Many works are important to genealogists because they document the thoughts, feelings, and facts surrounding people's lives. These works give us insight into why things were the way they were from those who lived the events being described. When these chronicals exceed what we might consider to be an oral history, then they often become books of family rememberances or details only documented within a family's collective memory.

If there was ever a hobby where writing should be encouraged, then genealogy is it. How many times have you searched for a fact, or tried to understand a relationship, or tried to understand why someone did what they did, and discovered that the information you need just does not exist. Your ancestors were not being malicious or hiding facts, they just lived in different times and had different daily concerns.

Many of our ancestors lived in a era where survival and the rigors of everyday living overshadowed the need for documentation or personal writing. They did not always have the gift of literacy since universal access to schools was not a given state. And the further back in time ones research takes them, the greater the likelihood that facts are obscured in time.

But we live in a time where literacy, time to document our research, and means to publish are given. With the Internet the only barriers to writing are effort and interest. All genealogists know the value of documentation, and if you can leave your descendents one gift, do not make them retrace all your footsteps to get back to the same point with their research.

The items ion this section of the web site differ from Oral Histories only in length. Some chose to do short narrative histyories of relatives, while others chose to do complete family histories in book form. Here we have complete books where permission to reproduce those items is possible.