When
I write I need to know exactly where I am headed and how I am going to get
there. I have been researching my mother’s family for years. I know the main
characters, the supporting characters, the setting and the timeline very well.
However, I need to organize the events in the lives of those intertwining
characters in a way that someone who unfamiliar with them can follow along
easily.
INDEX
CARDS
I
began with index cards pinned to my cork board to lay out the main sections of
this book. Those break it down to these sections:
Remembrances
Early
Pages: Title page, Dedication, Table of Contents, Introduction & My mother’s
Ancestor Tree
The
Families: The oldest information on the four families, Brady, Coyle, Gartner
& Mullane
The
Families Come Together: Marriages between the four main families & those
descendants
Our
Family: Where are the families now?
Later
Pages: Special Thanks, Epilogue, Documents, Works Cited & Index
These
are pinned to my corkboard and easy to move around which I have done several
times until it seemed to flow easily.
OUTLINE
From
those basic cards I wrote an outline which will become my Table of Contents. Here
is a section of that outline:
Remembrances:
The Story of the
Brady, Coyle, Gardner & Mullane Families
Title page
Dedication
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
ANCESTOR TREE OF ALBERTA JOY (GARDNER)
BROWN
THE FAMILIES
BRADY
The Brady Family Tree
The Brady Family Timeline
The Thomas &
Catherine (Gibney) Brady Family Story
The Children of Thomas Brady
Patrick Brady
The Children of Patrick &
Ellen (Reilly) Brady
William Brady
The Children of William &
Bridget (O’Reilly) Brady
Owen Brady
The Children of Owen & Mary
(McGovern) Brady
Margaret Brady Coyle
Thomas Brady
John Brady
The Children of John & Mary
(Mc Cartin) Brady
Ann Brady Kilday
The Children of James & Ann
(Brady) Kilday
Bartholomew Anthony Brady
The Children of Bartholomew
& Mary (Reddan) Brady
Mary Ann Brady
Catherine Brady
The Descendants of Thomas Brady
COYLE
The Coyle Family Tree
The Cunningham Family Tree
The Michael & Mary (Cunningham) Coyle Family
Story
The Descendants of Michael
Coyle
GARTNER
The Gartners in Europe: The Markusz & Devorah
(Horn) Gartner Family
The Markusz Gartner Family Tree
The Markusz Gartner Family
Story
From
Poland to Hungary
The
Golden Age
Wars & Death
The Gartners in America: The Leopold & Fannie
(Edelstein) Gartner Family
The Leopold Gartner Family Tree
The Leopold Gartner Family Timeline
The Leopold Gartner Family Story
Marriage: Leopold Gartner &
Fannie Edelstein
Citizenship
1900 in New York City
World War I
Buffalo, New York
The Descendants of Leopold Gartner
The Florence (Gartner) Weissberg Family
The Weissberg Family Tree
The Weissberg Family Story
A Family Visit
World War II
Milton Sydney Weissberg
MULLANE
The Mullane Family Tree
The Mullane Family Timeline
The & Brigid (English) Mullane Family Story
Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland
A Growing Family
1900 in Clonmel
Family Visit
The Death of Daniel Mullane
Frances
(Mullane) Keeton
The Descendants of Daniel Mullane
I
have printed out my outline, put it on my clipboard and made notes all over it.
I have notes on the fonts I will use for each section, stars to show the pages
I want to be sure end up on the right hand side of the book, arrows to show a couple
things rearranged, etc. My outline gives me the confidence to know where I am
headed.
