Kick-Ass Genealogy

Thanks to Flickr user DianthusMoon for this photo.

In a pleasant turn of events, I had to scramble to get this week’s post together because I was too busy doing actual genealogy to write about it! Consequently, today’s article is going to focus on one of those projects. I’ve spent much time in the past few weeks working on a project my father presented me with: take some memoirs and letters of his grandfather’s, and republish them in a more visually appealing format. You might think that such a project would be simple — I don’t even have to edit the writing! — but you would be underestimating my power to overthink my nerdy undertakings if you said so.

This is the first time I’ve undertaken such a large project. The source material is a measly 27 pages but we will have nigh on 40 before I am done. With this post, I hope to take you through some of the decisions I’ve had to make and the thought processes that have occured so that you may benefit from my labour if you ever decide to take on a similar project. (By the way, it was only after he had me hooked and reeled in for a couple of weeks that my dad mentioned there were two more people in his line he wanted to do this for. The man knows me too well.)

So, without further distraction, let us get on to the considerations I had to, er, consider.

Copyright

Whenever you’re repackaging or altering pre-existing work you need to check on the copyright status and get the okay from the copyright holders, if the work is still covered under such laws.

The Audience

Who is the project for? In this case, relatives who are not terribly genealogically inclined. This means that the text (which is fortunately quite brilliant) needs a bit of visual enhancement. But, being Serious Bizness Capital-G-Genealogists, it has to live up to our exacting standard of source citation, indexing, and so forth as well. Balancing these two aims was harder than you’d think. While we quickly agreed that endnotes were clearly a better choice than footnotes in this project (despite the obvious inefficiencies of the former), we are still embroiled in a debate over whether we should have the narrative flow better by placing the letters after the memoirs in an appendix style, or have it be historically truer by putting them before the memoirs, in chronological order where they “belong”.

The key takeaway point (other than that endnotes are a necessary evil and footnotes are vastly superior in every conceivable way) is that you need to consider who you want to reach with your project, and what their needs are. Make sure your work is tailored to them. I would never condone leaving out sourcing information, so if you are writing for a non-nerdy audience, you will just have to grit your teeth and deal with the dreaded endnotes. None of your family will read them, but the niece or nephew your book gets passed down to may well appreciate all that work when they blossom into the next family historian.

Also, just because you’re writing for a technical audience doesn’t give you free liberty to write boring prose in walls of text. Find and include as many relevant photographs as humanly possible. Maps of the area, pictures of the town (even if not necessarily of their house) or objects they would have owned (to some extent, a 1920s tractor is a 1920s tractor, so as long as you note that it’s not THEIR tractor, everyone’s cool)..pictures really help the less textually oriented among us. They let us really “see” the places and people and times in our mind’s eye. So go find some and include them.

Status of Existing Material

In my case, the scope of the material was chosen for me. My father gathered a couple letters, a short memoir, about half a dozen photographs, and two pieces of paper with the subject signature on them. You might not be so lucky. You could suffer from a relative desert — or, almost worse, a glut — of pre-existing material. If you have too few documents, you will have to do a write-up yourself. If too many, you will have to abridge, edit, leave stuff out, or just have a very long and very expensive project.

We decided to treat the written work as primary source documents: we would introduce it, explain it in endnotes, and add extra photos, but there will be no editing of text, abridging, or creative re-imagining. The words are his grandfather’s; they are not ours to snip and rearrange at our whimsy. Part of the point is to let the subject’s writing skills come through. Messing with the text would be directly contrary to that goal. Consider the length and type of material you have available when making similar decisions for your own project.

Also consider if you have a well-balanced coverage: do you have tons of material surrounding great-grandma’s wedding but almost nothing on the rest of her life? It would be simpler to focus the project explicitly on that life phase instead of trying desperately to not call attention to all the filler material you’ll have to put into the rest of the timeline, then. In our case the ancestor wrote a fair amount about his early life, while touching on his adult years. Our introduction and project focus will reflect that.

Nitpicky Formatting Junk

You’ll need a cover, a new copyright notice, an introduction, maybe a table of contents and probably a name and place index, interleaved explanatory notes as appropriate, and maybe to mess with the formatting a little to help things make a bit more sense. Don’t forget to add all these things in when considering how long the final document is going to be. Our project length grew by a third after accounting for all these “extras” which are easy to overlook.

Finally, the Fun Stuff!

Or not, depending on your artistic inclination. We read the text, talked about what sort of “feel” we wanted for the project…and still haven’t been able to find graphic elements that perfectly suit our needs. Because my skillz with Photoshop are weak and my free time is short, I will be using a pre-existing digital scrapbooking kit with roughly 10+ highly textured papers and minimal use of elements and generic photographs to do my design. While I’ve scoured the internet for The Perfect Kit, we’ve had enthralling discussions about whether the final book should be 8.5 x 11 or 12 x 12, and the relative merits of each. Three-hole binder or bound? Twenty pound paper or glossy heavy stock? Should we get this done at Staples or a print shop? Just how much do we want to spend on this anyway? How many copies do we plan to make, and how durable do we want them to be? Are we going to add to this later, or is this a one-time, finito, kind of project?

I believe it’s important to consider the practical aspects of the end project so that you don’t get caught up going down the wrong path with the graphic design. Knowing our budget restrictions meant that I shied away from kits with very dark colours, as they would be ink-intensive. We still haven’t chosen paper, but I’ve tasked my father with looking into that as this baby is his project and he will be the one paying to have it printed. I suspect it may be cheaper in the end to have a print shop do it, but we’ll have to get some price quotes and see.

Just Do It

With that whirlwind overview, I’m going to follow my own advice and head off to search for more layouts and debate some more minutiae. If you have ever compiled existing family history material in a highly visual manner, or just had to get creative when re-presenting prior work, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Thanks to Flickr user SOCIALisBETTER for this photo.

Obviously, creating a genealogical resume is a good idea if you plan on doing work for hire. But don’t dismiss it out of hand if you’re not. Why, you may ask (with good reason), should I go through such a painful exercise if there’s not even the slightest chance I’ll get paid at the end of it? Well, other than building good character, it’s a great way to assess your strengths and weaknesses, and a good thought-provoker to help you figure out what direction you want your genealogical development to take. Staring down the barrel of an empty section under “Publications” or “Motivations” leads to a certain clarity about how one can expand one’s genealogical horizons.

Because this is just for you (as opposed to being a Totally Official, Serious Business Resume), you don’t have to worry about fancy (or even “correct”) formatting. Just make sure it makes sense, and let it go. In fact at this point, many of you with decades of work under your belt are probably tensing up at the thought of having to put all that stuff down on paper.

Don’t worry.

You don’t have to.  Just put down whatever you feel is most relevant. (Although I think it can be illuminating to see just how experience you have, you might want to set aside some time specifically for it.)

What to Put In It

I strongly believe the first part of your genealogical resume is the most important. As such, it should contain your Motivation. Why do you do family history anyway? What are you unique interests and talents? What sub-fields do you study and what interdisciplinary fields do you marry in your practice? When you share your results with your family, what do you hope to accomplish? If you volunteer, why? Although there are many varied facets to our genealogy experiences, in practice we often focus on a few relatively niche aspects. No genealogist is the same as another. What are your special talents and interests that make you unique?

Because this is primarily for your own review, I would put your Education second. Include not only genealogy-specific classes and certifications, but any education that’s enhanced your genealogy, along with a short note as to how. Many people have university degrees that have unexpectedly helped with their research methodology or general knowledge of contextual history. After filling out this section, ask yourself if you’re satisfied with it. Or is there a course you’ve been meaning to sign up for but just haven’t gotten around to? A certification you plan to “try for” some day, but not just yet? Are there any gaps in your knowledge where formal education, maybe even a history class or just a good, overview type of book might help?

Next comes Memberships: any genealogical, historical, or hereditary societies you belong to. Personally, this meant facing the fact that I’ve not been as involved in the local genealogical community since I moved. I’ve let my old memberships lapse and haven’t purchased new ones. I don’t think it’s inappropriate to include less formal memberships either: listservs, blog carnivals, and forums where you have been a long time contributing member or a group leader or moderator can fit here just as easily as your official, paid community memberships.

Publications also matter. If you run a blog, put it down. If you do guest posts for other blogs, put it down. write a regular column in the genealogical society’s newsletter? Write it down! Wrote a column once in 1983? Put it down too. The key is to help you think about the kinds of knowledge you have that you might want to share with others. Write your article, or an outline of a speech, and then submit it for publication or deliver it to your audience.

Volunteer Work is also important. Maybe you watched booths at a convention, or maybe you gave free presentations in the library. Maybe you transcribed or entered census or grave data for a local indexing project. Write it down. Think about the worthy projects and organizations you have been meaning to volunteer for, but just haven’t gotten around to yet. Phone the one you want to do the most and get the ball rolling.

Last comes the nebulous Experience. If you have held relevent paid positions, include them here. Also include the general focus of your research, including dates and places. List any specific fields you concentrate on, and any unusual records types you’re familiar with. Any languages or professions you are proficient with go here as well. If you’ve been doing genealogy for a long time, this section may seem huge. My suggestion is to break it down into chunks — either topically or chronologically — to make it more manageable.

Conclusion

After going through this exercise you will have a crystal (maybe painfully) clear picture of where you are in your genealogical development. You will also probably have a good idea of where you want to go next. For me, I realized I wanted to become more involved in my local genealogy community, so I’m going to join a local historical society this year. I also realized I’ve been spending way more time writing about genealogy than doing the research that I so love, as evidenced by my long and recent “Publications” sections so close to my sparse “Experience” entries for the past 6 months. I definitely need to get back to doing some hardcore research!

What about you? What does your genealogical resume tell you? What one step will you take tomorrow to further your own genealogical growth and involvement in the community?

A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn’t. ~Author Unknown

If you’re an audiophile, you’re going to love today’s post. The concept is really simple: we’re going to look at how our ancestors interacted with rhythm and music, then compile our research into a tangible product: either a mix CD with informational booklet, or a folder containing an MP3 playlist and accompanying file (pdf, odt, doc, etc). This is a really awesome project because it draws in your family by using something familiar to them (music) in an unfamiliar way (music related to our heritage). It can also be enjoyed by the non-genealogically inclined. My fellow history nerds will further welcome any excuse they can find to become well-versed in the nuances of musical history as a whole.

A word of caution before we begin, though: Each jurisdiction has its own copyright and distribution laws; you should acquaint yourself with the ones that apply to you before embarking on this type of project. I do not endorse copyright infringement or other criminal acts and cannot be held liable if you are found guilty of said actions after reading this article. Support those artists whose work you enjoy.

Creating a musical soundtrack for your ancestors’ lives can be broken down into two parts: research and production. Research is by far the most complex and time-consuming of the two tasks, but the production phase can be further broken down into the music itself and the written component.

