Almost everyone who takes up family history says the same thing: they wish they had started while their grandparents were alive. Records will wait. People will not. So the order matters more than the method.
1. Interview the oldest people first
Before you open a single archive, talk to whoever in the family is oldest, and to whoever is considered the one who remembers. Ask about names, places, dates, jobs, and the stories that got repeated. Record it. You are gathering the leads that will make the records searchable, and the details no record contains.
2. Write down what the family already believes
Every family has received wisdom: the relative who changed the name, the ancestor who was supposedly related to someone famous, the branch that emigrated. Note it all, marked as unverified. Some will be true, some will be half true, and the half-true ones often lead somewhere interesting.
3. Work backwards, one generation at a time
Start with yourself and prove each step before moving back. The temptation is to leap at an exciting distant ancestor, which is how people end up researching a family that turns out not to be theirs. Birth, marriage and death records, censuses and parish registers are the usual backbone.
4. Keep the stories, not just the dates
This is where most family histories fail as documents anyone wants to read. A tree of names and dates is a reference, not a story. What makes it readable is what these people did, what they lived through, why they moved, what they were like. Capture occupations, addresses, war service, migrations and the anecdotes attached to them.
5. Decide who it is for
A family history written for other genealogists looks quite different from one written for your own grandchildren. If you want the family to actually read it, write it as a narrative with the research supporting it, rather than a research document with occasional narrative.
Turning research into something the family will read
Doing it yourself
- Organise years of records, notes and photographs.
- Write a narrative across several generations.
- Design, lay out and print it.
With Chapternity
- You talk through what you have found and what was passed down.
- It writes a readable family narrative across the generations.
- Extra copies cost less, so every branch can keep one.
Frequently asked questions
- Where do I start with family history research?
- Interview the oldest members of your family first, before touching any records. They provide the names, places and stories that make records searchable, and the detail no record holds. Then work backwards from yourself, proving each generation before moving to the next.
- How do I make a family history that people will actually read?
- Write it as a narrative supported by research, rather than a research document with occasional narrative. Keep occupations, migrations, war service and anecdotes, not just names and dates, and decide up front whether you are writing for genealogists or for your own family.
- Can I include genealogy research I have already done?
- Yes. Chapternity can build on what you already know, weaving your research and the memories that go with it into a single readable family story rather than a stack of records.
Explore more guides or read about family historys.