.
She perched on the bench in the Royal Botanical Gardens. Watching. Men promenading in pale pinstriped suits, on their arms women in their frilly-white Sunday best, giggling.
Easy for the men, she thought. Pick and choose. Pick and choose. Even the damaged men, the cripples, have a chance.
She sniffed.
What about me? Is that my future? Caring for my aging parents? No choice but to be an old maid?
Recently, my mother sent me an article about my paternal uncle. In it, he claimed to have ancestry extending back to Titus, a Greek convert to Christianity and the apostle Paul’s missionary companion. The author of the article took the claim with a grain of salt, saying, “Be that as it may …”
The article was written in the 1990s, way before we knew much about DNA. It was published when the internet was in its infancy and before research tools such as Wikipedia, and genealogical platforms such as Ancestry and My Heritage existed.
So, how did my uncle figure we were descendants of Titus?
Was it just a fanciful family history conclusion? Or did he have some access to secret information stored away in a library in Europe?
Many families have claims such as my uncle’s. It is what fuels family myths that are passed down from generation to generation, morphing and mutating from the original truth, much like Chinese whispers.
So, here was the challenge. Did this claim have any truth?
Equipped with the knowledge that historical claims need to be backed up by proof, I began my family history journey using research tools to find the evidence.
We don’t even know if Titus had any descendants. And if he did, who were those descendants? An initial search in my Bible notes reveals that Titus is last mentioned as going east of Greece, into the Balkans.
Yes, I have a percentage of Balkan ethnicity. But is that enough?
Next, I discussed this Titus theory of my uncle’s with my significant other, as you do. I find it useful to discuss my research with others and bounce ideas off each other. His first thought was the Roman Emperor Titus.
Now there’s a thought.
So, like a good amateur investigator, I spent some time tracing the noble line of the Orsini Family to which my father’s family is related. With the help of Wikipedia and My Heritage, I went back as far as I could. I am so thankful for Wikipedia, and My Heritage where information is shared and researchers are able to collaborate their findings.
But here I hit another snag. The article on the Orsini family in Wikipedia makes it abundantly clear that the Orsini’s would like to think they can trace their family back to Julius Caesar, but there is no solid proof.
As stated in the Wikipedia post on the Orsini Family (note the clause “according to family legend”):
“According to their own family legend, the Orsini are descended from the Julio-Claudian dynasty of ancient Rome.”
It’s not looking good for my uncle’s claims. My digging into the deep past of my dad’s ancestors and connection to Titus has gone cold.
This rabbit hole of fancy, that is, thinking we are related to someone great in our past, got me thinking how in our quest to build up our identity, we often take mighty leaps of faith without much substantiation.
History Research 101 which I picked up from my friend Carol in University and also as a research officer way back in my youth, taught me that good research depends on primary sources.
What are primary sources?
In family history research these are: birth, death, marriage, immigration and census records for a start. Diary entries and letters are also useful primary sources, as they give the reader a rounded view of the individual’s time and place in history. Newspaper articles can be helpful but can be skewed by a journalist’s subjective point of view. Hence, news reports, magazine articles and books may be seen as a secondary source.
That being said, even what appears to be solid records can become rubbery when the ancestor or ancestors, themselves are not truthful.
Another example, again the noble line. Information abounds for these famous ones on the internet. (Bless these historical influencers of the past.) And for this brief foray into history research, they serve a good purpose in the need to dig for information, find the hard facts, and support the genealogical claims. Plus, so much is written about these people, they become real and fleshed-out so to speak. Also, no touchy relatives will get offended if I use these noble people as my example.
A few months after plugging away doing the family history thing of filling in the boxes on my family tree, an interesting match appeared. Charlotte de Luxembourg, a noblewoman from the mid-1400s. The name Luxembourg piqued my interest as it resonated to be a name connected with the French and English royal families. I followed the lead slowly tracing back to Henry I of England and Charlemagne.
Then I returned to the key ancestor upon which this claim to such distinguished ancestry hung. Charlotte de Luxembourg. What was her age? Her age seemed to be in dispute. Furthermore, in some genealogies, she was missing.
I needed to do more research.
Was she just some family history fancy?
I worked out through my internet research that she was most likely Pierre de Luxembourg’s illegitimate daughter. Most likely born before Pierre married Margarete de Savoi. However, according to a genealogist on another family history site called Geni, she could possibly be the daughter of Pierre’s brother, Charles, Bishop of Laon. Either way, to smooth over the family’s disgrace, Charlotte officially became Pierre and Margarete’s daughter; the details of her birthday fudged in the mists of time and covered up so that she remained marriageable.
After what appears to be a shaky start to life in nobility, all ended well for Charlotte. She married an esteemed knight, Phillipe Estavayer. He went up in status and the world was none the wiser of her suspect background. From the records of the knight’s will, which I found in my internet research, Charlotte was well-provided for and loved.
When I first shared these findings with my family, there were those who were sceptical. As a result, I have had to be extra thorough in my research and use every resource and piece of evidence to support my conclusions.
I’m still at the beginning of my family history odyssey. One day I hope the results of this research, my legacy, will be dependable, based on solid facts, and not just a vague myth that boosts the ego but has no substance.
© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2025
Sources: Ritter, Eug. Mariage de Philippe d’Estavayer avec Charlotte de Louxembourg, en 1484. Revue historique vaudoise, Volume 30 (1922)
ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, E-Periodica, https://www.e-periodica.c
More than once fellow writers have asked me, “Where do you get your ideas from?”
Is it from other stories, books, plays or the media such as radio, television, or the internet? Or is it something more?
In the past couple of months I have, as mentioned in other blogs, like Alice in Wonderland, gone down the rabbit-hole of Family History.
What has ancestry or my heritage got to do with writing and publishing, you may ask?
One of the reasons, in my case, is research. A detective novel I am working on requires understanding of genealogy, and the process of DNA analysis. So, down the proverbial rabbit-hole I have gone.
What I’ve discovered so far are the beginnings of a revelation and like a detective novel, the clues/information presents itself like puzzle pieces gathered, then sorted and finally fitted together.
I’ve learnt that like a detective, I must be patient, methodical and have a keen eye for detail. Nothing worse than being sloppy or having sloppiness thrust upon me in the process and getting sidetracked by a red herring.
For example, in the beginning of my family history quest, there was the mystery of the extra “brother” of my great-grandfather. On further investigation and checking of Census data, it turned out the “brother” was a nephew. My great-grandfather from Bavaria, being new to Great Britain and the English language, labelled his brother’s son as a “brother” in the first Census he completed. Ten years later, in the next census, the mistake had been corrected.
Learning what it takes to become a good detective for my Detective Dan series, I’ve discovered that creativity is a part of problem-solving. One lesson learnt was the problem of my youth, tunnel vision. Thirty-five years ago, my auntie handed over the family historian mantel and box. Dutifully, I read the material, joined the local genealogical society, and began my search. I helped a family historian relative with my branch of my paternal grandmother’s family history.
But in the early 2000’s, once grandma’s history was done, dusted, and launched, with the internet in its infancy, continuing with the whole deal got too hard, and was looking like being expensive. So, I turned to the comfort and ease of fiction writing. I eased my guilty conscience of abandoning the project by knowing that my relatives of German descent were doing a much better job than I was in digging up ancestors, building family trees and producing more books. I was happy to receive their hard-earned research usually published in large tomes by local publishers and enjoy what they had uncovered.
Meanwhile, ideas flowed for my Sci-fi novels. The good crusaders fought against evil alien cockroaches. Injustices challenged, good people imprisoned, innocent people burned at the stake as witches, young nobles went missing and evil cockroach aliens wreaked havoc on the universe. Often ideas came in the form of dreams or ideas for a novel sprouted while showering. Worlds were built on these dreams and with the recall of stories of my German ancestors migrating to Australia, the Lost World of the Wends was born.
In late 2023, I delved into Family History once again, this time with more sophisticated computer technology. While plotting my ancestors using all those family history books, I had accumulated, I discovered a noble family line in Lausanne, the French part of Switzerland, stretching back to the 12th Century. Why had I missed this gem when reading the translation in 2010? Tunnel vision. It wasn’t my father’s family name from Bavaria, therefore the family name presented that was of French origin meant nothing to me. I must’ve skipped over that part when reading it.
Further investigation unearthed a pedagogue (a cousin I think from the other branch of this family). However, the pedigree showed me that this line of the family may have been influential in our family’s value for education, not just for the males, but females as well. Plus, it explains my affinity with France.
Now, to answer the question posed at the beginning of this post. Where do my ideas come from? I’ve often wondered if dreams have a genetic component. Sure, family passed stories down from generation to generation, but couldn’t it be also the case that significant emotional events of our ancestors are also passed down through our genetic code? Who we are, our identity, our creativity, is made up of the sum of our predecessors, our ancestors. Could explain why unpublished novel, Mirror World, Adelaide is French…Just a thought.
On that note, I feel as a writer, that with family history, it’s not enough just to fill in the birth, death, and marriage details. The genealogical books that most interest me are the ones which give the context of history, description of the land in which they lived, and a brief resume of each family member’s lives. Photos too are important and make history come alive.
All this research takes time. I’m at the beginning of my quest, searching, digging, and fitting the puzzle pieces together. I’m learning the art of research, once again, as I delve into the rabbit-hole of ancestry. At the same time, I’m learning what makes a good detective for my Detective Dan series which will be under the pen name, Tessa Trudinger. Watch this space.
© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2024
Feature Photo: Lake Geneva, Lausanne © A.N. Kling 2014
[New Year and for me at least a quieter time to reflect after a hectic end to 2023. Also a time when I have finally tackled the challenge of family history research. Almost thirty years ago, my auntie passed on the “mantel” of family historian. She also handed the box of research which she had done. For most of that time the box has been stored away in our closet, except for the early 2000’s when I took part in compiling my father’s mother’s family history. Then, after hitting brick walls in my research, back it went. Writing fiction was so much easier. And fun.
This last year, I have been working on a crime novel. Since a key part of the theme of this novel will include family history and using DNA to build ancestral family trees, out came the family history box again. You could say, I’m researching my novel by doing and experiencing. After only four weeks of exploring down the family history rabbit-hole, and believe me, it is a rabbit-hole, I’ve discovered tracing once’s ancestors requires methodical, critical brain power, and an OCD attention to detail…much like a detective, really. You wouldn’t believe how many of our ancestors have the same name but are different people.
I also have discovered that names, and dates of births, deaths and marriages get boring after a while. The family history books that stand out are the ones which give a brief, or not so brief, descriptions of people, their lives, personalities, interests and job.
On that note, I’m reminded of a blog I wrote way back in 2016 and how we are often defined and judged as a person by what job we do and how much we earn. So, below is that article which examines current day attitudes which may affect our motivation to become a writer.]
Census time!
As I filled the forms out online (two days after the due date—another story covered in the media), I had a Eureka moment.
I faced a dilemma regarding the work/employment section with questions: “What’s your main job?” and “How much do you earn?”
As an artist/writer I had a conflict of interest. I knew what the statisticians from Canberra were after. I understood by “your main work”, they meant “paid” work, or in my case, the work that paid the most dollars.
So, if I ticked my writing and proceeds from the novels I’ve published for which I’ve been paid a pittance, but on which I’ve spent the most time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) would not be happy. In their estimation, work without the dollars attached to it, is not “work”.
If I put my Art, that is, painting, from which I earned a few hundred dollars in the last financial year, that also wouldn’t satisfy the ABS—even if I do sit down at Art Group and say, “I’m going to do some work now.” Besides, according to my accountant, my earnings from art is “hobby money” that goes back into painting supplies and equipment.
Well, then, that leaves the paper round. I inherited the paper-delivery-round from my son, who after he saved enough money for a computer, had no use for it. But I did. This “work” earns sufficient funds for a holiday every year or two. And I like the fresh air and exercise.
So I marked the paper-round as my main work even though I spend the least amount of time compared to painting and writing. How sad that my “work” according to the ABS is reduced to four hours a week delivering papers after having achieved a University degree.
[I might add here, that I no longer do this paper round. So, I am investing time into building up the Indie Scriptorium business and helping fellow writers in the process of publishing their books.]
The ABS will never know the other side of my life—my work of choice—the Arty Creative work, because there’s no money of any significance in it.
In our society, unless the “work” has dollar signs attached, it’s worth nothing.
So I mean to say, the whole spectrum of our culture, what makes our culture in fact, and enriches our lives: the writing, drama, music, art, doesn’t exist in the Australian story according to the ABS.
The reason? Artisans, be they writers, actors, artists, musicians and other creative people are not valued for their craft. To survive they must earn a wage—if they can find a job. How many of us “creators” are forced to choose between our craft, and food and shelter?