Step 1. Research

Start with your ancestors themselves. See what answers you can find to the following questions:

• Was there anyone musical in the family? Did a whole generation or clan have aptitude?
• Are there any newspaper stories, books, or other articles written either about them or by them that pertain to music?
• Are there any family stories about music in their lives? Any diaries?
• Any photographs of them playing or singing? Of their personal instruments? How about generic photos of the same type of instrument as they played? Of the building(s) where they performed?
• Along that vein, are there any old programmes of performances, sheet music, tickets, or other memorabilia?
• Finally, are there any audio or video recordings of their performances, or maybe just a home video of them fooling around on the piano?

Unless your ancestor or family was prolific, famous, or recent (and thus well-recorded), it is likely that you will have to incorporate more general music too…

• What were popular songs in their time and area?
• What about ethnic, traditional, or folk music? Both period pieces and neo-creations are acceptable.
• What was a popular or defining genre of their time? How did it develop and what influenced it? Find a famous, representative song, or just an example that you find personally appealing.
• In a pinch, are there any songs you know of that seem appropriate to your ancestors’ lives, even if not strictly period in origin or style?

To give you an idea of the range of possibilities, people with Scandinavian ancestry have their choice of nearly any death metal band, Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song”, and any Scandinavian neo-folk music of their choosing. Have fun with that! This on top of actual period music or any music ancestor(s) were known to have performed.

You may well wonder where you are going to get your hands on all this music. The answer is many places: Google and Wikipedia (especially Wikimedia Commons) are good for searching out sources. Information and more esoteric samples are often housed at your local university’s Fine Arts history department, your local archives (they often have a multimedia section), and the Society for Creative Anachronism. Remember to inquire about licensing from the places you want to obtain music from. Simply explain what you want to do and they will be able to tell you what sort of requirements they have.

Step 2. Production

The musical portion itself is fairly straightforward: find and digitize the songs you have chosen, label them appropriately, and create an mp3 playlist using the multimedia program of your choice. If you’re making a CD, don’t bother with the playlist and instead burn the songs to disc. Remember that you can fit about 70 minutes of music or roughly 13 songs on a compact disc.

The writeup is the more complicated part. If you’re using a purely digital distribution format, I recommend using good word processing software to make up a tracklist with notes under each title, explaining why you chose it and how it relates to the ancestor. You may also want a preface/afterword that contains more traditional genealogical information, or a narrative of the individual’s life. A compact timeline also fits well here. If you feel like being fancy, convert the document to a PDF when you are finished for ease of reading.

If you are making a CD, you can do the writeup as normal, but must either size the pages to fit in a CD booklet size, or make sure the CD case is large and strong enough to contain the folded pages inside. And come to think of it, if you’re making a CD you will want a cover too. Either find a nice creative commons-licensed photo on Flickr or use some creative skills to make your own in Photoshop, Gimp, etc.

Conclusion

Now you have an idea of the options that exist when you try to encapsulate your ancestor’s lives in audio format. If you have any memories of music from your own history, feel free to share below.

No, no, not the genealogy of pets, but the pets in your genealogy. Most animal lovers will instantly grasp some of the possibilities inherent with this approach, but let’s take a moment to go over them anyway. Thinking about the animals in our ancestors’ lives is not part of our standard consideration when we do our research. But looking at this aspect, when applicable, not only helps to flesh them out more, it simply makes them more human. It’s also a handy exercise in using less common records, or extracting info from common records in ways you wouldn’t normally do.

Step 1: Things to Think About

Animals our ancestors interacted with can generally be split into one of two categories: pets, and work animals or livestock. The latter was, of course, extremely common in rural areas. Pure pets can be found, but often only with welthier owners and in more recent times. Once you determine what kind of animls your ancestors had, you’ll want to consider how they interacted with each other. What was the individual’s attitude or approah to them? A pet rabbit is very different from a rabbit kept for its pelt, or a wild one hunted and trapped for food.

Pause to ask yourself what kind of impact animals had on these ancestors’ lives. What kind of time investment did they represent, and how expensive were the animals to acquire and care for? Was this a livelihood for your ancestor, a hobby, or a luxury? Were animals a status symbol? How emotionally invested were the owners?

Step 2: Where to Find Information

The best stories about animals come from living memory. Interview your relatives if possible. The next best thing is to look through personally created written works — memoirs, autobiographies, and diaries or journals. The first clue, though, often comes from photos. Photos are a great visual aid and should be included whenever possible. In one of my aunt’s scrapbooks there is photo upon photo of my great-grandmother with this large, black farm dog. She is obviously affectionate with it and playing with it throughout many of the shots; you know there are stories attached to this animal.

After the informal private records you may also check out the formal, public records. A local newspaper is a great place to find more stories about a prize-winning steer, or perhaps a runaway cow that found itself in the neighbour’s yard. (This was not uncommon in some rural areas; the Lost and Found section of the newspaper basically consists of strayed livestock.) Of course homestead applications and agricultural censuses will give you a sense of the scale of a farming operation. It’s almost trivial to compare your ancestor’s 16 head of cattle to his neighbours and figure out how much of a rancher he was, exactly.

If they’re at all available, accounting books for businesses and families, or receipts of sale or purchase, are also a good way to track the movement of animals through your ancestors’ lives. Wills and probate files can tell you a bit about what happened, or they intended to happen, to their farm or pet after they passed on.

Step 3: Putting it Together

There are two main ways to interweave the information you find into your other results. If you are doing a written narrative, you will want to find an appropriate point in the story to bring in the animal(s) and launch into your side-tangent about them. I recommend finding some sort of date to attach to the creatures and using a timeline to introduce them in their natural chronological order. If taking a topical approach to the subject, you can include a section wherever it seems most appropriate — probably under work, home life, or family, depending on the nature of their relationship with their critters.

