W is for Writing Family Memories

Save Family Memories to Our Echo

You look at vintage family photos and wonder “what was their life like?” Some day, your great-grandchildren will be the ones asking this question about pictures of you. Start now writing about your childhood memories to pass along to your children and grandchildren. Don’t leave them wondering.

Gail McGhee and her older sister Melba on a horse in the 1930s.

My mother encouraged friends and family to write for the Our Echo website. She was such a consistent contributor and a cheerleader for the others writing there, that the site creator hired her for the webmaster. Not many sites have 80 year old webmasters.

Posting the memory pieces that you write online at Our Echo lets your family enjoy your memories right away. It also preserves them in case your computer should ever crash. Read on to learn more about the Our Echo website and how you can participate there.

How to Get Started on the Website

Go to Our Echo. Click on “Create an Account.” It will ask you for an e-mail address and to choose a password and a password reminder. It then asks your name, city, state, and country. You can add a photo and a brief biography and a link to your website if you have one.

You then have the option to view posts or to add a post. Browse around the home page and also view what other people have posted. This will give you some ideas for your own postings.

Sharing the story you’ve written only takes a minute.

1. Select “Add a Post” from the OurEcho homepage.

2. When prompted, sign in using your email address and the password you selected.

3. Select the type of story you are writing and include a primary person, year, and individual. These three items identify the main components of the story are used by OurEcho to organize stories. The more specific you can be, the easier your story can be located within OurEcho, as well as by search engines like Google and Yahoo.

4. In the space provided include your story and then select “Continue.”

5. If you wish, on the pages that follow, upload photos and audio to accompany your story – select “Continue.”

6. Review your story and select “Publish.” You must select “Publish” for your story to be published on OurEcho.

This is a great site to record your family memories and history to share with others.

Add Photos to Your Our Echo Postings

You can add photos to your posting and also record your voice reading your story. These enhance the experience of reading your memories.

Examples of Family Memory Writing on Our Echo – written by Virginia Allain

1. On My Grandparents’ Farm – memories from a 1950s childhood in Kansas
2. All Our Playhouses – remembering making mud pies
3. Off to Town – memories of family shopping trips to town

Here’s Mom’s Our Echo profile and links to her stories. She wrote dozens of posts from family history to poems to childhood memories that she shared on the site. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren don’t have to wonder “what was her life like?”