Writing is an art. It takes skill and patience to write a compelling family story. However, writers often make some common mistakes, and today, we'll be discussing three of those mistakes. But don't worry about these mistakes until after you’ve written a first draft of your family story. These tips can help improve your story if you have a story written. Avoid Writing Long Paragraphs Don’t write consistently writer long paragraphs. Paragraphs are the building blocks of your writing. However, long paragraphs make your content appear bulky, discouraging your audience from reading. Instead, break your text into small sections that are easy to read, making your content more engaging. Eliminate Irrelevant Paragraphs It's crucial to ensure that all the paragraphs are necessary and add value to the overall story. Including sections that don't add value makes your stories dull. If a paragraph (or two) adds interesting tidbits but doesn’t keep the story focused, break them out into Boxed Text—something we’ve mentioned in a previous post. Change Paragraphs To Emphasize Scene Changes Finally, break off and start a new paragraph when the scene changes. A new paragraph is not just breaking off a chunk of text but a new thought or idea. If you start a new paragraph when the scene changes, you avoid confusing your readers, who then lose interest in your story. Fixing Paragraph Mistakes Makes Your Family History Better Writing is a skill that requires practice and attention to detail. Remember, these tips to fix the paragraph mistakes in your rough draft, so don’t worry about them until you’ve completed that step. As you edit your stories, you will become a better writer and keep your audience engaged. Thanks for watching. Remember to subscribe to our channel for more writing tips and tricks. ↪️ Are you looking for more genealogy resources? Grab a copy of our FREE Genealogy Research and Writing Guides: Additional Writing Improvement Tips Does Your Family History Need a Pronunciation Guide? Best Reason to Share a Proof Copy of Your Family History Stop Repeating Your Ancestor's Names in Family Histories Stop Overusing Pronouns In Your Family History

Did you know that your story can benefit extended family members even if you do not have direct descendants? One of the best ways to ensure access to the genealogies you publish is to donate books to libraries and archives. Many libraries, archives, genealogical societies, and history museums may welcome your published family history. At some future date, a descendant of your common ancestors will find your work and praise your name. Therefore, how do you go about donating your finished self-published book? Donating Digital Family Histories If you're producing your genealogy books, you already have a digital copy of it. Create a PDF with all of the font, images, and graphics embedded into the file. Then, upload copies of your book to multiple digital archives. Be aware, that when you upload these books, you're typically granting public access to your work. You'll still retain the copyright, but you won't be compensated for sharing your projects on the following websites. Since we are family historians, the first place I’d recommend uploading your finished books is to the FamilySearch Digital Library. This informative post contains a video explaining the process and access to the forms for uploading your items. A second place to consider is the Internet Archive. While it’s not genealogically focused, it’s a second place to preserve your old diaries. 2. Thought Web / Mind Map Donating Physical Genealogy Books Hopefully, you'll take the type to print copies of your books, regardless of the format you choose. One of my favorite places to produce softbound or hardbound copies is through an on-demand service such as Lulu.com. Once you have ordered and received copies of your book, donate the finished projects facilities that collect family histories and family narratives. Start with: FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Allen County Public Library - Genealogy Center - Fort Wayne, Indiana New England Historic Genealogical Society / American Ancestors - Boston, Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution Midwest Genealogy Center Now, each organization has restrictions on which books they'll accept, but contact the conservators and find out whether your publication is a good fit. Additionally, look for repositories that serve a special connection your ancestor may have. California Genealogical Society Missouri State Genealogical Association National WWI Museum and Memorial LDS Church History Department If your ancestor is African American, look for ethnic-based repositories that welcome family histories for African American heritage individuals. If your ancestor worked for a university, consult the special collections division if they would like a family history about one of their former employees. My great-grandfather was a professor of physics at Ohio State University, and their special collections department asked me for anything that they could preserve about him.. Pro Tip: Don't Limit To Location Connections Don’t limit yourself to close connections for depositing your published family histories. Some locations welcome donations even if the link to a location is non-existent. A copy of my memoir, From Metal to Rhinestones: A Quest for the Crown, is part of Arkansas's genealogical library collection. Although I never lived there, the library wanted to preserve my pageant perspective and asked for a copy. The aligns with many historic document and artifact collectors approach. For instance, I’ve learned from a collector of Books of Mormon that it’s not wise for historical books to only be in the place where you would expect to find them. If all the historical copies of the Books of Mormons appear in Utah repositories and those are destroyed by fire, all copies will disappear. So, this collector deposits his collection at Harvard, Princeton, and other archives around America. The same thing can happen to you. Donate your family histories to the logical place and any place willing to accept family histories. Continue Learning About Family History Writing: How to Self-Publish Your Genealogy What Family History Books Should You Create? What To Do With Old Family Letters?

There are many aspects required to write well, particularly family histories. What exercises can you do to improve your skills and make your published genealogies more enjoyable? This post shares five exercises you can do to stretch your mental muscles. 1. Writing Sprints Writing may feel like an overwhelming project. However, little bursts of energy can help you progress toward publishing a genealogy book. Writing sprints are opportunities to leverage short bursts of energy. Writing in short bursts can help you see how much you can accomplish in 10, 15, or 20 minutes. Set a timer and work on one part of an ancestor's story. Write about one event, such as a birth, marriage, or death. Write transitions between life events. Add social history to the overall story. If you don’t have anything to write about, leverage tips two and three. You could also review the documents you previously gathered. Then, turn those records into sentences, as I’ve mentioned in this post. 2. Thought Web / Mind Map Whether you have written a rough draft and are looking for ways to enhance it, or if you’re stuck and don’t know what to write about for an ancestor, perhaps you need to do this exercise and then return to the writing sprints. Mind maps are a fun exercise when brainstorming topics for a debate or a paper for composition classes. And thankfully, family historians can utilize this technique to improve their writing skills. Pick one topic or event in an ancestor’s life. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write down everything that comes to mind about the topic or event, even if you don’t think it’s currently relevant to your ancestors. For instance, my topic is school. After the timer beeps, make a copy of your web. If you write about another ancestor, these topics will also help improve their story — no need to redo the process for every ancestor with a similar topic or event. Then, review the subtopics and make some decisions. If you know the answers for an ancestor - make a note that you have answers about that topic. Or expand the web with bullet points. If you don't know the answer, make a mark (like an asterisk) to research that later. If it doesn’t apply to your ancestor, cross the idea off your list. 3. Leverage Your Emotional Memory Believe it or not, our ancestors faced many of the same decisions we did. They felt what we felt. And they behaved how we behaved. We all have our own spin on things, but you’ll often find that you are not that different from your forbearers. Leverage this knowledge in this next exercise. This exercise requires a little knowledge about what events happened during your ancestor’s life. Take one event such as marriage, move, the birth of a child, war, sending a loved one to fight, etc. Consider how you might have felt or the decisions you had to make. Your ancestor likely faced similar concerns and choices. For example, if you have an immigrant ancestor, your list of considerations might include the following: Why would you move? How would you move from one place to another? What might you need to leave behind? If it doesn’t work out, could you move back? What feelings might you have had when leaving behind family, friends, and familiar places? Tap into your emotional memory regarding these events and add similar questions and experiences to your list. If you haven’t experienced the same events, you may leverage insights from others to guide your thoughts and considerations. With this list of considerations, you can research answers to some of these questions. Regardless, you can add these questions to your story even if you can not fully answer them. ↪️ Do you want to write a family history book? Grab your copy of this FREE Writing Guide: 4. Read a Draft Aloud You will need a writing sample to practice the following two tips. You can use your writing sprint texts in this exercise. For whatever writing samples you have, read your story aloud. Better yet, record yourself reading aloud. As you read, you’ll discover awkward wording and redundant details. You’ll also naturally speak more clearly when reading something a little confusing. As you read, if an idea for clarity or more information pops into your mind, say it. Speaking things aloud brings them into existence (at least in the writing world). By recording yourself, you can play back what you read. Again, listen for your auto-correct of verbiage and more natural sentence structures, and update your draft with these corrections. Again, you can now transcribe the amendments you made while speaking. 