Generations of a Name

Or, Why Genealogy Is Helpful

It’s a bit of a thrill when a daughter or son one day, seemingly out of the blue, takes an interest in family history, maybe asks you a little question like “Mama, where did this ring come from?”

I gave my daughter the ring over ten years ago. It was handed down to me by my grandmother over thirty years ago, and I don’t remember what she said about its origins. I probably wasn’t interested! For decades the ring sat in my jewelry box, a mystery.

It’s a very thin, unassuming band of what looks like silver with a delicate filagree pattern on the outside, and if you look very closely, you’ll see an engraving on the inside as well. OEM and MWW Apr 29, 1925.

My daughter read the initials in the engraving and of course asked who the people were. I had no clue. Luckily I remembered that I have a bunch of loose papers that serve as a family tree in the top drawer of an old dresser nobody uses. Someone on my grandmother’s side had taken the time decades ago to type out the names, birth dates, death dates, etc., etc.,  and here I had inherited a copy of a copy of a copy of it. We pored over the pages, trying to find the initials OEM or MWW somewhere in the seeming chaos of unfamiliar names covering six generations. After a while, we did find two names that matched the initials, with a marriage date of April 29, 1925. It was a wedding band! But who was this couple and how were they related to us? We carefully analyzed and traced the relationships to see how these two fit into my grandmother’s line. It didn’t take long to figure out that MWW was a first cousin to my grandmother.

I still have to wonder why my grandmother had her cousin’s wedding ring. I can only speculate. But reviewing the information on these worn pages led to a spontaneous exercise of attempting to memorize the key names in our matrilineal heritage, back to the 1800s. We found, not surprisingly, that there were frequent repetitions of names through the generations. Also, women often gave their maiden name as a middle name to their daughters (or sons). This seemed an interesting way for the family names, whether first, middle, or last, to be remembered down the generations. Of course I knew about this custom already, but it was noteworthy to see it spelled out in front of us.

My daughter has a sharp memory, and within a short time she could recite each couple’s names on her maternal side all the way back to the first couple on the list.

What would I have done without this family tree? The names and people would be lost over time. I feel happy and fortunate to have these pages in my possession, and they serve as a clear map back to my foremothers and forefathers.

Is there importance in holding on to the names? Yes! After all, they are not only names (and dates), but clues to entire life stories that are waiting to be investigated and shared. It does feel good to me to see these names, even though I’ve never thought or cared about whether someone will have my name in the future. It is nice to know that my daughter’s middle name is not only my late mother’s first name, but also my grandmother’s, great-grand-aunt’s, and great-great-grandmother’s first name. And so, we remember these women, forming links in a chain—like interconnected rings—joining the past and present.

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Ali de Groot is director of publishing for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Patricia Fuller

Patricia Ellen Redman Fuller published The Story of Us: A Redman–Nathanson Family History with Modern Memoirs in 2024. This Assisted Family History took four months to complete. We asked Fuller to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it has meant to share her book with others.

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1. According to your book, you did not discover your passion for family history until you were in your 60s, after your parents’ deaths. What was it that sparked your interest at that time?

Patricia Fuller: After my father died in 2008 (my mother had died in 2007), I realized that I was now The Oldest Generation. Someone had to take responsibility for keeping the family legacy alive. At that time, I really knew very little about my ancestors. I decided to log onto Ancestry.com and start a family tree. When I entered a name, “hints” popped up from Ancestry’s myriad databases: records, documents, even newspaper articles. I was hooked! And the rest is (family) history!

2. Your book includes many stories about your immigrant grandparents and your parents’ younger years. How did you uncover that information if your parents were already gone?

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“Genealogy is all about connection…I know now that I am part of a large and dynamic system that will continue long after I am gone. It’s a very comforting feeling.”

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Patricia Fuller: I started with the bits and pieces I had gleaned from my parents and other relatives over the years. For example, years before, I had asked my parents what towns in Europe their ancestors had come from. My mother said “Kovno” and my father said “Karpinen.” At the time, those names meant nothing to me. For some reason, I wrote those two words down on an orange Post-It-Note which I kept in my wallet for years. When I decided to start my genealogical research, I found that note in my wallet, and that’s where I started!

3. What inspired you to have your siblings contribute chapters about their own families?

Patricia Fuller: I always planned to have a section on each of my siblings. When I started writing my sister Nancy’s section, it dawned on me that she knew much more about herself and her life than I did and could do a much better job. All of my siblings are wonderful writers, much better than I am. So, I asked them if they would write their own sections, and they all said yes. It allowed them to contribute to a book that was as much about them as it was about me. And I actually learned a lot about their lives that I had not known before!

