Helen Powell Graham
Writing a memoir is like opening a window into your past life. It can also help clear the fog on windows of the past. Writing my own story in my memoir Nothing Like Normal (to be published by Black Opal Books in 2015) caused me to wonder about the tales of my parents and ancestors and what they could tell me about my heritage. While my father’s genealogy had been thoroughly researched by his brother and sister, I knew there was very little recorded about my maternal family line and actual history. This changed when I took the time to examine a faded sheathe of paper on which my great uncle had recorded a rudimentary family tree stretching as far back as 1600, tracing our ancestors who first immigrated to the colonies from England. I had been careful to make a copy of this priceless document that I finally painstakingly transposed into Ancestry.com. Continue reading
Martha Graham-Waldon 