Surname Saturday: A Solitary Surname

We Are Multicolored: USA, Angola, Wales

My first instinct was to write this piece on my online journal, but second thoughts often prevail. Why is that? Perhaps because my surname is solidly connected to this site. And, this site is connected to writing challenges, like the Family History Writing Challenge that I will be participating in this February.

Thinking of my own surname as a family historian would years from now might prove challenging. If anything, they will most likely wonder why I chose to hyphenate my name, while our children bore their father's surname.

In all honesty, it was out of vanity...the vanity of a writer who wanted name recognition from her school chums. Newton-Carter. But more than that, it established my own personal identity...something I had struggled with during my youth.

It is a melding of two families...with distinct and differing backgrounds...coming together as one.

My heritage is one of struggling immigrants: Russian Jewish refugees, Welsh coal miners, English farmers and religious dissidents; while, my husband's family was captured, sold at auction, emanating from a continent, not a nation in our minds, because their origin had been lost within the slave system. My family came to this nation with hope...my husband's family came with their hopes scattered upon the waters of the long voyage to an emerging nation called America.

And so, Newton-Carter is a solitary surname, lasting only one generation, held by only one woman. It is my duty to tell the stories to future generations so that our origins might be re-discovered in the telling. The challenge of this vanity is that future generations will have to search for my records among those for three surnames: Newton, Newton-Carter, and Carter.

I hope you will join me here during the month of February for the Family History Writing Challenge, where I will work on telling the tale of our most present generation and begin the journey to uncover the truth of those who came before.

Putting the Writer's Voice in Proper Perspective in the Instant

As I woke up this morning, bleary-eyed and stumbling as the alarm sounded at 5:30am, my first thoughts, other than coffee, were on what voice and perspective I should use to write my family history memoir.

Sipping from a cup that warm hazlenut-flavored liquid that at the same time warms my insides, centers my focus, and allows me to wrap myself in the world of ideas, I sat down at the computer to begin reading my Facebook updates.

After taking a moment to watch a poignant video of Dr. Cornell West, explaining why watching President Barack Obama taking the oath of office with his hand on the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's Bible makes his blood boil, I followed the link to a blog post from Life Story Writing: Tinted Memoir and Why You Should Do It.

Available at Amazon.com

The article was on target. Or should I say, at that moment I, too, was on target...writing my family history memoir through the lense of grief recovery. I followed the link to a book. I had heard of the title before, but did not realize how powerful the words were until I read the first few pages on Amazon.com and realized that I could not put it down.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. I see now that this will be a memoir that I must read.

Tuesday's Tip: Sorting through the evidence before the Challenge begins

You know how sometimes you can be so sure that all the information you need to do a project is carefully stored in one box, or on one shelf?

And then, when you pull it all out to take account of it all, you discover important pieces of information or artifacts are missing?

To top it all off...you just moved within the past few months and it could be somewhere, packed away, in boxes...upon boxes...upon boxes...

Tip of the day: 
Before starting any large genealogy writing project, make sure you have everything you need before you sit down to write.

I am SO glad that I just checked the contents of my sources for the Armchair Genealogist's 2013 Family History Writing Challenge! If not, I'd have been scurrying around in the midst of trying to write, and that would not work out very well!

So, now I know what's missing:

• the composition notebook used when interviewing our elder members of the family after our last reunion in 2009;
• the funeral book and newspaper clippings (the clippings have already been transcribed, but they need to be scanned & archived);
• photos taken on our last trip to North Harlowe, NC.

With only 9 days left...and a very hectic time in the month it is for me at work...I will have to muster up the energy and determination to pull down boxes from the seven foot stacks (with a little help from my husband), and begin the BIG SEARCH.

Who knows what I'll find in the process!

Wish me luck!