4. The title, The Story of Us, conveys a connection between the lives of your ancestors and their descendants today. How would you describe that connection?

Patricia Fuller: Genealogy is all about connection, both horizontal and vertical. Through my genealogical research I have helped to uncover and preserve those connections. Horizontally, I have discovered cousins on all the branches of my tree that I never knew I had, and have brought them all together through e-mail lists and even a Zoom reunion in one case. Vertically, I have traced the branches of my family back to their roots in Eastern Europe and forward to the youngest generations all across America. I know now that I am part of a large and dynamic system that will continue long after I am gone. It’s a very comforting feeling.

5. For the cover of your book, you supplied a vintage postcard of a town in Lithuania where some of your family originated. What was your reaction to the resulting cover created by our Book Designer Nicole Miller?

Patricia Fuller: I was absolutely thrilled by the cover! It conveyed exactly what I was trying to convey, and it is beautiful! The color scheme even reflected the colors of the Lithuanian flag. I didn’t know the name of the designer, but now that I do, I would like to thank Nicole Miller (and the entire staff of Modern Memoirs) for transforming my vision into reality without ever even meeting me in person!

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Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

My Grandmother’s Story and Mine

A blog post by Publishing Intern Pam Gainer

A printout of the interview-based biography that I wrote about my grandmother as a high-school assignment in 1994, alongside one of my grandmother’s page-a-day journals from the same year

I was shopping at an indoor flea market when I saw the grass-green plastic tray sitting on the floor, propped up against a piece of furniture in a booth. It was just the tray; the rest of the metal apparatus that had once made it a tray table was missing. It caught my eye because my maternal grandmother, June, had owned one just like it.

It’s funny the details you remember. I grew up next door to my grandmother and was in and out of her house all the time. My most vivid memories are of seeing her sitting in her recliner in her TV room, with that green tray table beside her. In my memory, it is covered with all manner of things—newspapers, a teacup, an empty plate with some crumbs left over from her toast or crackers, pens, pencils, a letter opener, some mail, and a round handheld magnifying mirror with tweezers for plucking her chin hairs. (She’d laugh if she saw I included those here.) And it always held her maroon hardcover page-a-day journal, with the year stamped in gold lettering on the front.

Today, I live in my childhood home with my family, and my brother and his family live next door in what was our grandmother’s house. My childhood bedroom is now my office, where my grandmother’s journals sit on my bookcase. There are eleven in all, one for each year from 1986 through 1996. Her entries become increasingly sparse and sporadic in the last few years. The final 1996 journal is mostly blank, and she passed in 1997. Year after year, she recounts the details of her days—the weather, what she made for Sunday dinner, who came to visit, and what my family had going on next door. I’ve scoured the pages, looking for something beyond those ordinary moments. There are a few, very rare, moments of emotion. Sometimes I can fill in details beyond what the words share, based on what I know now about her life and our family’s history.

I’ve heard it said that the mid-thirties is the age when life catches up with a lot of us, when we stop and look around and start to question what we’re doing. And that’s what happened to me. I followed the rules I had learned from my family and from society, yet I felt unfulfilled, anxious, and mostly I felt confused. I started questioning all I learned. Part of that process has involved looking back and piecing together my family’s history, with the intention of getting a broader picture of the forces that got me here. My grandmother’s story is a huge part of this.

June was a woman before her time, one who always worked outside the home and took care of her extended family. As a youth, the eldest of five children, she was expected to help at home. When any of her younger siblings got into trouble, she did, too. As a teenager during the Great Depression, she left school early each day to go to work at The New England Homestead Magazine. She loved being able to work and made herself indispensable, turning that high school job into a career. Eventually, she worked her way up to the advertising department, handling classified advertising, and later, display advertising.  After marrying, June left the magazine to help my grandfather run the family’s gas station and oil delivery business. When he passed away unexpectedly in 1976, she took over and became the first woman to be granted a contract to sell Mobil Oil-branded gasoline in the United States.

During my senior year in high school, we were assigned to write a biography about someone we knew, and I chose my grandmother June. I sat on her red chenille couch and interviewed her as she sat in her recliner across the room, with the grass-green tray table beside her. All the facts mentioned above came from her telling me her story that day. I must have asked her if she had learned anything over the course of her life that she wanted to share, because the biography concludes with her assertion, “All you really need to do is wear a smile, and everything will turn out to be just fine.”