5. Text-to-Speech Readers Sadly, we can read things aloud and still not catch typos and other errors. We can’t always bribe our relatives into reading our manuscripts. So what is an author to do? Try a Text to Speech reader and listen to the computer read your text. The computer- generated speech takes the human element out of reading. You will hopefully hear things your eye kept missing. If you’re using Google Docs, which I do, you can use the Read Aloud Chrome Extension. While plenty of other writing exercises abound to help you build your skills as an author, these will help you gain the most ground. You will soon have more stories and exciting tales to share with your family. And you will likely enjoy the process of storytelling. Continue Learning How to Write Family Histories Unlock Your Memories BEFORE Writing a Personal History 3 Memory Trigger Exercises for Your Next Interview The Easiest Way to Write Family Histories How to Write About Ancestors When You Have NO IDEAS The Only Outline Family History Writers Need How to Write Your Story When You Can't Write

If you attempt to share your published genealogy with your family that only has names, dates, and places, is it any wonder no one wants to read what you produce? To generate interest in your stories and have relatives asking for their own copies, wrap the genealogy facts with social history. Social history details how ancestors lived, worked, prayed, played, and interacted with their community. When you add these insights into your ancestor's story, you can easily turn a dull manuscript into an engaging story. The following steps will help you begin the process. Just remember to start adding social history to your rough draft. As you revise each draft, experiment with adding different elements of social history. If it works, keep it. If it doesn't, take it out. But you won't know how awesome your story will become until you add the details about the daily lives of your ancestors. 1. Research the Historical Context of Your Family As genealogists, we regularly research records to find evidence to identify our ancestors, events in their life, whom they are related to, and descriptions that separates them from someone else with the same name. When we research social history, we do not look for resources with our ancestors' names on them. Instead, we research the locations, dates, and world around our ancestor. For example, we research the following: Towns lived in for customs, laws, amenities, geography, climate, newsworthy events, economics, transportation options, technology. Schools attended for educators, administrators, activities, amenities, buildings, fellow students, and noteworthy events. Religious observance for customs, beliefs, leaders, and buildings. Occupations for skills needed, hours worked, financial compensation, products made or services offered, co-workers, and bosses. Culture - entertainment offerings, taboo topics, behavior standards, courting practices, favored groups, stereotypes, negative group interactions, social ranking, fashion, ethnic heritage, language, associations, medical treatments, and care for the poor. Governments - leaders, laws, social movements, political associations, criminality, military units, violent conflicts, taxes. Often, this social history is gathered in books and periodicals specific to a location and a time. For example, county and military unit histories often curate data about all the social history topics into one resource. However, the relevant resources for the above topics include history books and blogs, historic newspapers, diaries and letters for community members, statutes, religious decrees, and pamphlets. Lynn Palermo has a gateway of relevant resources to get you started in researching social history. However, one of my favorite idea-generating resources is Wikipedia. Review the details about your ancestor's life and then research those topics on Wikipedia. By so doing, I discovered that my Grandpa Lew was a huge Ohio State football fan and worked part-time as a stadium usher. While researching the football team and the famous horseshoe stadium, I discovered that construction of the facility began the year grandpa was born. I then wove the history of Ohio State football, and the stadium, into my grandpa's story, and my relatives thought it fit perfectly. While researching the context, do not overlook anything because you do not think it will fit. It's better to have too much initially and then not include it than to have too little and write a boring family history. 2. Integrate Social History Into Story Two techniques will help you include social history in your ancestor's story. Describe As You Go This first technique deals with defining the unfamiliar, which includes: Terminology - such as slang, idioms, and words that describe objects that a reader doesn't use or has not experienced. Obscure events & places Customs & behaviors For instance, when writing about a bobsled in my Canadian ancestor's story, we could write something like this. While waiting for her cousins at the train station, a friendly gentleman arrived in a wooden wagon set on metal skis rather than wheels. He knew Catherine's relatives well and was heading in their direction. Since Catherine had waited three hours for her kin, she leaped at the opportunity to leave the cold and continue her journey toward her confined pregnant cousin. As she grasped the neighbor's hand and boarded the bobsled, she prepared herself for the bumpy ride across the icy snow. Notice how I have defined a bobsled as a wagon with skis rather than wheels that cause a bumpy ride. In short, a bobsled was probably named by an engineer, "A sled (wagon) that bobs." (FYI. The engineer reference is a debate that happens often in my home between my husband and me. He's an engineer, and I have a degree in marketing. Engineers and marketers always debate over the names of products. Engineers call things what they are - glovebox, bobsled, etc. Marketers will be responsible for brand names and 'creative' words like Cricut machine.) Describe as you go invites you not necessarily to stop and insert a definition. While waiting for her cousins at the train station, a friendly gentleman arrived in a bobsled (a wooden wagon set on metal skis rather than wheels that caused bumpy rides where folks bobbed up and down). Instead, you weave the definition into the story to keep the reader engaged but informed. Zoom In The zoom-in technique works best for helping to describe the setting for events in your ancestor's life. For instance, I often use headlines, pop culture, and world events to introduce a birth, marriage, death, or major life milestone or change. Thus, I will start at a high level. On the day Vladimir Lenin’s would-be heir, Leon Trotsky, was banished by Joseph Stalin. Then I'll zoom in closer. On the 20th anniversary of the Grand Canyon being declared a national monument. Then I arrive at the scene of my ancestor's life event. A daughter joined the home of 34-year-old Jessie Alfred Tame and 30-year-old Elizabeth Orton. Notice how I start at the global level, then to the regional, and finally into the home of Jessie and Elisabeth Tame. After zooming in, you can now describe the scene as you continue identifying the name of the daughter and more about her birth. The weather was probably around 37°F for the babe's arrival. Newspapers blocked the windows of her family home. The headlines for the Salt Lake Tribune screamed “Groesbeck Sentenced to Prison Term” while also encouraging readers to follow the 1928 election season in that paper. What headline would an editor craft had they known Elizabeth's secret that she hid from her best friend and her entire community? Now, as we revise the story to improve the flow of the story, we might rearrange when we include the weather, the newspaper-lined windows hiding a secret birth, and the couple's identity. But do you now see how you can leverage the zoom-in and describe-as-you-go techniques to incorporate social history into a birth story? If you can, use these techniques in your family history and tell me how much they transform your genealogy books. ↪️ Do you want to write a family history book? Grab your copy of this FREE Writing Guide: 3. Don't Presume Many writing educators invite you to consider your ancestors more typical than unique. They are special to you, but they likely participated in behaviors typical of the time and place they lived. The advantage of this advice is you can then incorporate historical events, customs, clothes, household items, and so forth into your ancestor's story, even if you do not specifically know how they behaved, what they worked, or what they owned. However, never infer what your ancestor possessed, believed, wore, or did. An extreme example would involve assuming your ancestor condoned slavery simply because they lived in the Antebellum south. It's possible that a child of a slave owner was an abolitionist. Without documentation proving the fact, we can neither confirm nor refute that possibility. But we can also neither confirm nor deny that they were wholly invested in the practice of slavery either. On a smaller scale, don't presume they did what everyone else did. They may have baptized their children in the same church, but that doesn't mean they believed the religious tenants. Perhaps that church was the only one for miles around, and your ancestors believed in the ritual of baptism. In short, close was better than 'correct.' Try It Out Once you write a rough draft about your ancestors, enhance the stories with social history. You don't have to be a creative or talented writer to add context to your story. But by adding details about the world in which your ancestors lived, your stories are more meaningful and enjoyable. You can do this! Continue Learning Social History How to Use Social History in Genealogy, by Lisa Lisson

