Has anybody written a fictional account based on family records?

Question

How did you do it? How did you get started?

Answer 1

Alex Haley did in the book "Queenie".  I believe that his first book "ROOTS" was based on correct information though,.....emphasis on "based on".

Answer 2

remember, many family stories are so fuzzied up by you thinking the story your grandfather told was about his family when it was actually about your grandmother's family, etc. and by people just simply making it up as they went, that a lot of it is already fiction.

For example, I have an ancestor who I see, in census accounts, living in Kentucky in 1810 and who, by record, served for a brief time in the militia for the war of 1812.  Later, he moved to Illinois.  I might guess that he had a land grant that he used to get property in Illinois.  Another family member hears this and next time says, "Our ancestor fought in the war of 1812 and was rewarded with a bunch of property in Illinois".  The next says he was a Captain and that he fought at New Orleans against the redcoat invaders, alongside Andy Jackson.  The next teller says that Andy Jackson was a good friend of my ancestor and that they drank and played cards together and that my ancestor visited the white house when Jackson was president.  The next teller says that my ancestor was engaged to Andy Jackson's wife before she left him and married Jackson.   ETC.

In fact, my great grandfather was said to have been in Andersonville, threatened with hanging and reprieved at the last minute and exchanged for confederate prisoners, thus turning his hair white.   actually, Great grandfather was in Tennessee for a little while as a teamster, then spent most of the rest of the war in a military hospital suffering from various swamp ailments.