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“What if I had never interviewed her? Who would know this?”

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Today, it still amazes me that most of what I know about her life is because of that biography assignment. Just as her journal entries are short on emotional or personal information, our family isn’t one to talk about challenging or tender topics. But during that interview, she opened up. My mother, June’s own daughter, told me that she didn’t even know much of what was in those seventeen pages I wrote in 1994. For example, when June married her first husband in 1939, she kept her marriage secret because it was common that companies wouldn’t employ married women. Then, when they were buying a home in 1940, the bank based their purchase on her husband’s income only. And then there’s the tragic story of her first husband dying of appendicitis in 1945 while he was in the Navy and they were stationed in California. June was pregnant and returned to Massachusetts by train, alone. I sometimes think, “What if I had never interviewed her? Who would know this?”

My grandmother started writing in her journals after she retired. She wouldn’t have had time to write while she was working and taking care of everyone. Did she start keeping the journal because she was bored after she retired? Was she always interested in writing, maybe because of her time working at The New England Homestead? Today, I scour my grandmother’s journals looking for clues about how she felt about her life, her work, and her family. I wonder about so much. I want to ask her, “What did that feel like for you? What do you think? We’re you afraid?” I do a lot of speculating.

The last page of her biography notes my sources. It says the interview with my grandmother took place on February 24, 1994. I pulled out her 1994 journal to see her entry on the day she told me her life story. At the top of the page, in her cursive handwriting, it says only the temperature and waking time:

L22, H34 Cldy
Up at 7:00. Chair.

The rest of the page is blank. Once again, I’m left wondering. As I looked at the empty space, I thought, “What did you think about telling me your story, Gramma?” I’m glad to have the words she did share, but I can’t help wanting so much more.

And even though I won’t have the chance to talk to her again, today I can work to pick up where she left off by staying committed to writing my own story, in my own voice…

February 26, 2026
Low 22, High 34
The sky is so clear and blue today. The sun is helping melt all of the snow. I was up at 5:30am. I love this quiet time before the rest of the house wakes up. It’s an opportunity to connect to myself.

I think it’s more than a coincidence that I’m writing these words almost to the exact day I interviewed Gramma, thirty-two years later.

I want to write more about what Gramma said about everything turning out just fine if you wear a smile. I wish I could talk to her about this. I wish I could tell her what I’ve learned in the years she’s been gone, and about all I’ve done to make the truth of how I feel inside match the smile I wear on the outside. I think she’d be proud.

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Pam Gainer is publishing intern at Modern Memoirs, Inc. in spring 2026

An Offering

A blog post by Publishing Intern Pam Gainer

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“Ring the bells that still can ring,
forget your perfect offering,
there is a crack, a crack in everything,
that’s how the light gets in.”
—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

A sunlit moment of presence during a winter walk at Silver Bell Farm in Monson, Massachusetts

What element of my Modern Memoirs publishing internship do I like best so far? I’ve only been here for about a month, but here are a few things I can offer:

I enjoy learning about the different clients and their needs and desires. Each client is unique, and the company works to be flexible and adapt to each one. Some clients are doing their own writing, while others are interviewed and have their stories written in-house. Some want a shorter book, some want a longer book. Books vary in size, and some are softcover, while others are hardcover with leather and gold-foil stamps. There are an infinite number of design possibilities; in the same way, there are an infinite number of human stories.

I was asked to share my writing by contributing posts to the company blog. My blog post about “Beginnings” was shared last month, and I am writing another post about my grandmother and her journals. I appreciate this very much.

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“Here’s a question for you, dear reader: do you know the difference between output and offering?”

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And while this is not something specific to this internship, it has felt great to go into an office and contribute. The last time I worked in an office was at a software development company thirteen years ago. So, this new role isn’t a small thing for me! Most of my professional career has been working for my family. It’s important to be in my MFA program now and to take on work out in the world.

Here’s a question for you, dear reader: do you know the difference between output and offering? I didn’t until recently, when I was researching different types of writing for a class project. As I engage in my internship and contribute what I can, I see how “output” is work completed with the energy of fixing a problem. “Offering” is work completed in flow, with presence. The distinction has me reflecting on my work, my writing, and on the years (a lifetime, really) I’ve spent trying to fix myself.  I’ve prioritized output over offering, and it has left me feeling like something is missing.