Passenger records aren't the only genealogy gold mine for migratory ancestors. For example, the Canadian and Mexican borders historically maintained records of who entered the US, where they've been, and where they went. How Far Back Do Border Crossing Records Go? Thanks to several immigration laws, the US government began documenting who entered the US. These records help genealogists trace their ancestors so long as they crossed the border at official land-based checkpoints. US/Canada border records began around 1895 in St. Albans, Vermont, with US/Mexico records starting 11 years later in 1906. Before these dates, you won't find federal border crossing records. What Do These Records Document? Many border crossing records are available to search for free on FamilySearch (Canadian border). They often list some or all of the following details: Full name Place of birth Age and sex Marital status Occupation Point of arrival in the United States. Final destination Physical description Individual picture or family picture While you can view many Canadian original records, the Mexican border records do not include the original image alongside the index search. To view the original Mexican card manifests, you would use the information from the index to consult the Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85 from the National Archives. Watch this video to see examples. Who Crossed the Border? You might think you'll only find Canadians or Mexicans crossing the closest border to their home country. However, land crossings happened as frequently as ocean travel. Therefore, you will find a variety of European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African nationalities represented in these collections. Don't exclude a search of these records because your ancestors weren't from Mexico. Fellow researchers have found Europeans, Syrians, Japanese, Palestinian, and Filipino immigrants in the collection. ↪️ Are you looking for more genealogy resources? Grab a copy of this FREE Genealogy Research Guide: Be Ware of the Double Names In many cultures, individuals had double surnames. For example, Sofia Hernadez y Espinosa or Gustave Bonickhausen dit Eiffel. They may also have topographical surnames, such as De La Cruz. Also, your ancestor's name may not appear with one of the names or the topographical portions of a surname. When searching the records, look for the following: Hernadez, Sophia AND Espinosa, Sofia. Bonickhausen, Gustave AND, Eiffel, Gustave Cruz, Manuel If you can't find your ancestors' port of arrival or passenger lists, give border crossing records a try. Additionally, discover your ancestors who frequently returned to their homeland in Canada or Mexico. You might learn more about them by tracking how often they cross the border. For more valuable genealogy research tips, check out the following: Researching Mexican Families in Border Crossing Records by Colleen Robledo 7 Websites to View Maps for Genealogy Research For Free Exploring US Passenger Records on Ancestry US Naturalization Records Every Genealogist Must Explore

Anyone wishing to write a non-boring family history has to deal with the daunting task of writing a first draft. Many people in my writing workshops will admit that they never write anything because they don't want to write someone awful. Guess what? Everyone must write a first draft, no matter their chosen genre of stories and reports. And yet, we often can not write our family histories because we're too busy comparing our rough draft to someone's final version. Please stop. You have no idea how many revisions that finished work endured before coming before your eyes. (Well, unless you're an editor by trade.) Together let's reframe our understanding of your first attempt and writing a story. Of course, it will be terrible because it's that way by design. But no one should ever publish the first draft. In fact, Ernest Hemingway apparently isn't a fan of rough drafts when he said, "The first draft of anything is shit.” I won't argue with the man who wrote "The Old Man and the Sea," "A Farewell to Arms," and "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Therefore, If he believed first drafts are awful, cut yourself some slack and write the garbage version of your family story today. Goal of First Draft in Family History Simply stated, the goal of the first draft is to FINISH IT! The goal isn't for the story to be grammar error-free. The goal isn't for it a publisher to sell for millions. Heck, the goal isn't for your family to love the story. The goal of your first draft is to simply finish it. While I like to keep things simple, experts in writing have other thoughts on the goal of the first draft. Professor Mark A. Davis from St. Lawrence University wrote, "The purpose of the first draft is to get one’s ideas on paper and to try out a plan of organization for those ideas." Additionally, he suggests the following: We include more, not less. We should experiment in our first draft by trying ideas to see what works. This draft could be for sharing with others to obtain feedback before we publish something. Knowing the goal of the first draft will help you finish it sooner rather than later. Is today that day? What Isn't a Rough Draft? What doesn't constitute a genealogy book's rough draft? If your book looks like this: or this You have not written a rough draft. While you may want to write the 'big book' with generation after generation of family members and how they related, those books served their purpose. However, sharable online genealogy trees replace the need for such books. As such, we need to stop trying to print out a book form of our genealogy database. Few people enjoy a book of charts and notes. Instead, write a family story that ties the charts, notes, and details together. Here's an example from the published genealogy entitled Descendants of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford, Ct., 1638 and 1635. Here's another example from my Geiszler Family Ancestors book that's currently in progress. Again, if you find errors, I'm okay with that because it's a rough draft. Notice how I also have a footnote telling me I need a citation? You also don't have to have perfect citations in your story. Just leave yourself a note to correct the reference and insert it later. What you see is more than sufficient for a rough draft. ↪️ Do you want to write a family history book? Grab your copy of this FREE Writing Guide: Steps For Writing Your Family History First Draft I will not abandon you with the knowledge that you're draft will be awful without giving you some pointers on making them less terrible. The sooner you write your first draft, the better off you'll be. Follow these steps, and you'll have the draft completed in next to no time. 1. Pick an Ancestor Your book should include an ancestor or multiple relatives. Let me advise you to begin small if this is the first time you've written something. Only bite off what you can chew. Therefore, either focus on one person or a small family. Additionally, writing proceeds more quickly when you know the person you're writing about. Therefore, pick a close relative you met and interacted with first-hand rather than through documents. Once you have written about a small family or someone you know well, you can tackle the person you know only through records. Experience and practice give you the skills you will need to write that story well. 2. Gather Facts As genealogists, our pre-writing process is easier than for fictional or academic writers. We do not need to take notes because our source material should reside in a database, online tree, or research files. Therefore, make sure you have sufficient facts to start a story. Notice I didn't say all the possible details. Sufficient facts often include researching these genealogy basic records: Vital records Census City directories Burial records Photos Family stories and memories Perhaps: probate, wills, land, passenger lists, yearbooks, tax records, and newspapers. That's not an exhaustive list like the one I offer for free on our genealogy resource page under the title Genealogy Brick Wall Busting Guide. It's a start. 3. Outline With all these facts gathered, your next step is creating an outline. For genealogists, our outline is the timeline of our ancestor's life. For the most part, if you're using genealogy software, the program creates a timeline as you add new date-based details to a person's profile. However, you could also create a timeline on paper or a spreadsheet. In your first draft, include events in your primary ancestor's life, their close family (father, mother, siblings, spouse(s), and children), and a few significant historical events. If you focus on the family unit with a central ancestor and include historical events, your outline will lead you to a more well-rounded story. That story will be more engaging for your audience. 