If you are a visual person, it probably behooves you to reserve a page or two in your scrapbook, so you can fully cover the topic. Other visual projects like family calendars could have monthly themes, with one month focused on the family pet.

And of course, if there are other projects you’re considering, you shouldn’t be afraid to find a way to inject this information into them either. If creating heirloom jewelry, why not get a pendant or charm to represent Spot? (Please note, the original document on creating heirloom jewelry is no longer available through me or my blog. You will have to find it from someone else who has it, or somewhere else on the web, if you do not already have a copy.) If you’re doing a pedigree chart of your ancestors, why not put it alongside a matching pedigree chart of your purebred horse or cat? The possibilities are as endless as your imagination…

Related Reading

• 10 Steps to Writing an Awesome Biography.
• Why You Should Consider Digital Scrapbooking.

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child? ~Lin Yutang

Few things rival my passion for genealogy, but cooking and eating good food is one of them. What better way to spend a day than marrying the two into one delicious, history-rich extravaganza? Today’s article is going to focus on sharing a family recipe — not a cookbook, mind you, as that might be overwhelming to any perfectionists in the crowd *shifty eyes*, but just one recipe. Besides, the process is repeatable to create a cookbook if that’s what you want to eventually do.

Heirloom recipes are a great way to bring your family together and sneak in some genealogy. Kids love looking at pretty pictures and helping to make stuff, and who doesn’t like to eat food? The covert amongst you can serve these at family gatherings and casually mention the ancestor the recipe is associated with, causing all the other relatives to reminisce (or at least critique your interpretation of Aunt Bertha’s classic dish) while you scribble notes madly.

So what counts as a family recipe? Generally, any dish made by your ancestor. It could be a homemade recipe that they created, or it could be one in an old cookbook that has been circled, scribbled upon, and stained from use. In an extreme pinch, a historically and locally accurate recipe can do, provided you attach the appropriate qualifiers to it. (“Cabbage soup was a staple of miners in the small community of Poorsoil, so it seems likely that Great-Uncle Zachariah may have eaten a meal similar to this after coming home from his work in the coal mines.”)

How to Acquire Recipes

If you are the collector of cookbooks in your family, start poring through them. If you are not so lucky, find whoever does have the stash and ask them. If no one in your family keeps old cookbooks, you have two paths to take: the first is to think back to childhood and remember what you ate. Ask your relatives the same. Think about the dishes you continue to make today because you loved them as a kid.

The second approach is to go to churches, libraries, genealogy and historical societies, companies, and various social groups that existed in the time and locale your ancestor lived. These institutions always put out community-created cookbooks as fundraisers. See if anyone still has any. (The volunteers may in fact direct you to the village matriarch, who will inevitably have a copy of every cookbook the women’s auxiliary has ever produced. She probably knew your great-great aunt too, and still maintains a deep rivalry over whose chili is best.) Even if you don’t find your ancestors in these books, you will find their neighbours. In the days before produce could be reliably shipped across a continent, it is likely that many people in an area were eating similar things.

How to Present the Recipe

Once you have the recipe, you will want to jazz it up a little. This could range from typing it out in word processing software to doing up a fancy Photoshop page. Depending on the nature of the recipe, you might also be able to mix up all the dry ingredients and create a mix jar out of it. This makes a really nice gift for someone, especially when accompanied by an explanatory tag.

Some things you will want to include on the recipe page are:

• The title of the recipe. Don’t laugh, I’ve forgotten this before.
• The recipe’s story. How it was found or who created it.
• Memories of the ancestor it relates to.
• Photos, either of the recipe or the person.
• Commentary on the recipe itself. Often inserted when it calls for unusual ingredients or methods.
• The recipe! Try to transcribe it as closely as possible while maintaining clarity. You will have to use your judgment here.
• Optional extras: if you have room you can include nutritional information, substitutions and variations, decorative elements, or bits of other “stuff” relating to the ancestor or the recipe.

Sample Family Recipe Page

Below is a sample family recipe page I did up for a chocolate cookie recipe I found as a small child. If you have any family recipes to share, please post a comment.

Related Reading

• Why you should consider digital scrapbooking. A related hobby.
• Creating a family calendar. Since you’re learning image editing anyway…
• Writing about heirlooms. Another presentation format ripe to be jazzed up with mad word processing skillz or more photo-editing software mania.

P.S. Today’s photo credit goes to houseofsims on Flickr, who made these cookie mixes look absolutely appetizing.

I’ve written an article on social media and genealogy for GenealogyArchives.com. It looks at why you might want to use Web 2.0 in your search for ancestors, and provides you with some easy steps to get started. Instead of covering the obvious sites (Twitter, Genealogy Wise, etc.) it delves into some of the types of sites you wouldn’t necessarily think to use for your family history — wikis, social bookmarking, and photo-sharing sites.

Check it out right here, and feel free to leave comments on the article.

The photo to the left is an Aztec Calendar at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City by k6mmc, used under Creative Commons License.

Calendars that include important dates from family history can make an amazing impression on your non-genealogist relatives…or they can be an ugly, time-and-effort-intensive flop. This article will go over the pros and cons of making a family calendar, explain the various decisions you will have to make, and outline how to create one.

Should I Try Making a Family Calendar?

Family calendars can be a great, non-scary way to introduce your “normal” relatives to their genealogy. Calendars and daytimers are a useful product for anyone to own, and they are used on a daily basis. This almost guarantees that some fo the family history will seep into their minds, even if unconsciously. And creating a calendar will definitely hone your riting and design skills!