Fixing oneself is different from taking care of oneself. In the latter, healthier vein, I’ve been taking Pilates classes for the past three years, and I have the absolute best instructor. She owns the studio and is a beautiful teacher in so many ways. This winter, with the bitter cold here in Massachusetts, a pipe froze, flooding her studio. She had to cancel classes for the week. Today, she told us how glad she was to be back teaching, how much she needed to be back, for herself. And as a drove away, I thought about how her teaching is her offering.

To be able to contribute, to offer something to the world, is life-giving. It’s your energy, it’s your creativity. It’s you. And maybe the person your offering gives the most life to is you.

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This post is slightly adapted from a piece I wrote for my MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at Bay Path University.  To see the original post, as well as more of my writing, visit my Substack, “Pam’s Daybook.”

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Pam Gainer is publishing intern at Modern Memoirs, Inc. in spring 2026

Love Is a Memoir

Hearts, Cupid, and chocolates are all around, and I’m thinking about one of the main reasons people write memoirs and family histories: love. It is an act of love to pour your energy into writing, to delve into your psyche or the past—painful or distant or beautiful or conflicted—and record your memories, knowledge, or family lore. An account of feelings, reflections, or recollections is a gift to your loved ones, a golden gift that only you can give. It’s a window into your soul. It also can provide roots for family members or promote belonging, connection, and understanding among people.

However, writing can take so long, be so tiring, become so tedious. It’s easy to lose interest or momentum. Yet the rewards abound. Memory may not last, but books do.

Looking on the shelves here in our Modern Memoirs library, I can quickly spot titles that quite literally embody love. These are commissioned joint memoirs of couples, and I remember working closely and compassionately with these partners during their book projects. A few examples:

A Love Story: A Memoir—interviews with a family matriarch, augmented by stories and memories from her husband

The Hallam Family—interviews with an elder couple, including a WWII veteran’s war stories and photographs

Pam and Harry—interviews with a dynamic couple centered around family, family business, and community initiatives

Some memoirs include written contributions from family, colleagues, and/or friends:

Kaddishel, A Life Reborn—one man’s Holocaust experience, with extensive interviews of his contemporaries on three continents, conducted in a variety of languages and translated for the book. (Click on book cover or on title to read this open-source digital volume.)

An Unlikely Entrepreneur—narrative by a businessman diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, with additional chapters written by his wife

Conitex Sonoco 35th Anniversary: In Celebration of José Luis Artiga—company history and retirement gift to former founder/CEO, with written tributes from colleagues and family

And then there are the more varied styles of memoir, compilations of authentic journal or diary entries, letters, poems, even notes on index cards:

Walking Together: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey through Aging and Alzheimer’s—imagined letters from daughter to her mother during her final years

“No Excuses” Love, Dad—notes on index cards written by a father and stuffed into his son’s backpack every morning before school

A Grandmother’s Diary—journal writings about raising bilingual grandchildren

Eighteen Letters from a father to his daughter—a father’s letters written, but never sent, to his daughter, from birth until she went off to college when he shared this book with her

Reading Proust to My Mother—memories from childhood through sunset years with a literary mother

All My Love Always, Your Gampy—hundreds of letters from a grandfather to his grandchildren, though they are still too young to read a book!

In every one of these personal books, love shines through in the words of each narrator, in that unique way only seen in writing—with thoughtful attention to memory, detail, phrasing, relationship, and what Wordsworth called “the breathings of your heart.”

Perhaps you’ve thought about writing and not yet jumpstarted it. Perhaps your writing is just sitting on a desktop, idle. Try to get to the next step! Get the book done. Some day, somewhere, some family members or friends will be interested. And I’ll bet they will love it.

Beginnings

A blog post by Publishing Intern Pam Gainer

My internship at Modern Memoirs is a component of my Immersion in Publishing class at Bay Path University. One assignment is to write regular blog posts incorporating our internship experience. Fittingly enough, in our first post for class, we were asked to write about “beginnings.”  Referring to the staff bio I wrote as one of my first tasks at Modern Memoirs, I wrote about authenticity and beginning again, sharing:

“I’m inspired by my boys, as I watch them go out into the world, knowing themselves and following their own unique paths. I see myself doing the same thing, only it’s happening during the second half of life.”

Here is a link to the full blog post, which appears on my Substack, “Pam’s Daybook,” where you can find more of my writing, too.

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Pam Gainer is publishing intern at Modern Memoirs, Inc. in spring 2026