4. Turn Source Material into Paragraphs With your genealogy source materials gathered and your timeline, all that's left is turning those resources into paragraphs. Simply extract all the details from the documents. Then covert the extracted details into sentences that clearly convey what the data means. Connect the sentences with transitional words or contextual details so that each fact makes sense. For example, take the following from the 1910 Census. And turn it into something like this: In 1910, Caleb Crowley, aged 56, lived in the second ward of Butte, Silver Bow, Montana, on 209 Quartz. He was married to Margaret (for 29 years) and had the following children in their home: Caleb, 25; Eleanor, 27; Clement, 21; Leo, 17; Clifford, 13; and Margaret, 8. He worked in a Copper Mine as a timekeeper and had a mortgage on his home. His parents are originally from English-speaking Canada. Wow! That's a real page-turner. That's precisely the point. All the first draft accomplishes is converting source material into sentences. And sentences into paragraphs. We will have a completed first draft if we process all the documents about Caleb's life in this fashion. Avoid These First Draft Obstacles Remember, the goal of the first draft is to finish it. Therefore, please avoid the following pitfalls that make it impossible to complete that draft. Do Not Do More Research As you write, You may find that you do not have a source for a fact in your database . Or, you may discover that you don't have a fact that you'd like to have. Do not stop writing to research more details. Instead, save that for when you complete your first draft and start revising it. Do Not Listen to Your Inner Critic Inner critics or inner editors halt the progress of authors writing their first draft. So send your critic on vacation or time out until after you finish your rough draft. It's supposed to be rough!!! You can invite your inner critic and editor to return after you finish your draft. They have an important job to do, but first, you must have an initial starting point! When you put the critics in the proper order and then allow them to help during the editing phase of writing, you will discover how to piece together your ancestor's tale. Ignore yourself and get to work. Do Choose a Voice or Style Claire Bradshaw suggests that "Finding your voice and developing a unique writing style are among the trickiest things you’ll do as an author. For this reason, we recommend that you don’t focus on them during your first draft at all." Whether you should write in formal or causal language, first person or third, or prose or poetic, are not decisions for the first draft. These stylistic decisions should come after you process the details of an ancestor's life and select your audience. Then, knowing your audience helps you revise your draft for them. However, you can not know which audience would benefit from your story until after you write about your ancestors. For even more pitfalls to avoid, check out this post 7 Things NOT To Worry About During Your First Draft. Commit to Writing the Bad First Draft Have you changed your mind about the first drafts yet? Are you ready to get started writing today? Awesome. Let me leave you with two more tips for quickly writing your story. Make a Date - Set a deadline for completing the rough draft. Ideally, the deadline will have a short timeline, such as a week or a month. Then set aside time to work toward your deadline. Write Out of Order - Just because you have a timeline for your ancestor's life doesn't mean you have to write in chronological order. Instead, the timeline serves as your checklist and your organizational structure. But, if you want to write about your ancestor's death and probate first, when they married second, and their military service before writing about their birth, go for it! Just arrange the stories in your draft in the timeline order but jump to the sections you want to work on next. Now that you have the right mindset and know how to write your draft, I expect to hear from you soon that you have rough drafts ready for revisions. More Family History Writing Tips When you're ready to revise your rough draft, these articles are the next step. Ignore Your Audience When Writing Your Family History First Draft Planning a Family History isn’t Writing What should you include in a family history story? The Easiest Way to Write Family Histories How to Write About Ancestors When You Have NO IDEAS

Exploring US Military records may be worthwhile if you have a legacy of military persons in your family tree. But also, look at these records even if you are unaware that an ancestor participated in a conflict. The great thing about having ancestors who served in the military is the records they leave behind for genealogists to discover! While not every service record is available online, the documents you find may reveal when an ancestor served, where, and with whom. In addition, you may discover physical descriptions, names of additional family members, and the stories from their service and injuries. So how will you find all the discoveries waiting to be explored? Were Your Ancestors Old Enough? When you do not know if your ancestor served in a military conflict, this chart will give you an idea of the typical age for those who served in the military. But also, review the rounded number of persons who served in each conflict. * Years the US participated in these conflicts. Ancestors may have joined other countries to participate, such as Canada. ** 458,000 militia members provided local defense. The total in the chart represents the regular Army. - 179,000 Colored persons and 3,500 Native Americans participated in the Civil War - Women started serving in the military in World War I. That number may suggest how likely your ancestor may have served. For instance, the population of the US during the Mexican - American War was about 23,000,000, about 3 million were slaves. The number of men who served in the military during that conflict was 112,000. If you assumed about half of the population was male, then you would Thus, 0.011% of the total male population participated in this conflict. While you should consider if your ancestor served in the Mexican - American War, the chances they did are small. For more conflicts, visit the FamilySearch Wiki Page regarding Servicemen in Wars. Watch this video. How to Search For Records When you have identified an ancestor that may have served in a war, or you have a heavy dose of curiosity, follow these steps to search military records. 1. Review an Ancestor's Profile Before diving into military records, you must know a few details about your potential veteran. These details include: Full name - including aliases, nicknames, and spelling variations Birth year and place Residences - where did your ancestor live before and during the conflict Name of possible military conflict. 2. Gather Clues of Service Next, search your home, the home of family members, and the memories of relatives about your ancestors. What records, photographs, letters, artifacts, or stories document the service of your ancestors? For instance, my Grandpa Lew had a photos with him in his military uniform, a military cross, several military bracelets, and his discharge papers in his home confirming his participation in the war. Next, consult genealogical records: Gravestones - some may have engravings or signage identic ting service. Cemeteries - some cemeteries are resting places for veterans Census Records - Since 1910 (except 1920), census records have asked about veteran status. The 1890 Veteran's schedule also documented service persons and their widows. Newspapers - obituaries, lifestyle features, causality lists, enlistment rosters, and letters to the editor may reveal military participation. Other genealogical resources may also identify military participation. Let me know which ones I've overlooked. ↪️ Are you looking for more genealogy strategies? Grab your copy of our FREE Genealogy Research Guides: 3. Leverage Record Hints I’m a big believer in leveraging technology to do some research for me. Therefore, build your family trees on Findmypast, FamilySearch, Ancestry, and MyHeritage and let their algorithms recommend record hints for you. In a previous post, Ancestry's hints directed me to Canadian military records I hadn't considered yet. Granted, those military records were Canadian, but the principle holds for many U.S. military records. New record collections are regularly added to the big four genealogy websites, so let their hinting tools point you in the right direction (or a new direction you hadn’t previously considered). 4. Utilize Genealogy Website Card Catalog Now, not every military collection online is indexed or fed into the hinting algorithm. As such, we can’t rely solely on recording hinting for military records. Dive into the Card Catalogs on the big four websites of Findmypast, FamilySearch, Ancestry, and MyHeritage. Use the card catalog filters of keywords, location, record types, or time filters. In this video, I demonstrated how to use the Ancestry Card Catalog to filter to specific military record collections. Some other military-related keywords to search in the card catalogs include: Military unit name Battle/ Conflict Town Pension Japanese Internment, etc. If I have thought of an additional keyword one that you've found successful, let me know in the comment section. 