Writing a book on my family history, need tips/tricks pls!?

Question

hello. my name is jemma and i live in australia. i want to write a book on my family history, not so much in depth about each person, maybe a couple of paragraphs, from what i know to back as far as i can find out - so that our childrens childrens children will have some sort of knowledge about this part of our family and where they have come from etc. the way i was thinking of working it from is for EG. my father, married my mother, they had 3 children, jason, simon, jemma. then go onto jason, who isnt married and has no children therefore his part ends there. simon, engaged to name, has a daughter name. then his daughter, a bit about her, she is only 1 so not married no children ends with her. then me, not married, no children etc. but from my parents work back to their great great great grandparents. the information i was thinking of putting into the paragraphs is name, date of birth, place of birth, anything spectactular, wars, things done, places been etc. married whom, when,

Answer 1

I'm in the middle of one right now and it's a tremendous amount of work.

But go here --- plenty of great points to help you get started, and to keep you from getting frustrated:

http://www.byub.org/ancestors/records/fa...

Answer 2

You are planning it backwards.  You need to go in reverse order.  My great aunt did this.  She wrote her book for a specific line, starting with a specific ancestor from the 1700's and worked forward, so each new chapter (which is how the generations were divided) was longer than the last.  The first chapter/generation was on that one ancestor, who he married, their kids, birth/death dates, known information about his life.

The second chapter was about each one of his kids, in order from the oldest to the youngest, each having their own paragraph of who they married, that couple's kids, info about their life.

Then the 3rd chapter was his grandkids and she followed the same pattern throughtout the book.  The book is 10 generations long.  I am in generation 9 in her book.  Since the book was published in 1994 and my daughter was born in 1994, she didn't make it into the book, therefore, there is no mention of me in generation 10 as the parent of anyone.

With each entry, she would identify in parenthesis each person's line back to the first person in the book.

Example:  My grandfather, John, who would be generation 7 would be listed like this:

John (Jim, Mark, Joe, Luke, Andy, William).

What this means is that my grandfather would be John, then his liniage back to the first person in the book, so it would then be his father Jim, then Jim's father Joe, etc. back to William who was the first generation / first person the book started with.  So, in my mother's generation, it would say:

Sue (John, Jim, Mark, Joe, Luke, Andy, William).  It is important to do this because my grandfather was one of 6 kids.  Therefore, his brother, Jacob, kids would be listed the same as my mother was but in next to them it would say (JACOB, Jim, Mark, Joe, Luke, Andy, William) instead of (JOHN, Jim, Mark, Joe, Luke, Andy, William).  These are not the real names by the way.  I just used these as examples.

I hope this makes sense.  There is also a couple of standardized numbering systems that genealogists uses that is recognized by the official Board for Certification of Genealogist.  You should probably learn about those numbering systems as well.

Best thing to do is to find such a book about a line in your family, but if you cannot, just get any that you can find and study the format and how it works.  the one my great-aunt did was "The Crouse Family of North Carolina.  A Genealogical Record of Jacob and Sarah Edwards Crouse, Their Ancestors and Many of Their Descendants In the Blue Ridge Mountains".  I recently saw a copy of it on Amazon.com for $90.  I believe the original price in 1994 was $30.  Mine was a gift from her.

Answer 3

hey there,. I wrote a small one for my family.. very low key... nothing special.

I started with my dad... and went back from there... each chapter was a new generation. I also included a small section on where our last name came from...which was Scotland.

Each page had the person Picture if available, Name, Birth/death date, place of birth, AKAs, spouse, and children.

then a little BIO on them..

email me and I will send it to you as reference

good luck :)

Answer 4

sounds like a really cool idea. Good luck!

Answer 5

Here are some good sources for BEGINNING to END family history publishing: