Family History

Once you've begun a personal history (see previous lesson), it's a natural thing to start creating a family history as well.

Download this pdf from OurStory, the history exploration site from the American History Museum at the Smithsonian. This tells you exactly how to begin.

You can also use resources from the previous lesson.

There are also valuable resources, guides, and free computer program you can download from the Family History page of LDS.org.

And Wayback has a great site for learning about family and family history.

Be careful, though--learning about your family history is addicting!

Personal History

Some of the easiest and most fun history to get involved in is studying and writing your own personal and family history.

Writing your personal history helps you understand and enjoy your own life. Understanding your family history helps you understand yourself better.

So here's your assignment: Start a personal history and begin to examine your family history.

The question is, of course HOW?

And there are thousands of resources available to get you started.

Do this activity from Between the Lions.

First, look here: Writing your Personal History.

Then, check out the tips on Ancestry.com.

Here is a lesson on keeping a personal and family history from a religious perspective.

Finally, check out Writing Your Personal History at About.com . This site has tons of resources.

Using these resources as a guide, begin your personal history. You can also keep a journal, write a blog, or even just jot down random memories, thoughts, jokes, and events as they come to you. All of these are ways of writing your personal history.

A few tips: put a full date (Day, Month, and year) on each thing you write. Use people's full names. Don't stress out or put too much pressure on yourself--anything you write will be of value, no matter how incomplete it is.

For more help, inspiration, tips, tricks, and reasons to keep a personal history, check out any of these articles.

What is History?

Get out a paper and brainstorm: What do you think of when you think of history?

What IS history?

History is everything that happened before right now. What happened two minutes ago? That's history. What happened two years ago? That's history. What happened two hundred years ago? That's history.

ANYTHING in the past is history.

And history is fun. It's the study of stories. Stories about what people did, what they thought, what they wore and ate and laughed at.

The trouble with trying to study history is there is just so much of it!

So when we study history, we tend to focus on:
1. Things that changed everything that came after them (like the American Revolution), and
2. Really great stories (like the story of Roanoke and the mystery of what happened to it).

The other problem with studying history is that it happened in the past. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what REALLY happened. For more about HOW historians find out the truth, spend some time exploring this web site: History Detectives.

So why study history?

Well, there are the great stories. And interesting real people--all the best heroes and villains can be found in real events. There are fascinating mysteries to solve.

And it's good to remember that history is YOUR story--the story that you are the main character of. Knowing what already happened in your story--how you got to where you are and how your world got to where it is--will help you become a hero instead of a villain in your story.

For more fun history exploration, check out this site.