We become teachers, restaurant staff, cleaners, office workers, accountants or whatever while our passion to create becomes quenched by the need to survive. At the end of the workday, we are often too tired to create.
‘When we retire…’, we promise ourselves.
My Dad was an artist. He went to Art School after high school. He even sold a painting through the local newspaper as a young married man. However, he had a family to support, thus became a teacher, and his art was sidelined. ‘When I retire, I’ll get back to my art,’ Dad would say. He retired, but the paints and paper remained packed in a suitcase in the cupboard while he pursued his passion teaching and music.
Also, having come from a family of authors, he had dreams of writing a book, or maybe his memoir. Never happened.
I have inherited Dad’s 300gsm Arches paper, watercolours and brushes, and I feel that I’m carrying on the art tradition my Dad began. In the writing field, I am also carrying on the family legacy of authorship, albeit self-published, but published all the same.
So in the end, statistics are just statistics; they don’t tell the whole rich story. Statistics won’t reveal that the Fleurieu Peninsula (the area in which I live) has reportedly the highest percentage of writers and artists in Australia. Statistics only reveals the tip of the iceberg of artists and writers who have entered for the census information that they are a writer or artist because it’s their main source of income. However statistics will miss many other creators who do not put their craft as their main source of income.
For most of us creators, the line flung at us by well-meaning family and friends is: “Get a real job.”
Creating is not valued unless there’s a cost, and yet everyone wants to be entertained…often without cost.
The other side of the story those who push the “proper job line” don’t understand is that the rewards of creating for an artist, in the broad sense of the word, outweigh the monetary rewards one receives from the so-called “real work”.
© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2016; updated 2024
Feature Photo: One of my ancestral stamping grounds, and behind it, a riches to rags tale (but that’s a story for another time), Lake Geneva, Lausanne, Switzerland © L.M. Kling 2014
Following Lee-Anne’s blog last week I realise there are a couple of extra points to be made in relation to this thorny issue of others being upset by something we have written. These are points of a more general nature however.
Memoir is probably a simpler issue: you yourself as the writer are recording events from your own point of view. Yes, there are others involved but you can run your work passed them prior to publication to seek approval or come to an agreement re any changes or omissions that seem to be either necessary or kind and considerate.
As I see it, the real problem comes if you have chosen to write family history. All families have skeletons in their cupboards. Some don’t care a fig if and when these skeletons are dragged out and aired; others can be hugely embarrassed, distressed, humiliated… Basic common decency and respect for others means that these concerns must be dealt with carefully and caringly.
By way of example let me tell you about my own family where there were a couple of babies born “out of wedlock” back when such things were not acceptable in most circles.
One was born in the 1930s and on the chart of the family tree her name was underlined; the only one that was. My brother and I were intrigued and asked questions. We were told that even though it looked like she was the youngest of a number of siblings that underline indicated her birth mother was in fact her eldest “sister” and the people she regarded as her parents were actually her grandparents.
All this was well known in the large family she was born into but never held against either lass. Both were much loved and treasured family members who always belonged regardless of what any neighbours might say or think. As this was a couple of generations ahead of us it was ancient history and never mentioned when we were being regaled with stories of the doings and peccadillos of our forebears – not because it was shameful; simply because it was no longer relevant.
By way of contrast, the same situation took place on the other side of my family but was treated very differently. To be fair, this occurred back in the late 19th century in a very conventional Methodist family. Currently, most of the family could not care less at the present time but the branch descended from that wayward one still feel shamed and humiliated and, while happy to be included in the family history, were guarded and most reluctant to supply certain details.
When we write history, it is important to present the facts. This is obvious. What is often not so obvious is that we can so easily present those “facts” from a current, 21st century perspective and thus unconsciously skew them somewhat. The values, ethics and attitudes to morality can be (and often are!) very different today from what they were fifty, one hundred or even more years ago.
If you are torn between producing an historically accurate record or one that does not cause distress to others might we suggest one way out of the dilemma is to produce a text that pleases all but then also quietly write a sort of addendum stating the “truth” of the bits that had to be omitted or glossed over; put it in a sealed envelope marked “not to be opened till twenty (or fifty if you prefer!) years after my death”. Lodge it with your lawyer or in a strong box in a bank or with a highly trustworthy family member.
Merely a suggestion.
© Mary McDee 2023
Feature Photo: Thorny Weed © L.M. Kling (nee Trudinger) circa 1986
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