Adding to the Family Records

So far there is one poor, overworked, fraught and hassled man putting records on-line. Me. It keeps me more than busy - it keeps me overworked.

I have several sheets of information to add to the records at the moment, and could pile up the dry, dusty numbers into the Family Records until I had a complete record of every single member of the Preston family we have ever found in all the records of England, Scotland and Wales - they sit upstairs in three very large boxes, meticulously typed on paper and carefully filed by parish, county and year by my astonishing father who spent many years compiling them.

Unfortunately, he never made much sense out of most of them - it was quite simply too much work for one lifetime. We do have sense in some parts of the records - mainly our own branch of the family - but for the most part they are just lists of details in each parish or village in Great Britain. It would take me months or years just to type them all in - and one day I do hope to have done them all.

But it will not get me the stories.

Finding the stories

As I said in the last Journal, the stories are even more important than the dusty old numbers and it is the stories that will be hardest to find. They are rarely written down - often they are deliberately "forgotten" by the family that was involved in them - and have to be dug out of what little written record there might be.

The stories, in short, are what the nearest relatives do best. And that means all of you.

So far, people have been wary of putting their details into the Family Records and - from what I have been told - it seems they have two main worries:

• They are not sure how a wiki works.
• They are not sure they want to record personal matters, family matters or those involved in them.

I suspect there's a third reason. I suspect people are a little afraid to try and tell a story about their own family in case it upsets others for some reason. And they could very possibly be quite right. It has to be a fine judgement that only you can make about how people in your family will feel. Let's try an example to show you what I mean.

Telling the tale

For this example we need to take an imaginary family. Of course, it will be an imaginary Preston family, since we all fall into that glorious category of being a part of the greater Preston brotherhood (and sisterhood). We're going to roll back the years a lot as well and presume that the family we are talking about is from a couple of Prestons - let's call them George and Mildred - who lived at the end of Queen Victoria's reign.

Now, our imaginary George and Mildred, as was the habit at the time, popped out a lot of kids. It may not be a Preston trait to have all that many children - and if anyone has even the faintest idea why that seems to be the case I would love to know - but this pair managed three boys and two girls. Let's call the boys Tom, Dick and Harry and the girls Mary and Anne.

As they grow up, eventually all come to that terrible time that was 1914. War breaks out and in due course conscription begins into the British Army. Imagine that Tom and Dick were eager to go and both volunteered, making their parents proud and giving the sisters something to gloat about to their friends. Harry, though, refuses to sign up. Indeed, when the time comes Harry even refuses to be conscripted and spends the war in prison as a conscientious objector.

The girls both use their female wiles and the reflected glory of their brothers to nab a couple of nice husbands and raise a family of their own - one, let us say, a naval family and the other remain as simple land-workers. Tom, unfortunately, is killed at the Somme and Dick is badly wounded, but does return home alive though severely disabled. He marries a nurse who looked after him in the hospital.

Back to the present

Their children, born at around the time my own father was, in the late twenties, early thirties, happily grow up and have their own children. It is those children - people like you and me - who are looking at this website and wondering if they should tell the tale of Grandfather Harry, or Great Uncle Harry and his refusal to serve in the Great War. It might - as it would be for me, for instance - be something of which they are very proud indeed.

But what about the rest of the family? What about the grandchildren of Mary and her naval officer? What about the grandchildren of poor disabled Dick who spent his years after the war in a wheelchair, coughing up his mustard-gassed lungs? How would they feel if someone should tell the story of Harry the Objector in a public space like this?

This - though it is only an example - is the sort of thing we need to be aware of. Don't tell potentially embarrassing stories without first asking those of the family you think could be affected. Get their opinion and, if possible, get them to read what you would like to say before you send it to the public record. It will not always work, but you should try.

Older records

There will be times though, and one of them has already arisen, when it is simply impossible to trace the family that closely and to ask them in advance. As I say, we already have one example of that in the Records.

Those of you who have looked at the Records should see that there is a story told about the old Preston family of Lancashire - at the time a part of my own branch of the family, but since that time a new branch of the family now to be found in Ireland - the Viscounts Gormanston and Barons Drumhaire. The story looks back eight hundred years to the terrible period of King Edward I and his less than glorious offspring. It tells how the records appear to show a story of corruption in high places - by other members of the family as well, I might add - and of betrayal, murder and possibly even treason by the family in the story.

Is anyone affected by it? Can anyone be offended?

Well, as part of the family branch involved, I suppose I could be but the most affected will be the current Viscount Gormanston and his family. As a member of the aristocracy, he is hardly someone you just phone up and say, "....listen, I want to tell the story about treason back at the start of your family line...". They would probably laugh at you, if they could even spare the time to listen to such a call!

Instead, it is fair to let them know after the story is told. Give them the chance to change it or to add to it. That is exactly the reason I have set the Family Records up the way I have done. As members of the site, you can and should feel perfectly free to read and change any parts of the record you have problems with. That is what makes a wiki work!

You should do the same. Tell your family stories, but remember that it is your family. Care for them. Let them know what you are doing. Tell them where to find the stories and how to change them if they want to. Involve them in the stories.

Our family stories may be part of the public history of Britain, but they are also personal. Never forget that your family - even if you have never met them - are still your family and the people most like yourself in the whole world.

We are - despite all our differences - one blood and one breed. Respect each other, but be open with each other. Let's hear what we have done across the world and across the centuries, but let's do it as friends.

As family.