On the other hand, custom calendars can be quite time-intensive. Without specialized software, you have to start almost from scratch each year. Custom calendars also require an investment of effort. Chances are good you will have to learn more about your word processing, spreadsheet, graphics, or genealogy software in order to product a decent product.

If you already have a high level of skill in these programs, or would like to learn them anyway, a family history calendar can be a great way to gain those skills. If you just want to get one out with a minimum of effort, however, you are probably going to want a specific program written just to make calendar software. This will cost a bit of money and you have to work within the program’s specifications, but if convenience is a concern, it’s probably the best way to go.

Should I Do It Myself or Use a Software Package?

Doing it yourself involves using programs you probably already own — MS Office/Open Office or Photoshop or similar graphics editing/design software. There are a few benefits to doing it yourself:

• You don’t have to shell out extra money — you already own all the software needed.
• You can get near total control over the final product.
• If you are already proficient in the programs, it won’t require a huge time investment to learn more.

However, there are also some drawbacks:

• You are limited by what the program is capable of.
• Replicating some effects that specialized software is designed for could be a real time and energy sink.
• If you’re not that proficient with the software, you do still have to learn a fair amount.

If you go with a software package — either using/creating a report built into your genealogy software, repurposing custom calendar generator programs, or finding something built specifically to make genealogy calendars — you have a different set of variables to consider. Because the software is designed for your purpose, you won’t have to fight to make the program do what you want. However, it will likely cost you some money, and you still have to learn a brand new program and work within its limitations. Not all pieces of software offer the level of customization you might want, and demos/trials can be hard to come by.

Once you’ve decided whether to use DIY software or purpose-specific programs, you’re ready to actually make your calendar.

How to Design and Create the Calendar

1. Decide Scope of Project and Extract Data

Decide what branch of the family will be included, what event types you’re going to include, and if you’re going to have breakaway notes, anecdotes, etc. Then, extract all relevant information from your genealogy software or your informatin storage system.

2. Decide the Calendar’s Format and Create the Basic Layout

Will you be printing this at home, or will you take it to a store or other service? The former option pretty much limits you to stuff that will fit on 8.5 x 11 paper; the latter lets you get fancy with various bindings and sizes.

You also need to consider the calendar itself: monthly, weekly, daily? Usefulness to the recipient and cost considerations come into play here.

After that, use your chosen software to create the basic calendar layout. Format everything correctly, using placeholder text where necessary. Then, refine it — add any background images, set the colours and transparency levels, any icons you’ll be using, etc. etc. Get it looking right so that all you have to is add the real text. If you need help, try googling “[software] calendar” to find some good tutorials.

Then, save your work so that you can adjust or reuse the template later.

3. Add the Content

Take the information you gleaned in step 1 and replace the dummy text from step 2 with it. Make any additional tweaks necessary, although by this point there are hopefully only minor formatting issues.

Save your work as you go, making sure that you do NOT save on top of your original file — you want to be able to reuse or alter your master template later if desired.

4. Edit and Produce the Calendar

Once you have set everything up, go into whatever preview/overview/thumbnail mode is available and make sure everything looks good from there. Then, let the project sit for a few days before reviewing it. Do a full edit to make sure all the info is factually correct, there are no typos, and so on.

After that, print and bind the calendar using your chosen method (self-printing or print shop/service). Distribute calendars to recipients at appropriate times and watch them learn more about their family history without even trying.

Conclusion

This article has given you a high level overview of the process required to make a family history calendar. If you have made this project before, I would love to hear how you did it in the comments — the programs you used, the time and effort involved, and your family’s reaction to it.

Samples

• My meager offering. To give you a sense of the possibilities, this took one hour with Photoshop, including sorting through old family photos.
• A nice, clean style. Simple but elegant.
• Buttons! Stitching explanatory text on would be a pain; I suspect there are print-on-fabric techniques you could use to mitigate this. This would definitely be a one-of-a-kind gift and conversation piece!
• Lego calendar. This has no real family history application; I just like Lego.
• Dodecahedral calendar. For all the gaming nerds out there, represent! Plus it would look totally awesome in my office. You could put pictures of family members as a faded background image, or shrink the calendar itself down and put pics and a smidgen o’ text off to the side or bottom.

Related Reading

• Why You Should Consider Digital Scrapbooking. The skillset I used to make this calendar is identical to that I learned to do digi-scrapping.
• Writing About Heirlooms. An important part of our history that we often inadvertently neglect.
• Creating an Individual Timeline. A wonderful research tool that also functions as a great presentation format.

I am proud to present the following guest post by Thomas MacEntee of GeneaBloggers.com.

During my recent meetings with ancestry.com management and staff as part of ancestry.com’s Bloggers Day, one topic of discussion involved ways in which genealogy and family history could attract a younger demographic.  As Andrew Wait, Senior Vice President and General Manager at ancestry.com  stated during his presentation The Changing Face of ancestry.com, the current demographic is as follows[1]:

• Genealogy currently has 13 million active researchers – up from 9 million in 2005[2]
• Over 185,000 are 25 years or younger (this translates to only 1.4%)

In addition, during the same event, Joshua Taylor of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in his presentation The Changing Face of Genealogy discussed various successful methodologies recently used to engage a group of 18 to 21-year olds in researching their own family history.  As an already accomplished 24-year old genealogist, Josh seems a natural choice for leading younger folks to the genealogy and family history field in the 21^st century.

Merely “hoping” that genealogy becomes “hip” isn’t going to make it so; nor will the demographics of the field moprh overnight into one dominated by the 20 and 30-something set.  And unfortunately, the upcoming media exposure being given to genealogy via Faces of America on PBS and Who Do You Think You Are? on NBC – with the use of celebrities and subjects mostly over the age of 40 – may not help skew the demographics younger either.

