How to share your family history?
 

How do you share your family history?

Charts

Files

Book

App

Memory stick

What do you reckon is the best way of imparting the information you have collated over the years to the family?

Also disc.
Really it comes down to whatever format they are comfortable with, and their degree of interest.
In my experience, the casual observer family member is happy with a chart or report, along with photos. They usually want to know the truth behind any family stories or legends.

Thanks Pinefamily

Unfortunately I don't have photo's especially OH's side as he was an orphan and everything got thrown away.

A chart is ok but doesn't give much except names and dates and none of the stories behind them - not that I have a lot if info on most of the names.

Just wondered if anyone had found a better way of enlghtening the kids and grandkids.

When my children were younger they wanted to see a basic chart so they had something to refer to and then a couple of paragraphs about each of the people on the chart in a word document or the like. Now they are older they don't want to see anything!

This is pretty much what I'm sending off tomorrow on a memory stick to my uncle who wants his three children to know their heritage, he has many of the original family photos so I have given the backgrounds with some census details and some will transcripts. He's going to get it printed locally, the old sweetheart wants to pay me but I've said one of his drawings or a painting would mean more to me.

I think the ideal system would be a memory stick or CD with charts, and a story for each of the main people that has clickable links to records and photos. However, it's beyond my IT skills to set up something like that.

In addition to my tree I'm doing my BiLs, so I've sent him descendant charts of his main lines and an ancestor chart. I also send him a Word file every so often about various people I've found, and sometimes attach BMD and census records etc.

I also have a copy of his tree on TribalPages, so that anyone without an Ancestry sub can view it once he's given them the password. I've done the same for my tree.

I'm also writing up a history of my most dysfunctional and complicated family, and sending it in instalments (because it takes me ages to write it) to all the Australian cousins and half-cousins who popped up once I started investigating all their (bigamous and otherwise) relationships in depth :-)

Thanks all

A chart on its own is very boring for those without a real interest but I have a book about The Clan Shaw of Argyll and the Isles history which a fellow researcher Duncan Shaw published in 2015 (I was able to give him a few bits of info back in 2007).

I have got a copy each for the children so hopefully they will be interested and also learn about the history of the clan and what tartan they can wear now.

I also have all the various trees on tribal pages too - which I am printing off in their more colourful style on A3 paper.

Think I will write a summary for each of the direct line and put it in a folder or photobook for them to keep.

Family stories are always popular too.

Unless they are interested in family history, all the John married Mary and had thirteen children stuff is boring, and if they are interested, they can find it out for themselves, and probably much more quickly than we ever did.

I totally agree with Pinefamily. Bear in mind that the one thing we cannot find out from records is what our grandparents' favourite food was, who their first employer was, how far they had to walk to school, what their nickname was, if they ever met anyone famous etc etc. A paragraph on each immediate ancestor, with photos of the street where they lived, or their school, or a car of the same make that they drove.

If you have to put in dates, see if you can relate them to World history in some way, say inventions.

The only people my family were interested in were the suicides and the prisoners.