Sometimes the most powerful part of a story is not what is said outright, but what is left unsaid. In this video, I explore “the gap” as a silent story engine—the space between what a character knows and what they fear, between what happened and what can finally be named. For family historians and storytellers, learning to notice that gap can open the door to deeper emotion, richer scenes, and more meaningful ancestral narratives.
The Research Gap: A Silent Story Engine
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The gap in Jessie’s story seemed to be did they divorce? There was a second wedding to the same man but no mention of a divorce. Why marry twice?
Last month I found a record after someone mentioned “full text” on Family Search. It was the divorce record that included an account of the husband’s adulterous relationship and evidence of arguments between the married couple. Do I fill the gap or leave it a mystery?
How do I treat that with out coloring bad feelings in the family? Those bad feeling exist in the original children but what about the grand children and great grandchildren?
Gosh, there are so many gaps. One is for my great-grandmother. In 1901, the local newspaper said that she was packing up her house to join her husband in Colorado. His brother had recently died and he was going to take over his business. There is nothing until the 1910 census, when she has returned to the suburb of the large city where she was living, and her daughter, my grandmother, was with her. The husband vanished into the mists of time. She was in the 1920 census, teaching for the local school district, and in 1925 she took a round-the-world trip, perhaps after she retired from teaching; I don’t know. She would have been about 60 years old then. Nothing else is in the newspaper until her obituary in 1951. Only place she is mentioned is in the censuses in 1930, 1940 and 1950. I would love to know what happened in 1901. Did her husband decide not to take over the brother’s business? He was an alcoholic and perhaps my great-grandmother decided that she was done with the marriage and became a “widow.” She was a very respectable church member and seems to have never stepped out of the role of wife, teacher, mother, and widow.
Hoping this gap becomes a door someday soon!
My female married ancestor was ready to board a ship to emigrate from the British Isles to Canada in 1847 (she is on a list as ‘willing to emigrate’ a few months before the crossing). Four years later, in the 1851 Canadian census, her husband is listed as a widow. I’m not sure how to write this part of the story as it so important to describe ‘something’ about her death. Did she actually cross the ocean? Die on board? Tragedy on the walk up to the Queen’s Bush? Or somewhere once they settled in Grey County?
Lynn, your video is amazing….thanks for putting so much work into it!