The CSI Factor

What do we need?  One only has to look to the field of criminology and forensic science to see how the media depiction of crime scene investigators and other personnel has helped to bring new and younger people into those fields.

I’ve often told people that the reason I love genealogy is that it is “like CSI without the icky bodies.”  I’m not kidding.  When I watch television crime dramas such as NCIS, CSI, and others, if there is a depiction of an autopsy or some other scene, my palms cover my face, I peek out through my fingers and/or I ask others, “is it over yet?”

A Common Character – The Quirky Yet Hip Investigator

Watch closely during almost any CSI-type television show and you’ll notice one character that stands out but serves the same purpose: the geeky, nerdy, quirky but hip forensic investigator.  NCIS’s Abby Sciuto with her tattoos and piercings which give her goth cred, is a nerd at heart and often provides the one-liners and zingers that a show often needs.  On CSI NY the character Danny Messer serves a similar purpose.  I’d even say that a show like The Good Wife fits into this category with its sharp-witted private investigator/paralegal Kalinda Sharma.

Wither the boring old librarian or archivist?

One only need look to Elyse Luray of The History Detectives on PBS to see how America’s image of a historian has been forced to change.  And librarians no longer live up to the image of their namesake Marian with her cat-eye glasses, sweater over the shoulders, tissue stuffed in one sleeve. Nowadays a librarian is just as likely to have been an ex-punk rocker who runs her own blog about Jane Austen and attends mixers and meet-ups geared towards the information resources industry.

More than just serving as characters whose dialog help the story line, these same television roles have made the under-30 set stand up and notice.  They see that it isn’t boring or nerdy to be an analyst in a crime lab.  They notice that working as a forensic investigator can be fun and rewarding. They watch as the guy or gal behind the screen and keyboard very often provides the missing clue to solve the mystery.

Moving From Boring To Hip

So what does it take to move a field like genealogy in its perception by the public from boring to hip?  Here are some ideas:

• Create an “under 30” club at your local genealogical society.  Many non-profits especially opera and symphony societies have experienced tremendous growth by allowing younger patrons access to the same benefits of membership as others but only at a lower membership price and with special events geared towards their interests.
• Use younger genealogists as role models and spoke persons.  In your organization’s materials, including printed versions as well as on-line, make sure to include a balance of young and old.
• Go to the schools where the younger set rules.  Along with exposing school-aged children to various professional fields, make sure your local district includes genealogists and family historians in such outreach efforts.
• Focus on ancestors when they were in their teens and 20s.  When writing narratives or blog posts, try to highlight ancestors at a time in their lives which young people can relate to.  Did Grandpa go off to college or have trouble adjusting when he moved away from home?  Did Grandma leave a diary with thoughts on dating?
• Don’t be afraid to let the young lead the way.  Those “whippersnappers” with solid genealogical research and scholarship skills should be allowed to lead and not relegated to just following.  Doing so is probably the best way to create a win/win situation for all of us in the genealogy field.

Genealogy can only continue to expand by attracting new participants.  And the exchange of information, techniques and methodologies between old and young will help keep genealogy a vibrant and engaging pursuit.

© 2010, copyright Thomas MacEntee

* * *

Thomas MacEntee is a genealogist specializing in the use of technology and social media to improve genealogical research and as a means of interacting with others in the family history community.  Utilizing over 25 years of experience in the information technology field, Thomas writes and lectures on the many ways in which blogs, Facebook, and Twitter can be leveraged to add new dimensions to the genealogy experience.  As the creator of GeneaBloggers.com he has organized and engaged a community of over 900 bloggers to document their own journeys in the search for ancestors.

[2] According to a summer 2009 @Plan survey, approximately 14 million people researched their family history online in the prior 30 days.

When you interview your family, sooner or later you will encounter a pretty tall tale. The novice researcher gets excited at the possibility of belonging to an exotic ethnicity; the more jaded historian dismisses the stories of war-time heroics out of hand. Neither approach is particularly constructive. In this article, we’re going to walk through how to prove (or disprove) a family legend.

I’m not going to detail all the common family legends here. You can find those by googling “common family legends”. In my own genealogical research I came across two particular myths, which I think are fairly representative of the standard trope. The first legend, told to me by my husband was that “someone on Dad’s side was in World War I and was gassed or something and given medals and buried somewhere in Europe”. The second legend, told to me by my father-in-law, was that his paternal grandfather was a sailor from Scotland, and he was the immigrant for that branch of the family.

Step One: Preliminary Considerations

The first thing to recognize is that most family legends contain a grain of truth. While some myths may result solely from someone’s imagination (often for a very specific purpose), most family stories do have a basic underlying core. A good way to gauge this is to ask many relatives about the person in question and see what variations on the story they come up with. (This doesn’t work so well if Aunt Betsy has told everyone the story at the same time, but with larger or more disparate branches it holds some merit.)

In the case of the two stories above, I could be reasonably certain that the following were true:

1. Someone in my husband’s line served in WWI.
2. My father-in-law’s line was (or claimed) Scottish descent.

Common alterations to the myth include lowering or raising someone’s socio-economic status, claiming more or less involvement in an important or famous historical event, changing ethnicity, dates, or locations, and mixing up different branches of the family

Step Two: Do the Research

If the myth concerns ethnic ancestry or relation to a specific person, you probably know that you still have to work from the present, known linkages back towards the past — instead of working forward from the famous ancestor.

