AT RISK explores the way the records can be destroyed and looks at the heroic efforts by many people around the world who are working to preserve them. You'll see how records are kept and stored through microfilming efforts at the National Archives. You'll meet a Russian genealogist who is trying to reconstruct genealogies destroyed in the Bolshevik Revolution and visit the Shoah Visual History Foundation, where the memories of Holocaust survivors are being preserved. Historically, governments have destroyed records. Because records can be so easily destroyed or lost, each one is precious.
Records tell the stories of the past.
Take a look at the following link and get an idea about the many different kinds of records that have been created throughout history. This site, created by Kentucky genealogists Jake and Jo Thiessens, includes text from wills, letters and property inventories. Note the fact that before the Civil War, slaves were considered property and as such, were given to family members the way furniture or cattle might be passed on in a will. Also note the Woodford Co., KY, Circuit Book C., p. 65 record. You might write from the point of view of the slave, the slave owner or the person receiving the slave.