5. Consult Military Resource Guides Not every military record will be easy to find, and many will be offline. So your next step for do-it-yourself searching is to consult military-specific research guides. There are several available for you. First, I highly and often recommend using the FamilySearch Wiki. On the FamilySearch Wiki home page, key in the name of a war or conflict. Once on the conflict Wiki page, you’ll see research strategies, online and offline sources, and other notes - such as record loss. There are several other guides I want to call your attention to. All links and information will be in the blog post in the description box. The National Archives website has research guides segmented by each branch of service. Select a branch like the Marine Corps, and you’ll view various topics and relevant research guides. Many of the collections will be offline, but at least you know what to look for if you plan a visit to the archives. Major genealogy archives and libraries have guides to military research, such as “Types of Military Records” - New York Public Library “World War I & World War II U.S. Veteran Research” - American Ancestor Many state archives have guides to Researching Military Records, such as this one from Colorado. Of course, books and eBooks are available. James C. Neagles, U.S Military Records: A Guide to Federal and State Sources. (Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry, 1994) Lt. Col. Richard S. Johnson and Debra Johnson Knox, How to Locate Anyone who is or has been in the Military – Armed forces locator guide. (Spartanburg, SC: MIE Publishing, 1999) How to Find Military Records, free eBook from Family Tree Magazine. 6. Hire a professional Even with our best efforts, finding military records requires travel that we can not do or expenses we lack. What then? Then it’s time to hire a professional to look up records and seek out items you haven’t considered. While this may cost several hundred to a thousand dollars, the time and energy you say chase the wrong records might be worth the rates. My colleagues at Legacy Family Tree and Trace can offer you these services. You can also reach out to the Association of Professional Genealogists to see who is experienced and active in military research. Now that you know the basics of U.S. military research let me know what other questions you have or successes you've had. Continue Your Research Journey Do THIS to Research America Revolutionary Ancestors on Ancestry How to EASILY Search for Civil War Ancestors Using Findmypast How One Ancestry Hint Led to PAGES of Genealogy Discoveries

Do you have trunks in attics full of loose photos, photo albums, and other scrapbooks? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the process of scanning each image? There is NO NEED to feel overwhelmed. Instead, invest in your sanity and your family archive by outsourcing the job today! Is Outsourcing Expensive? There are many times when do-it-yourself projects are less expensive than hiring a professional. This is not one of those times. You will either going to pay with your time or your pocketbook. With experience, it can take about 5 minutes to scan and correct a single high-resolution image. If you have a collection of 500 images, it will take about 41 hours to digitize all of the photos. If you have a collection of 1000 images, it may take 83 hours. Digitizing slides and negatives may take longer, depending on how much you spend on the appropriate scanner. Do you have two solid weeks of free time to digitize your images? Consider your expenditure of time as a cost. Some photo scanning services charge about $0.45 per image to scan 500 photos at standard resolution. That amounts to $225. Their costs may be higher for picture touch-up services. If you earned minimum wage ($12 in New Mexico), your time to scan and correct 500 images is about $492. While that's a cost that doesn't appear in your bank account, this is an intangible value of your time. We also haven't calculated the time spent researching scanners and learning how to use the technology. Add to the intangible cost, the expense of both a quality digital scanner ranges from $107-1,200. You'll also need to purchase a quality photo editing program that can touch up, organize, and add metadata to your images. I use Photoshop Elements and it costs around $69-100. The actual outlay of dollars to scan 500 photos yourself could start at $150. If you're photo scanning service is $225 for 500 images, DIY costs may see like a money saver. However, you have to factor in the cost of you spending over 40 hours scanning rather than doing other genealogy or preservation related tasks! Additionally, there is the intangible cost consideration that scanning companies often do a better job processing your images than you. The technicians have training and more hours of experience than you or I could ever gather from our home collections. They put that experience to work and you reap the benefits. Soon, the question of expense tips in favor of the scanning companies. Also, do not forget how much overwhelm you'll reduce by having someone else doing the tendinous job of scanning images. Saving your sanity has an unquantifiable cost you should also factor into your decision. Did you know…? You can subscribe to Family History Fanatics YouTube Channel so you can stay up to date with my new How-To Videos & Tutorials! Click here to subscribe now so we can stay in touch and you won’t miss out on anything! Make Scanning Services More Affordable While digitization companies over an amazing service, your costs will increase unnecessarily unless you do the following. Gather Photos in One Location The best cost savings benefit batches of photos. You spend more if you have to send additional photos or photo books that you forgot you had in an attic or other hidey-hole. Organize Photos If you send a disorganized batch of photos, you will receive a disorganize digital image library in return. Thus, you'll waste more time sorting your photos on your computer than you'd likely wish to spend. Instead, organize your photos BEFORE you send them to the service. Photograph photo album pages (so you can remember arrangements later, which might have genealogical clues that you need.) Carefully remove the photos from albums and scrapbooks whenever possible. (Loose photos cost less to ship and scan than albums). Initially, sort loose photos smaller than 5x7 by year or decade. Set larger photos aside. Then sort the photos by months and events within a month (or across months). If a photo doesn't fit, create categories as needed. If the photo is unidentifiable, set it aside until all photos are arranged. Attempt to place the picture in the chronological arrangement of photos. If you still can't identify the photo, set it aside. You can create a scan yourself later if you figure out the person's identity. Don't spend money digitizing unidentifiable images. You can further organize photos by family unit or surnames, depending on your collection. Reduce the Clutter There is no sense digitizing photos that aren't worth preserving. These include extremely blurry or damaged photos, duplicates, photos were a finger is covering most of the important features in the photo, and so on. Remove such photos from your collection. For those photos that are slightly blurry or need a small amount of touch up, make note of those images and pull them out of the chronological arrangement. When you submit those images, you'll sent notes to the service company about your photo restoration needs. Out Source the Scanning of Your Photos After choosing one of the following services, follow their instructions for submitting your photos, photo albums, slides, and negatives. While the technicians scan your photos, spend time climbing your family tree or sipping hot chocolate. Whatever you do to relax, that is what you should do. When the photos return, fine tune the organization of the digital images and being adding them to your family trees and your writing projects! Copies That Can Digitize Your Family Archive Many copies have digitization services. Several of these are featured annually at RootsTech or other genealogy conferences. In other words, they work for and with genealogists on a regular basis. LARSEN DIGITAL - can digitize your photos, audio cassette tapes, and various other media. They have offices in Sandy and Bountiful, Utah. And they have been a long-time supporter of RootsTech. THE MULTIMEDIA CENTER - If you are have listed on the ExtremeGenes radio podcast, then you will know about Tom Perry at TMC. Their services are also all carte pricing covering photos, slides, negatives, films, audio formats, and more. If you don’t live in Springville or Spanish Fork, UT,, they will also refer you to a high-quality digitization service provider near your home. CONVERT (formerly Legacy Republic) - charges a price based on what you can fit into a box, not based on a la carte fees. Additionally, a local representative will help you prepare your box for mailing. LEGACYBOX - Legacybox is very similar to like Legacy Republic, except without a local representative to help you fill your box. You fill a box with items you want to have digitized and mail it in. Legacybox process your items and send an archival DVD or an optional thumb drive for your storage items. There are additional scanning services that I'm unfamiliar with but are popular in the photo scanning services space. Check out this post Best Photo Scanning Services for additional options. Take the Overwhelm out of Digitizing Your Family History You no longer need to stress out about digitizing your family history. Organize your material and outsource it. Better yet, ask extended family members to chip in for the project or collect donations at a family reunion. You can even request this service for a birthday, anniversary, or Christmas present. After you have digitized your family history, you are well on your way to Downsizing With Family History in Mind. Learn more family history preservation tips: The Most Important Thing To Do In Genealogy This Year 5 Things To Do With Finished Genealogy Research 5 Tips for Donating Your Genealogy What To Do With Family Journals or Diaries?