If the story is about a known ancestor, you have work of a different kind cut out for you. Your basic modus operandi then is to:

1. Find out as much as you can about the ancestor from many sources.
2. Find out as much as you can about the area s/he was in during the appropriate timeframe.
3. Consider the story and ask yourself: what records should my ancestor be in if the story is true? This is useful mostly as negative proof, but it’s a useful card to have up your sleeve in murky cases.

In the case of the war hero, I was not given a name so I just held onto the story while I did research on that branch of the family. I very quickly learned that my husband’s great-grandmother had a brother who served in World War I. I wondered if this was the celebrated ancestor. Information on his military service was corroborated by a local history book, a search online of Canadian military records, his attestation papers on Ancestry.ca, and Libraries and Archives Canada’s copy of his service record. Through the above sources, I also discovered the legend was actually mostly true: John Albert Driver had not “been gassed or something”, he had died in battle in France in 1916 and is buried, or at least memorialized, at the Vimy Ridge Memorial. And he had been given medals, as noted in his military service record.

I later asked my father-in-law about his grandma’s brother and he verified for me that he had indeed served, died in France, and he himself had seen the medals on visits to Grandma’s place. He also told me the man had died bringing wounded soldiers off the field in the midst of battle. The company’s war diaries don’t say anything to that particular point, but the basics of the story were pretty well nailed down. The last bit of detail can still go into my family history, with a quick “So-n-so said…” appended to the front.

In the case of the immigrant ancestor, I had a name and a family unit. All I had to do was look up the records. Unfortunately for my father-in-law, recorded history didn’t agree with him. Everything I found — every birth registration, homestead application, marriage registration, census, and obituary — indicated that his grandfather had been born in Manitoba and had never been anything but a farmer his whole life. However, his parents had come from Scotland. And his wife’s father was a sea captain from a long family of distinguished seamen. It would have been easy as a small boy to mix up grandpa’s father-in-law, grandpa’s parents, and grandpa himself, especially when all of these stories took place in a time long before you were even born. It certainly didn’t help matters any that the grandpa in question had a wooden leg, just like a pirate or sailor might! (To complicate matters further, my father-in-law’s maternal grandpa actually was an immigrant sailor from Scotland…)

Step Three: The Aftermath

If the legend turns out to be true, feel free to spread the proof far and wide to all your family. If they tell it as a story, they will generally be glad to have it confirmed with solid, historical backing. If your findings disagree with family tradition, however, you can face a quandary.

It’s important to gauge the response you think you will get from not towing the party line. People believe very strongly in some stories, and these tales provide some sense of identity for them. Proving the story wrong is like ripping away a part of who they are. Understandably, they might not react too kindly to that.

There is a third legend in my husband’s genealogy that falls into this category. The evidence for it is extremely shaky at best; someone with 6 months of solid genealogical practice could easily spot the holes in the story. The research simply doesn’t support the conclusion. But I, and others who have examined the pedigree, have quietly held our tongues. Why? Because the legend is so important to the family that they have had memorabilia done up commemorating it. It comes up at family get-togethers. Rocking the boat would be a great way to alienate myself from the entire family in one fell swoop.

Of course, the flip side of that is that some people are actually more interested in getting it right. My father-in-law, though he would never admit he had mixed up his generations or branches of the family, was proud to know that his grandma came from a very well-to-do, respectable merchant family on the coast. And he was pleased to learn that my research confirmed his branch of the family was Scottish through and through. (I just neglected to mention that the particular ancestor he thought was born in Scotland was the child of the actual immigrants…)

The main thing is to remember to deal delicately with the way you present the facts and, if there are any bits of colour that are unprovable, go ahead and toss them in for good measure. The stories that can’t be proved or disproved are often the best of all. They reveal a little bit of our ancestor’s lives, and let others know who, exactly, we think we are.

Related Reading

• Dealing with Roadblocks When Interviewing Relatives. Maybe your problem isn’t that they’re telling you wild stories. Maybe it’s that they’re not telling you any stories at all?
• How to Interview Your Relatives through E-Mail. Conquer geography and get those stories written down and told despite time zones and distances.

I was in the midst of seeking out cool genealogy project ideas when I stumbled across digital scrapbooking. Those of you who are familiar with “regular” scrapbooking will probably have some idea as to what “digital scrapbooking” could mean. Those of you who think a scrapbook is a bunch of yellowed photos crammed into those plastic peel-back pages are about to have your minds blown…

See, I never was a scrapbooker. I’m not artistic, I’m messy and bad with finicky stuff, and I’m such a perfectionist I get frustrated incredibly easily. I attended a Creative Memories class with my mom as a child, but only because she couldn’t get a babysitter for the evening. The pages she made looked gorgeous — plus, I got to cut up photos! — but I couldn’t come close to replicating it. Scrapbooking was just Not For Me.

Until now.

What is Digital Scrapbooking?

Digital scrapbooking is simply taking all the elements that would go into a regular scrapbook (paper, photos, decorations/embellishments, text) and creating them on your computer. Some people print out their scrapbooks at the end of the process, some prefer to upload them to create a virtual photo album. Just as you can buy physical scrapbook supplies and templates, you can also buy digital “kits” or specific elements (say, fonts and alphabets, or little embellishments) for your digital scrapbook. If you are a broke student like yours truly, there are also plenty of kind, helpful people who give away their creations for free. (More on that later.)

Why Would I Want to Do This?

Why indeed? A physical scrapbook has an heirloom quality about it: it’s absolutely unique, made of real (and sometimes hefty) material, and a lot of love and time goes into making it. Plus, you have something physical to hold and touch and look at and share.

