Your Family History Stories Deserve to be Recorded

By KAYE FORD Co-Director

Consider either writing or recording (audio or video) what you remember about your childhood, what your grandparents told you…those wonderful family memories that will be lost to time if you don’t preserve them in some manner.

My great-aunt did this, and I am so very grateful! She left a few sentences about several of her earliest memories. I read her memories and wanted to know more about the stories. I turned to other sources, such as census records and historic newspapers, to flesh out more details. Please note the accompanying photos to see the surprise I found while searching my great-grandmother, Gentle Doyle, in old newspapers!

To learn more about using censuses and newspapers, check out the first two presentations in our 2023 Family History Writing Series. These are located at unlisted links on our new YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@HenryCountyMuseum). To access the links, you must be a member of the historical society at the Patron, Benefactor, or Life Member level or a member of the Henry County Genealogy Alliance (HCGA). The presentations are available to Individual/Family Members for $10 per lecture and for nonmembers at $15 per lecture.

Go here for information on how to join using PayPal: https://henrycountymuseum.org/become-a-member-form/

Go here for information on how to purchase access to the links using PayPal: https://henrycountymuseum.org/henry-county-genealogy-alliance/

The next presentation will be about searching military records. I will also be talking about using Storied (https:// storied.com/), a new way to collect your family history stories and memories in an interactive way with your family.

Please contact Kaye at the historical society at 765-529-4028 if you are a Patron, Benefactor, Life, or HCGA member to have the unlisted link emailed to you.

Gentle Doyle, the mother of Appleby, is mentioned in this article. In her memoir, Appleby mentions that the family called her father, John Edward Doyle, husband to Gentle, “foxy grandpa.”

“Foxy Grandpa,” Richmond Daily Palladium, 2 October 1901, p. 4, c. 2. “Foxy grandpa is circled in her family notes below.

Those who lived through it will never forget April 3, 1974, when a tornado “roared” through the small Henry County town of Kennard. Above are Courier-Times archived photos and the front page of the newspaper the next day. At the left, Indiana Gov. Otis Bowen reviews information about the storm’s impact. At the right, a stunned Kennard resident stands amid the rubble with what’s left of the elementary school in the background.