Are you fortunate enough to have published family histories for your ancestors? Do you read them and find them acceptable for the skills of the past but lacking for modern and future family members? Today’s viewer mailbag has an awesome question that I am sure many genealogists have considered. Barb Lee wrote, "I have quite a few written histories by ancestors - all now deceased - and I'd like to publish or otherwise share them. Most have grammar/spelling errors. A couple of them contain family stories that have been proven incorrect. The grammar/spelling errors aren't the real concern for me. The factual errors in the narrative are. I am torn between wanting to leave them as is, in honor of their work, and making corrections. How would you recommend handling this?” Watch this video. What Revisions Are You Considering To make this question more applicable to more people, let’s consider why you might want to revise a previously published genealogy. Add source citations to published books that lack them. Correct grammatical errors. Correct errors in relationship and identity. Correct disproven family stories. To tell a more complete and exciting story about family members. There might be other situations that come to mind. Let me know in the comments section. Lack of Citations and Grammatical Errors If you want to correct for lack of citations or grammatical errors, be like Barb, and don’t let that concern you. In other words, don’t bother updating the previously published family histories. Instead, build your family tree online and use citations. You can link to the published genealogies as part of those citations, just don’t rely on the uncited sources. Then direct your relatives to the latest versions of the family tree rather than published genealogies. Correct Errors in Relationships, Identity, and Disproven Stories If you have the new and correct information to add to a previously published family history, consider doing an update. You can respect the work of previous generations by titling your book in such a way that it looks like a second or third edition. Granted, the original book didn’t think it would be the first of multiple additions. However, you can make a “revised edition” for family members to see what’s new and so forth. In this edition, you can ALSO make up for any lack of citations or grammatical errors from the previous edition. The point is you’re adding significant changes that warrant a new edition. Set up your file in the same style as the previous book. Make any additions as needed: Reformatting citations Add sub-heading for narratives Add appendixes for debunking stories after including the facts in the main section of the genealogy. Insert digitized documents and artifacts. However, consider updating a digital family tree if you need to correct one small story or relationship detail. Tell More Complete Story If you’re going to build off what was previously published and tell a more complete story that utilizes many of the techniques that I have shared on this channel and my blog, then absolutely revise a previously published book. Set up your file in a similar format to what was previously created. However, recognize you’ll likely make significant revisions. But, by building off what was previously there, you already have that pesky first draft written. Now, you’re in the editing stage. No writer’s block for you! ↪️ Do you want to write a family history book? Grab your copy of this FREE Writing Guide: How to Enhance a Previously Published Genealogy In a previous post, How to Critically Read a Family History, I developed a list of questions to ask based on a sample from the book Descendants of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford, Ct., 1638 and 1635. Read that post to view the entire list of questions based on the text. However, here’s a short sampling of questions to ask and address in an update to this book. Descendants of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford, Ct In examining this sample, I would like to clarify a few things quickly. How old were Edward and Margaret Marvin when Reinold was born? How long had they been married? Did either have previous relationships? What is Reinold's birth order? Where is Great Bentley, England? What are the culture and geography like? What religion was St Mary’s church affiliated with? What historical events took place in 1594? Was it a peaceful time in England? Who was on the throne? Notice how many details need further explanations in these two brief pages? And that's not even all of the questions. Again, more are found in this blog post. If you critically analyze what was written previously and expand on the stories, I fully support you revising the genealogies published in the past. Have fun, and let me know how it goes. Continue Learning How to Write Family Histories How Reliable Are Published Genealogies? The Easiest Way to Write Family Histories How to Write About Ancestors When You Have NO IDEAS The Only Outline Family History Writers Need

Do you have family letters in your family archive? Are they love letters, letters home from the war front, traveling, or serving missions? Often correspondence is full of genealogy gold and gives us fantastic insights into the minds and emotions of our ancestors. But what can you do with these old letters to help our family appreciate them more? In a previous post, I shared many steps for preserving family journals and diaries. I recommend you watch that video to learn how to project the physical artifacts you have and how to digitize the pages. After digitizing your family letters, consider creating either an easy or enhanced letter project. The Easy Family Letter Project The easiest preservation project publishes a series of letters in a bound book. You can include only digital copies of the letters or insert pictures of the letters with a transcription following each image. Simply, arrange the letters chronologically by the date the author wrote them. While this project is easy, remember to add a few enhancements to make them enjoyable. At the front of the book, introduce who the letter writer(s) is. Then, provide some context to the time the letters were written and why. For instance, a series of letters written to Charles Thomas’ parents while he served during the Civil War between 1862-1864. Or, letters written between spouses Jeremiah and Katherine Hendrick while he traveled to California during the Gold Rush. She cared for their young daughter in Rehoboth, Delaware. If you have maps, photos of the letter writers, or pictures of the places mentioned in the letters, sprinkle them between them to add more visual interest. A good example of scanned letters interspersed with photos is the book by Edith Vonnegut, called Love, Kurt. Once you have all those items prepared, create a PDF file of the content and send it to Lulu.com for publishing. They do an excellent and affordable job. While this easy project makes letters shareable with family members, the following suggestion will make them far more enjoyable. The work is challenging. Can you handle it? Watch this video. The Enhanced Letter Project The Enhanced Letter Project begins in the draft phase, similar to Easy Project. Include digital copies of the letters and a transcription of each note. Arrange the letters chronologically by the date written. Explain the letters Now, you’re going to read each letter critically. For instance, if the letter said, “The captain gave us double rations for successfully completing our AIT today.” Who is the captain? What is their name? What is their age? What other details can you find out about them? What are double rations? How rare or frequent are they? Would someone consider this a reward, or is it a punishment? What is AIT? Define the acronym. Then, explain what this might involve. How easy or difficult is AIT? In short, digitally mark up the transcription of the letter. Think like a reader unfamiliar with the letter writers. What is happening that a reader wouldn't understand, but the writer would. Repeat this process for each letter to letter. Adjust the chronology Whether your project includes letters written by one person or exchanging a series of letters, insert a communications timeline. Often, letters will overlap between correspondence. Or, writers will tell stories out of order of when they happened. For instance, a writer could say, “I forgot to tell you about…” The goal of this revision is to make the final project flow better from a reader’s standpoint. Now, this might mean that you take portions of a letter from when it was written and move it earlier in the letter order. At this stage, consider that your final project will likely not contain every digitized letter within your book. Perhaps you’ll include clippings from the letters to add visual interest to the writers. While you’re making that decision, move the transcribed and marked-up sections to the proper arrangement chronologically. Then create a reference (not a full citation yet) to the letter that section originated. ↪️ Do you want to write a family history book? Grab your copy of this FREE Writing Guide: Add historical context With the content of the letter arranged chronologically, add historical context. For example, you may have letters written between two lovers who attended different colleges. Incorporate details about the universities they attended, the culture of the schools, what each person studied, what each field of study requires to earn degrees, who finished their education first, and how far apart the lovers lived. Next, layer local and world events, technologies and entertainment of the day, and social customs into the story. By so doing, you’re making this series of letters more engaging for your readers by anchoring their correspondence in a time and place. Final Arrangement Decisions