So what happens when everyone wants your one-of-a-kind scrapbook? I’m sure you’ve seen the nasty fights that erupt over estates. Why not bypass all that and just print out multiple copies of a digital scrapbook while you’re still alive and well? Digital images let you do this without expending another I-don’t-want-to-think-how-many hours creating an exact duplicate (which would bore you to tears anyway, because if you’re a scrapper, you probably like the unique creative aspect of it).

A digital scrapbook is also one means of sharing your family history with the younger generation. Your kids or grandkids may live halfway across the country from you, but chances are good that they have access to Facebook or Flickr wherever they are. Upload your images to a private or restricted album and you’re good to go. You can also send notifications to your family when you upload another album, thus generating interest and sparking conversation about the family’s history.

You know another thing traditional scrapbookers have to deal with? Supplies. If you live in the middle of nowhere, it’s hard to get them. If you have plenty of availability, you still have to store them when not in use. And after you’re done with them? You have to clean up the leftover bits. Digital scrapping suffers from none of these drawbacks. The internet is global. You pay once for your download (somewhere between three and seven bucks) and can use the elements a thousand times over, at no extra charge, if you wish.

And as a completely unrelated side bonus: digital scrapbooking gives you experience in graphic layout and design, as well as specific skills with photo editing software. This is pretty marketable knowledge. In fact if you get good at this stuff you could start making digital elements and kits yourself and have a nice little side business.

But, but, but…

Oh, I know you. There is one lady in the back row there saying “But isn’t the cost of Photoshop plus a wide-format photo printer plus a scanner ridiculously expensive?” Yes, dear lady, it is. Thankfully you can use almost any photo editing software to create your layout (including GIMP, which is free), and you’re not required to print a layout in 12×12 inch format — or to print it at all. Also, do you have a digital camera? If so, you might be able to bypass the scanner.

“But I have no artistic talent!” You must be my twin. I bet you’re a perfectionist too, and frustrated that you can’t make things all pretty or elegant like the “real” creative types. Thankfully there are a myriad of gorgeous styles and kits for you to choose from, and thousands of examples online. The digital scrapping community has also created something called “Quick Pages” (commonly called QP): an almost pre-made page where all you have to do is insert your modified photos. No lie. Some of these pages are stunning.

“But I like being totally creative; I don’t want to just use other people’s design elements.” Do you draw inspiration from images of other scrapbooks? Have you ever copied or modified a design element from another scrapper? Ever used a page plan? Then you really shouldn’t have a problem with this. While Quick Pages exist for us newbies and impatient types, there are millions (probably more; I didn’t stop to do an exact count, sorry) of individual elements that you can use to customize your digital scrapbook. And frankly, it won’t take you long to learn how to tweak even those “stock” elements to suit your needs.

And then there is the last person off to the side, chewing their lip and wondering quietly to themselves: “I know nothing about traditional scrapbooking, graphic design, digital photography, archival processes, or image editing. That sounds like a steep barrier to entry. I don’t have that much time.” I am pleased to be able to reassure you, oh quiet one. Prior to discovering this new art form, my only experience with scrapbooking was the aforementioned CM class. I have had no training in graphic design, being a wordsmith at heart. I actually don’t own a digital camera and know next to nil about archiving photos. (I think exposing them to light is bad?) I use a free web service to crop and re-size my photos. But yet, in one afternoon, I was able to find and download some free elements, edit my photos, and create a not-too-terrible sample page.

So, How Do I Do This?

There are tons of sites that pop up with tutorials and FAQs and whatnot if you go to Google this. Instead, I’m going to link to three good resources, two online and one physical. I’m not getting anything from linking to these people — they don’t even know I’ve done it — but they are pretty thorough and authoritative on the topic.

The most comprehensive website I’ve found is Digital Scrapbook Place. I’ve linked directly to their Digital Scrapping 101 page for your convenience, although there is tons more to the site than this.

If you have a photo editing program, some digital photos, and just want some free loot to get started, try hopping over to the Digital Scrapbooking Freebies lens on Squidoo.

If you’re not a website person and prefer a good physical book, try “Digital Scrapbooking” by Sally Beacham and Lori J. Davis. This book, put out in 2004 by Course Technology PTR, is a not-inconsiderable 300 pages in length. It also has handy step-by-steps if you get easily overwhelmed like me. As this book is 6 years old, the software commands are totally out of date, but the authors included good explanations of what the functions do so that you can figure out how to do it in your own program. (To whit, GIMP is not mentioned in this book at all yet I was able to easily map a number of the functions to simple GIMP commands.) This book is available at Amazon for under $25.

Sample

Because we are dealing with a visual medium, I thought it would be helpful to include a picture to illustrate all this stuff for you. Total time spent on this project included 1 hour looking up and downloading free elements, papers, etc. online, 1 hour skimming through the textbook mentioned above, and half an hour actually messing with the graphics and throwing everything together.

All you experienced scrappers and artists gotta promise not to laugh though. Even though I used a QP, making this is a huge accomplishment for me. We all have to start somewhere, and I want to give other non-artistic types hope. I know that given time to learn and practice, I will be able to turn out much better stuff. For now, I’m just proud of the fact that I successfully used layers, installed a font on the computer, and fiddled with the drop shadow on the text until it looked not-too-ugly.

What about you? Do you do digital scrapbooking? Any resources you’d recommend?

Further Reading

Okay I lied. I’ll link to more resources.

• Raspberry Road Designs’ freebies. This is where I got the QP for the sample page. She has tons of other stuff too.
• 1001 Free Fonts. Because I’m a font junkie and you will be too.
• Drew Klausner’s Youtube channel. Drew has a very handy series on how to digitally restore old photographs using Photoshop.