Family Stories – Gift From the Past

Author Elaine Cougler has written historical fiction as well as non-fiction. Her latest book, Maggie, is based on a story her mother wrote. Today, she shares the significance of writing a family story and offers some tips for those wishing to write their own family history either as fiction or non-fiction.

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Family Stories Tell the Past and Explain the Present

Twenty-five years after the passing of my mother I discovered she had left us a treasure. Oh, I knew she had been writing a story on her old manual typewriter, tapping away almost blindly because she had, by then, lost her center vision. I had even proofed the first two pages for her, checking for spelling and other errors.

When I pulled the sheets out of the envelope I was ecstatic to find Mom had finished over fifty pages of her story. She called it Maggie. I sat down to read.

Another couple of pages in, a light bulb flashed. This wasn’t fiction. The Maggie Mom introduced at about four years old was actually my grandmother. This was a story of Grandma’s childhood, her family, and the world she grew up in, told in a fictional format.

My mother, Alice Garner, had written loads of things in her life—letters to relatives in the southern United States, speeches to give at various clubs and organizations where she was often the president, and the odd message to one of us, her thirteen children wherever we might be in the world. 

She was a prolific reader. At a young age I worked my way through her bookshelves finding out about people and the world through the many pages. My favorite trick as a young teenager was to take the vacuum upstairs on Saturday mornings to my brother’s bedroom, plug it in, maybe make the bed, and then grab a book from the huge shelves. I’d turn on the vacuum and lie on the bed reading, hoping Mom would think I was working. I was my mother’s daughter.

And when I started to read her pages, I was overjoyed to realize she had written family history. As I read, my grandmother came to life in a whole new way. Details surfaced about her birth family, her home near Stratford, her family’s religion and the traumatic breakup of Grandma’s marriage when Mom was eight years old. I saw family traits in my great aunts and uncles that I’d never known, traits that I recognized in my own large family. They were musical and they passed it down. Mom was a beautiful singer, her brother a gifted pianist and composer and her sister always a silvery voice blending with my mom’s around the piano.

Points for Writing Your Own Family History

1. Decide on the format. Will it be a fictional story format or will it be factual only. The fictional format gives the facts direction and allows the writer to imagine dialogue and bring the characters to life.
2. Is there a central plot or theme? I wonder if my mother wanted to show us a little bit about our grandfather and his point of view. We had never had much to do with him. As an adult Mom may have been exploring just why her parents’ marriage went the way it did.
3. Decide whether to write in first or third person. I realize that my mother was able to distance herself from the story by using third person.
4. My mother had not completed her story. This meant I had to decide how to deal with the unfinished parts. Should I try to continue on the writing as Mom had started it? Should I just put in the sections I had and let the readers make assumptions? Should I insert myself clearly into the gaps and be honest with readers. This last is what I did with titles such as Elaine’s Notes, where I added explanatory items.
5. Should I publish just for my family or for the wider world? I wrestled with this. What I decided to do was to name the characters with their real names as they lived three or four generations back. I wondered about putting in a family tree but didn’t, again because I liked Mom’s fictional style. I decided to publish for the wider world as everyone has a family and may experience the life issues or the story issues for their own family.

Here is an excerpt from Maggie which was very meaningful for me as it shows how smart my grandmother was. In true author style I’ve ended it on a bit of a cliff-hanger for you!

“Maggie, Miss Sims thinks that you should go to High School next year. She says that your marks are so good that she is sure you would have no trouble passing the entrance exams. Now if you want to do this, I am willing to take you to Stratford to write your exams and, if you pass, we will find some good family for you to live with while you are going to school.”

            Maggie was absolutely amazed. None of her older sisters had even thought of going to High School. They either went to work for some neighbour or friend or stayed home to help Ma. Goodness knows Ma needed the help. How could she leave her family and go live with perfect strangers? Her friend, Emma, who also had good marks, was getting ready to work in the general store.

            “You know you might want to become a teacher. You would be really good at that, I think,” said Pa as he left the room.

            Late into the night Ida and Maggie whispered to one another about what it would mean to take this step. Both girls were very shy of strangers and Ida, especially, was very timid about leaving the safety of her home. She was afraid for Maggie.

            By morning Maggie had made one of the biggest decisions of her life.

Maggie by Alice Garner and Elaine Cougler

A Riveting True Story From Another Time

Maggie is an engrossing true story set in the early 1900s, against the historical backdrop of WWI-era Canada. It features warm-hearted glimpses of life in a large ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ family, as well as shocking revelations that Maggie’s husband wasn’t the man she thought he was. Author Elaine Cougler unearthed this tale twenty-five years after her mother, Alice Garner’s, death, and she masterfully preserves her mother’s voice, offering readers a relatable and enjoyable glimpse into the past.

Elaine’s Mother’s Bio

Alice Garner was born Lillian Virginia Alice Doxey in November 1923, the youngest of four children. She grew up in a musical family and at age eleven walked into the radio station in Stratford, Ontario and got a job. She had her own show for which she had to learn new song every week. She went on to marry and have thirteen children of her own with whom she carried on her musical talents, teaching all of them to thoroughly enjoy music. She was active in her farming community rising to become the president of many of the community-oriented groups she joined. She even ran for provincial parliament at one point. In her later years she was working on this story when she passed away.

About the author: Elaine Cougler is the award-winning author of four historical novels about the lives of settlers from the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to Britain during the American Revolution. She also wrote Amazon #1 bestseller The Man Behind the Marathons about the incredible life of the man behind Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope, as well as her personal memoir, My Story, My Song, about growing up in rural Ontario with 9 brothers and 3 sisters during the 50s and 60s. Her anthology, Canada: Brave New World, launched in 2023. Elaine is a sought-after speaker talking about many topics related to her writing.

You can find Elaine on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel is THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, a dual timeline set in Hong Kong. Mary’s other novels, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads or on her website www.mktod.com.