Finally, there are better ways to tell a story than chronological arrangements of letters. Consider rearranging the correspondence one more time into thematic categories. Many writers discuss multiple topics in their notes. For example, they could discuss education, work, service, faith, politics, trials, etc. With the discussion in chronological order, your final project can still be difficult to follow unless you group correspondence by these topics. These topics can then become their own chapter. One chapter may discuss veterinary medicine training experiences. You can begin with a memory the vet student shared. Then follow it up with the non-vet student’s reaction and follow-up questions. Then move on to the next vet-related memory. The next chapter may discuss the football season and the associated activities the sorority member participated in. Even though the sorority/football season experience might overlap the vet medicine stories, you should collect the related messages in separate chapters. Thus, your reader will know each chapter has different timelines, but the conversation flow is smoother. Finalize Graphic Choices Similar to the easy project, you will want to add visual elements that enhance the story of the letters. These elements may include maps, artifacts, newspaper clippings, and more. However, the advanced letter project will need to finalize your decision on how many digitized entire letters to include. You could publish a book that contains all of the letters at the end of the book. Give each letter a reference number, then craft citations to refer to the document. Thus, the vet stories could appear in letters 4, 8, 12, and 15. The sorority girl’s topics appear in 3, 8, 13, 14, and 15. Anyone wanting to see the entire letter can then know where to look. Then, you can include clippings of the letters within the body of the rearranged text. A writer may have had a funny way of writing something. Perhaps they used hearts on the letter ‘i’ or excessive exclamation points or capital letters. Perhaps the author doodled a lot. Choose highlights of the handwritten letters to include in the body of the text to make the pages visually appealing and remind your readers that all your content comes from a series of letters. Why Project Will You Choose? I hope you now have a wealth of ideas on what to do with the letters in your family archive. For family history writers, this can be a fun and challenging experience. However, for those who are more focused on preservation than writing, you can publish the letters so that someone else can enjoy what you make. Perhaps they’ll tackle the advanced project in the future. Additional Family History Writing Tips What Family History Books Should You Create? How to Quickly Choose Pictures for a Family History Book How to Arrange Photos in Family Histories Places to Find Royalty-Free Images for Your Family History Book Tracking Down Copyright Release for Memoir

Are you fortunate enough to have old journals and diaries from family members in your attic, garage, closet, or home hiding places? Old journals and diaries are incredible genealogy resources. If you have some in your home collection, how fortunate are you? Few people actually have such insights into their loved ones. Today, consider the following ideas of what you (or your family members) should do with those historical items to preserve them for the future. Do What You Can But before we get into that, please know you might not be the person who can or should do all six steps. Enlist the help of family members or the genealogy and archivist community to help you preserve these treasures. If you can do one or more of the ideas in this oist , that’s less work someone else has to do. But please, start on this project sooner rather than later. Did you know…? You can subscribe to Family History Fanatics YouTube Channel so you can stay up to date with my new How-To Videos & Tutorials! Click here to subscribe now so we can stay in touch and you won’t miss out on anything! 1. Organize Fires, floods, illness, and other trials can damage or destroy your heritage in the blink of an eye. Therefore, the first step to preserving your old family journals and diaries is to organize the artifact and details about the creator of the items. Dig the journal(s) out of the hiding place where ever they reside. Place them in one workplace. Then organize details about who created these items. When I donated two diaries to the Ohio Start Archive, the archivists were thrilled to know a little about the person who created the journals and his heritage. I drew out his family tree and tied him to deep roots in Huron County, Ohio. Not every archive or family member will accept old journals unless they know something about their creator. So, organize that information and put it together with your diaries. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should be well-sourced. 2. Preserve Now that you have the items and who created the items gathered, take action on preserving them. Melissa Barker, The Archive Lady, shares a wealth of knowledge about preserving family artifacts. With old journals, she recommends: Archival Box The one she recommends is an adjustable 1-piece book box or a clamshell book box. Both are available through an archival supply store. One that I’m most familiar with is Gaylord. Archival Tissue Paper While the box is necessary, this next preservation tip is optional. You can purchase archival tissue paper and wrap the journal for additional protection before placing the book in a storage box. Additionally, if a diary has newspaper clippings and other inserts, place a piece of archival paper between the pages to reduce other damage, such as ink transfer. Melissa has also suggested avoiding tape, rubber bands, or adhesives. Simply fold the tissue paper and place the book in the box. Crumple some tissue paper and fit it around the journal in the storage box to reduce movement when stored. Finally, store the journals flat, not on their sides, and keep them in a cold, dark place. Avoid the attic, basement, or garage as storage locations. 3. Create a Finding Aid With the old journal property stored, consider creating a finding aid so others can know what’s inside the box without opening it and handling it frequently. There are numerous finding aid templates available online. For instance, you’ll find this one from the Georgia Historical Society. As a home archivist, the details within this template may seem confusing. Therefore, view manuscript finding aids at an archive near you. Or review this one that Melissa created for the Houston County, Tennessee archive. While her finding aid relates to letters, notice that Melissa detailed what was in the collection. Few people take the time to create this finding aid. And yes, if you donate your journals to archives and libraries, they’ll likely revise what you created. But the goal is to create something that makes it easier to pass on your family archive when you’re no longer able to keep it. 4. Donate the Journal For many, preserving the items is more than you want to do with old journals and diaries. Therefore, I recommend you donate them to the options I’ll mention in a moment. For others, you do not want to stop there. However, I advise you to consider what will happen to your family archive and make plans now. You’re family journals and diaries have a better chance of lasting long into the future if you take time to consider where you donate the items later on. The Society of American Archivists has a helpful post about Donating Your Personal or Family Records to a Repository. This society offers the best tips and action plans for donating any family record, including journals. I will offer a few places to consider donating your old journals. Local/State Archives, Repositories, Depositories Genealogy Libraries / Archives University Special Collections Subject Archives/Museums Subject archives are thematic museums and archives. For instance, Military museums Farm & Ranch Ethnic Groups Church History And more. For instance, if you have LDS Pioneers or Missionaries, you can contribute to the Church History Biographical Database, by reaching out to the Church History Donation Office. The LDS Church is not the only religious organization collecting such material. If your ancestor wrote a faith-promoting journal or diary documenting numerous members of a religion in an area, reach out to various church archives to see if they would accept the items you have. Finally, you can reach out to your family members and distant cousins, researching a common surname to see if they would like to care for the family journals. Donating physical items can take a considerable amount of time to research the best place to receive your old family diaries and then deliver your items. Don’t procrastinate making the decisions necessary to pass on our items, even if you’re going to keep them for a while. ↪️ Pick up copies of FREE guides to family history research. 5. Digitize the Diary Now, let’s take preservation up a notch. While preserving the physical item is essential, providing access to the item to many is something worth considering. When numerous family members have access to the old family journals, they can benefit more than one person hoarding them in their home. Digitizing the diaries can accomplish this goal. This task also creates a second layer of preservation. If the physical item is ever damaged beyond repair, you and others can have a digital copy of the personal writings of your ancestors. The American Library Association provides several tips for preserving diaries. You’ll want to remove the journal from the archival storage. Then, attempt to turn the pages. If they are easy to open, you can scan the book on a flatbed scanner. If the book is hard to open, take digital pictures. If you do not have access to scanners, reach out to your local genealogy library or FamilySearch Center that might have such equipment. Next, capture the highest resolution possible and save the files as TIFs rather than JPGs. For instance, many images on your phone or digital camera have a 300 DPI resolution. For the diary, strive for a minimum of 600 DPI. Be aware that TIF files at a high resolution take up a lot of digital storage. You’ll want to use external hard drives and/or online storage such as Dropbox to handle these files. After digitizing all the pages, create one file with all the images. You can share this digital file in several places. I will tell you those a little later, so stick around. Once you have digitized the book, you can place the journal back in the storage box and not open it except for rare occasions. 