Making a Family History Book

What to do with your hours of research, mounds of photos, and hundreds of fascinating documents?  How can you share your research with your family in ways that will make them interested in your research, not drive them to avoid you in conversations?  An engaging family history book has worked for me. 

I completed my first book for someone not related to me.  I only needed to research aspects of the tree for the book.  It was also more of a collaborative approach as there was a family history association in Finland that had completed much of the research on one of the branches of the tree, and had written a family history already (in Finnish mind you).  I had to fill in the gaps for the Canadian branch, collect some additional stories, seek help with translations, and then it was done.  There was also a very limited amount of research and information available, so I knew the book would be short.

As you may have read in my blogs associated the Allison family, there is lots of information available.  I learn something new every day associated with the family, and while I have had some help from time to time, mostly I have been compiling the information related to my branch of the tree myself.  Stories have been written and posted to this blog, which meant some of the more entertaining aspects of the family book had been completed.  That being said, the family tree and some of the stories had lots of holes; these had to be filled before I could publish.  

Before you start your book, do your research.  Be relatively confident about what you know (and what you don't know).  Once the book is published and family members have it, they will be using it as their source of information.  If your family tree is peppered with guesses (or more often other people's poor research on which you have relied) then your family will pass down through the generations inaccurate family tree information.  The more I have learned about research, the more accurate has become my family tree.  I rely on primary sources.  Anything without a primary source is a guess and I make it clear that it is a guess.

With sound research, you then have to determine what your focus will be for the book.  Maybe you want the whole family tree?  That depends on how extensive it is, how much effort it will take, and so on.  One of my key lessons is to decide when enough is enough, and to do that you need to ask yourself a few questions:  

• Who is your audience?  If it's just family, then you can include some details about the youngest family members.  If it's intended to be public, then keep identifying information about living people out, or at least to a minimum.
• What is your focus?  Determine whether you are studying one branch of your tree, a surname, or a particular person's ancestors.  Perhaps what would interest your audience is only the family history from a particular country, or a particular time period.  Your focus will be determined by your audience.  I wrote my first book about a branch of one family tree.  My second was based on a surname, and my third (now available for purchase through this blog) was based on the ancestors of my grand-mother.

Organization is the key to making an engaging and informative family history book that people will actually read.

• Find photos, documents and sources to put in your book and bring your story to life.  Many documents collected by genealogists are important for genealogical proof, but your audience will be less fascinated.  Sort through your boxes of material for the documents that tell a story or include surprises.
• arrange your files electronically so that you can assemble your book easily.  Your filing system could look a lot like chapters of the book.  Put electronic versions of your documents, stories and materials into each folder.  Doing this will help you see whether how you have arranged things will make sense to the reader.



A sample file organization showing chapters and including all source material

• Prepare any narrative in separate files.  This means that as you assemble the book, you will have backups.  I write my stories and chapters in Word files.  I load them onto the book making platform and keep the originals, just in case anything goes wrong.

You will need to choose your platform for creating the books.  Think about whether you want to be the one printing off the book and distributing it to family members, having it bound and published more professionally, or just available electronically for limited sharing.  These factors will help you determine which platform.  Here are just some of the choices:

Cover made using FTM

Cover made with Bookwright/Blurb

• Most family history software includes book creation options.  These are usually limited in terms of design, but will result in perfectly sound books relevant mostly to the genealogists in your family.
• Online photo-book creation platforms like Shutterfly and Picaboo offer plenty of options.  My choice continues to be Blurb because of its many format and paper options, its templates, and its ability to adapt well to text-heavy documents.  
• Blurb has the added bonus of being a distributor for self-published books, so I can make some of my books available publicly or with limited distribution.  Consider whether you want the book for sale or for limited distribution.

I sometimes do workshops on book creation, so I costed out the cheapest option of creating the book on Word, then printing it out with a basic plastic binding and cover.  To be honest, the cost differential between that and the same sized book professionally published through Blurb was not that great.  If you are budget conscious, consider developing it on a platform that will allow for the creation of a downloadable .pdf version for distribution. There are limitations to all of the platforms.  The one you choose will meet your book's needs best.

I picked this document because family
would appreciate seeing evidence of
our ancestral history from so long ago

Your book's design will be about your taste, and also about your audience.  When you pick a design, think about who is reading it.  Consider that they may pick it up and flip through it first, so include an interesting mix of photos, documents and stories arranged in a compelling and thoughtful way so that the reader will actually read the book.  Consider what your table of contents will look like.  If there are other contributors, ensure they receive appropriate acknowledgment.  What colour theme will you use?  Don't make it too busy or people won't read it.  Similarly, don't be too text heavy throughout the book as it will be intimidating to those unfamiliar with genealogy.  

As a genealogist, I ensure my research is accurate.  I have primary sources to back up my family tree, and subscribe to the genealogical proof standard.  If your book's audience is other genealogists, then text heavy, appropriately footnoted and sourced articles is perfect.  If you want the rest of the family to be interested in what you did, consider keeping the sourcing to a minimum and keep a file of source materials available to anyone who asks.  Focus on the stories and interesting tidbits.  

There have been a few challenges I have dealt with in the three books I have completed.  The first is how to present a family tree diagram in the most interesting way.  Definitely focus on parts of the tree.  In the surname book, I arranged the book by generation, so I could use excerpts of the tree for each generation.  In the book about all of the ancestors of a particular family member, that didn't work because I was working with multiple branches of the tree.  So for that one, I did relationship charts, showing the person I was talking about and their relationship to the one family member through the generations (and there were 13 generations to deal with).  I have done the charts in different ways and I suspect I would need to invest in expensive design software to really make it look terrific.  Play with your ideas and see what you come up with.

I went from a basic chart format (on the left) to
the family tree version above.

An excerpted page from the genealogical report.
It's mostly just a report, but illustrated with the
occasional document or photo

Make sure, before you finish, that you have time for editing, checking accuracy, proof reading (more than once - there are always errors and the more proofreading you do the more likely you will find them).  One other thing I always do:  even though my intended audience are not genealogists, I always include a complete and accurate genealogical report at the back.  The font is small (to reduce the number of pages and therefore the cost) as I don't anticipate that the readers will pay much attention to it.  However, given that this book may be available to other family members over time, it is a way of ensuring the research itself, even in its more basic form, is not lost.  I throw in a few pictures and documents to make it more interesting, but its more about including the details for future generations than ensuring reading.  A little peace of mind for me I guess.

Be sure that you are not using any copyrighted materials, that you seek permission on anything you publish, and that you are happy about the finished product before it is distributed.  Then be prepared to enjoy the fruits of your labour in the form of flattery...  and requests to create more books.