A Creative Way to Fill in the Blanks

A fun footnote about how I enticed my cousins to share their memories of our great-grandparents so I could write their story

For 30 years I've been working on genealogical studies. I started perhaps the way many others have started - collecting names and dates and building a tree. Over the years I've come to realize I enjoy the detective work in verifying names and dates and lineages. But as much as I find that investigative work excitingly challenging, for me, I wanted more. I wanted to know why my ancestors did what they did. What drove them from Italy to a booming city in Minnesota? Why did they leave their home country and presumably all of their extended families? How did they get here and what was their journey like? What did they see on the cross country railroad trip? 

So starting in the early 90’s I sent letters and later (when the technology became available) I sent eMails asking questions such as "What do you know about our great-grandparents?” In retrospect I can see why these vague questions garnered very little, if any, new information. It was frustrating and I thought I had exhausted all efforts of ever finding out about the meat on the bones, as they say. 

Then, a few years ago I came across a Lisa Louise Clark's webinar about how to write a family history story, which suggested video as a means to share the story. As a marketer, I understand the power of video to engage an audience. But I still didn't have the information I wanted to make a video story about my great-grandparents.

As I was watching Dateline one evening, it dawned on me! Not every story has a resolution. There are a bunch of facts, a lot of interesting theories, a lot of questions, but no conclusion.

My imagination was percolating … what if I made a video that would capture the attention of my audience (my cousins, in this case) enough to help me fill in the blanks? The video wouldn't have to tell the whole story - instead it could outline what we know and add mystery around what we don't know. Maybe that would intrigue them enough to either remember something they had forgotten, or be excited enough to help solve the mystery.

So, in a single dedicated afternoon, I wrote a script, gathered some photos and home video that had been digitized, and started working in iMovie - never having used the software before. I had to use the "help" feature a few times and YouTube tutorials to learn how to do a few things within iMovie, but I wasn't going for perfection - and I landed far from it! But I created a short movie. At 2 minutes and 20 seconds, it's actually not very short, and I crammed a lot into it. But as a first attempt, I felt very proud.

I titled it "An Incomplete History - The Unsolved Genealogical Mystery of Tony Corbo" and I shared the video on Facebook, tagging as many relatives as I knew. The response was more than I ever expected or had hoped.

Among the relatives who saw the video - all had positive things to say, such as they enjoyed seeing Grandpa Tony in moving picture again and they would ask other family members for information and couldn't wait for the mystery to be solved. But, one relative - a 2nd cousin - responded with this:

“I have a few papers with information about Grandpa. I have his original discharge papers from the Army, their original Marriage License, his original passport written in Italian from 1912. His original Certificate of Nationalization into the United States and some formal and informal summaries of his life with details such as the name of the boat he came to America on, how he got to Minnesota, when he met great grandma, the names of brothers he left behind in Italy and more!  Would you be interested in seeing them?”

Uh... yeah...

ORIGINAL documents. Amazing. Of course I wanted to see them and she was kind enough to lend them to me so that I could scan and photograph, which I promptly did. I was so giddy. I gave the documents the white glove treatment. Precious, precious documents that my great-grandfather had held in his hands as a young man - leaving Italy with his passport - coming through Ellis Island ... amazing. Gives me goose bumps just remembering the feeling!

So, the moral of the story is this... if you're asking for help from your family, you need to share what you already know, highlight what you don't know and find a way to engage them! It may be video, or it may be something else entirely. 

That’s the story of how I got some of the details that helped me write the real story.

My next post will be a BEHIND THE STORY podcast episode where I will go into more detail about some of the research challenges involved with this story — even after getting the invaluable documents from my cousin, to whom I will be forever grateful.