6. Transcribe the Handwriting Thus far, all of the previous steps have preserved the physical journals. But have you considered making the journals more enjoyable and approachable? To step up your connections to these journals, consider transcribing handwriting genealogy documents. However, transcribing these documents is a labor of love and time-consuming. Therefore, this is one time that you should consider getting help. Reach out to family members and others looking for genealogy service opportunities to help transcribe these important items. The more interesting and historically significant the diaries, the more non-family members might be willing to help. In the end, you might end up with a transcribed journal similar to this one for Eugénie de Guérin. 7. Share Digitized Journals Once you have transcribed the journals or diaries, you can create a PDF file and share the journal in several locations. In actuality, the suggestions that I will share with you may accept either the PDF of the journal images or transcription. But, if you can transcribe the journal, I recommend uploading the text version as it is now searchable by other family historians. Since we are family historians, the first place I’d recommend uploading your transcriptions is to the FamilySearch Digital Library. This informative post contains a video explaining the process and access to the forms for uploading your items. A second place to consider is the Internet Archive. While it’s not genealogically focused, it’s a second place to preserve your old diaries. One golden rule of digital preservation is backing up items in multiple places. With these two digital archives, you’re on your way to achieving that goal. There are other possible places to upload digital copies of your old journals. If you know of some, please share those suggestions in the comments section below. Bonus Preservation Idea for Old Journals If you complete the previous six steps, you can call it quits and celebrate all your efforts to preserve your family legacy. However, I have one final tip. Consider taking the journal and annotating it or adding context. In this 1863 Civil War Diary, the transcriber added front material that helped readers know who wrote the diary. provided historical context and timelines to help readers really process all the diary would contain. went straight into the transcribed diary. Adding a little extra to the diary becomes more historically relevant to people outside the family. But it also makes the journal more approachable to family members. You can also take things a step further. While this example pertains to old English essays that Andy wrote, it can serve as an example of what you could do with a diary. Andy transcribed the old essays. Then he transcribed the critiques his teachers wrote on them. Finally, he added commentary on the essay and the teacher’s feedback. Not everyone will take old family journals to this level. However, if you do, you can annotate the journal and diary and explain who is whom and what is what. While reading these entries in the Civil War journal is nice, imagine how much more meaningful the journal would become if someone could explain what “This pen was drew as a prize from NY PH Winslow & Co” means. I hope these items will help you care for the blessings of having old journals and diaries in your care. If you have further questions about preserving items in your family archive, let me know in the comments below. More Preservation Tips The Most Important Thing To Do In Genealogy This Year 5 Things To Do With Finished Genealogy Research 5 Tips for Donating Your Genealogy

Do you often hear, “You should write a book” after you share stories from your past? Or, do you have children asking you to write about your life, but you can’t do it? Today, let me walk you through the process of writing a story about your life when you can’t do it. Is it True You Can’t? Growing up, I often said I couldn’t do this or I couldn’t do that. Finally, a frustrated mentor said. “Stop saying you can’t! Can’t means you don’t want to or don’t know how.” Before taking advantage of my advice later in this video, you must determine which is it. Do you not want to have your life story recorded? Do you not know how to record your life story? If it’s the first, stop reading and tell your family and friends why you do not want to record your life story. However, if you think it’s because your story is not interesting, please ignore the Negative Nancy in your head. This transcript comes for this video. Many people would give just about anything to know more about their loved ones and ancestors. If you already have people telling you that they want your story, then please recognize they think your story is interesting and worth preserving. Having stories on my shelves about my loved ones and ancestors help me feel a greater connection to something beyond myself. These books aren’t best sellers, but they are worth more to me and my family than any of the Top Books of 2020-whatever. If you don’t know how to write your story, then let me suggest the following steps. Talk Rather Than Write Writing can be a difficult task. In fact, when I started educating people about genealogy research, I didn’t like writing blog posts. Thus, I started the Family History Fanatics YouTube channel because showing and telling were much easier. You might find it easier to tell your stories rather than write them. I know my Great Aunt Margie started writing stories about her life and her brother (my grandfather). Unfortunately, her arthritis made it difficult, so she switched to recording herself telling me her stories. It went faster, she enjoyed it more, and I LOVED hearing the inflections in her voice. Therefore, find an audio or video recording device and tell your stories. Then, let someone else transcribe them so you don’t have to be involved in the ‘writing’ process. And yet, you have started writing your story. Use Photos or Memorabilia Next, when you’re unsure what stories to tell, pull out your photo albums and memorabilia. Then, share what you remember about the events captured in these pictures and souvenirs. Don’t worry about telling your story in order. Describe what you saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt emotional. Tell the touching, frustrating, sad, and humorous. It’s okay to brag a bit. It’s also okay to be disappointed. Simply share your thoughts in the audio or video recording. Respond to Questions This next step involves the assistance of those family and friends who want you to tell your story. Have them write out questions that they want you to answer. Or, have them request which stories they’ve heard that they want you to tell. Again, my Aunt Margie enjoyed responding to questions I had about her childhood, how she met her husband, walking the neighbor's cat, and so much more. After each recording session, I would listen to what she wrote and ask follow-up questions. For several years we exchanged questions and responses. It was awesome! She didn’t have to think about what I wanted to hear. I asked lots of questions. By so doing, she shared even more stories I hadn’t heard before. I loved hearing, “Oh, I should also tell you about…” before she shared something I hadn’t known to ask. ↪️ Do you want to write a family history book? Grab your copy of this FREE Writing Guide: Consult Writing Prompts In a previous post, I shared why writing prompts aren’t exactly helpful. However, after you’ve used photos and memorabilia and responded to questions and story requests, you can consult lists of personal history writing prompts. Perhaps you will find questions or suggestions you and your relatives haven’t considered. These suggestions might trigger details that we shouldn’t forget. If that’s the case, use your audio and video recording device and share your responses. Again, you’re ‘writing’ without having to handwrite or type. It’s a win-win. Turn Recordings Into a Book Once you have recorded all of the memories using the suggestions I had before, what then? Well, it depends. Do you want to compile and revise the stories into a book? If you don’t want to go through that laborious process, outsource it! You can ask family members or hire free lace ghostwriters to take your recordings and turn them into a mansucript. Once they’ve finished, you can read and add commentary to their work. Thus, you’re still involved in the process and telling your story. The writing burden has simply shifted to their shoulders. If you want to take your recordings and turn them into a book, check out the writing tips I share on this website. Start with posts about drafting your story, then editing and enhancing it, and finally publishing the final product. More Family History Writing Tips Continue your learning journey with these tips: Stop Being Afraid of Writing Your Life Story Unlock Your Memories BEFORE Writing a Personal History 3 Memory Trigger Exercises for Your Next Interview How to Preserve the Treasures in Your Home