Welcome back to Chronicle Makers, where we celebrate beginning storytellers and turn genealogy facts into engaging stories.

I’m thinking about Tom Cruise right now.

His eighth Mission Impossible movie just hit theaters, and it’s sure to be another blockbuster. And honestly? The life of my ancestors feels just as epic and astounding. (Granted, they didn’t leap from airplanes or climb the side of a skyscraper.) But I’ve been struggling to figure out how to bring that same Hollywood energy into my family history writing.

That’s when I came up with what I call the cinematic approach.

The cinematic approach is how I take real family history—names, dates, occupations—and turn it into a living story that feels dramatic, emotional, and worth remembering. It’s not about adding fiction. It’s about adding dimension.

Take my ancestor John Wilmer, for example. He was born in 1841 and died in 1929. He didn’t serve in the Civil War. He never owned a watch (according to tax records) and his house didn’t even have indoor plumbing. He spent most of his life working as an iron miner and later as a dairy farmer.

Not exactly blockbuster material… or so I thought.

But then it hit me: if I were turning his story into a Hollywood script, what would I need to include? What moments would make people care—even people who aren’t related to him?

That’s how this whole post came together: a set of cinematic approaches I’m using to tell his story in a way that feels bigger than one man’s life. Not fictionalized, not over-dramatized—just finally told with the depth it deserves.

So grab your popcorn. We’re turning family history into Hollywood blockbusters.

1. Anchor their life to a famous event or era

For my ancestor John Wilmer, his absence from Civil War service is worth noting—not as a gap, but as a clue. Why didn’t he serve? Was he needed in the mines? Did his labor contribute to the war effort in another way? These are the kinds of questions that pull readers in.

And here’s some ways to anchor your ancestors to events:

• Frame their life by what they lived through: born before Lincoln, died after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic.

• Use inventions (railroads, telegraph, telephone) to show how their world changed.

• Connect personal timelines to national policies like Prohibition or draft laws.

2. Show how state and national policies shaped private lives

Soon after John Wilmer died and the Depression hit, Pennsylvania began regulating milk prices and requiring dairy licenses that cost the modern equivalent of over $5,000 per year. Those policies crushed small farms—including every one in the area by 1950.

Here’s ways to research and write about government policies with your ancestors:

• Trace the ripple effects of big policies into small communities.

• Look at land, taxes, licenses, and health laws as characters in the story.

• Use modern-day equivalents to make the impact real.

3. Center around a transformation or turning point

John Wilmer went from digging iron ore to milking cows. That pivot alone opens questions: Was it economic necessity? Physical wear and tear? A yearning for something steadier?

Here’s how to approach writing about transformations with your ancestors:

• Focus on a key change—career, marriage, location, belief—and zoom in.

• Use tension: what triggered the change, and what did it cost?

• Anchor the turning point in a scene, even if you need to reconstruct it with imagination and research.

4. Highlight the often invisible work of women

John wasn’t a sole hero. He was married for over 40 years to Martha Boggs, who was described as “hardworking her whole life.” What does that mean, really? I’m digging through newspaper ads and advice columns from her lifetime—because they often reveal what women were expected to do and how they did it, both old-school and “modern” ways.

Here’s some other ways to reveal women’s work:

• Look for research of women’s labor in PhD dissertations.

• Consider what was expected of women in her generation.

• Create an hourly list of jobs she did to keep the household running.

5. Explore their place in a community or class system

John was an orphan. Martha was the daughter of an Irish immigrant laborer. These weren’t the local elites—they were the working poor. They likely weren’t invited to the dances or mentioned in the town history books. But they helped build the community all the same.

Here’s how to uncover an ancestors’ social class:

• First, acknowledge the unspoken class system in America.

• Use tax records, property addresses, and occupation lists to show status shifts.

• Review popular magazines at the time and see which groups of people were mocked.

6. Describe the world through fashion, food, and culture

I don’t have a single photo of John or Martha, despite photography being available for most of their lives. But I can still bring their world to life through the clothes they likely wore, the tools they used, and the meals they ate. That means layering in period images—not to decorate the story, but to ground it.

Here’s ways to find what their world looked like:

• Search digital books for recipes, song lyrics, or Sunday sermons.

• Trace how trends changed over the decades they lived.

• Visit local historical societies and museums to view collections of photographs and items.

7. Let primary sources speak for the time

In 1914, John’s barn burned to the ground. As awful as that was for him, for me it was a gift: the local paper ran a full column about it. That article tells me what the barn looked like, what was lost, and how people in town responded. It gives me language and tone for the whole chapter.

Here’s how to approach this:

• Use diaries, newspapers, court records, and gossip columns.

• Search church bulletins, lodge rosters, and business ads.

• Local people may have written about your family in letters to each other. People of every time love to talk about other people!

8. Use imagery and artifacts to evoke emotion

I’ve gathered milk bottles from the Wilmer dairy, photos of one of the homes that still stands, and the gravestones of John and Martha. I plan to include those in the story, not just to show what remains, but to reflect on what’s been lost.

Here’s what to do with heirlooms and objects:

• Use them as gateways to tell a story—not just as illustrations.

• Describe their journey from then to now with what’s worn, broken, or lovingly preserved.

9. Mirror their story with national myths or archetypes

John’s life is the American Dream. Orphaned young, worked hard, and eventually left behind a 60-acre dairy farm split among six kids. He didn’t get crazy rich, but he made something that lasted through two 19th century economic crashes.

Here’s how to figure out the archetype of your ancestors:

• Use Perplexity.ai to teach you about national archetypes with a query such as “What are the top ten archetypes for [country] for [time period]?”

• Contrast myth with reality—what parts didn’t match up?

10. Close with a legacy that matters

There’s nothing left of Wilmer Dairies now—just a street sign. A few people still remember the milk truck deliveries. That’s it. But in writing this story, I’m keeping him alive just a little longer and showing people what life was like before it all got paved over for strip malls and highways. And that feels like the most important thing I can do.

Here’s some ways to turn facts into legacy:

• Don’t end the story with death—end it with meaning.

• Share your personal reasons for writing the story, even if it seems like the world doesn’t care.

• Reflect on what you’ve learned by researching and writing the story.

And hey, if Tom Cruise can make eight movies about running toward explosions…

…I can write one unforgettable story about the ancestor who quietly built something that lasted.

Happy cinematic storytelling!

—Denyse

P.S. If this post gave you ideas, share it with another family historian looking for inspiration—and let’s make storytelling the real blockbuster.

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