The Things Family Don’t Know Astound Me!

Before the Pandemic hit I joined my brother and nephew and families for a dinner out. During the evening I showed them a booklet I was creating for our McGinnis family ancestry.

My nephew expressed surprise that my mother and father (his grandparents) had been married in a double wedding ceremony with my mother's sister. This was news to him!

This may seem like a small thing but I was startled. That double wedding was something I heard about as a young child. I have the actual wedding invitation. I have newspaper articles about the two sisters in Guelph who were to be married in a double ceremony. 

I have articles about their showers, their trousseau teas, their wedding and their honeymoon plans. I have a photo of my mom and dad standing on the steps of the church on their Wedding Day. I have a group photo of the Wedding party. 

For me, this is old news and something I know as if it happened to me. I assumed everyone in the family knew. It never occured to me that my nieces or nephews might never have heard of it.

Didn't my brother ever mention it? Did he know? I suddenly feel quite a bit of pressure to spread the word! To share the stories and the facts I've known for so many years. 

Maybe I'm the only one who knows and boy that worries me. I made an error by assuming everyone in the family knew of this special day. What else don't they know (that I do). 

I grew up hearing stories. My mother, grandmother and aunt all told me stories of their childhood and their lives. I asked for the stories over and over again. They showed me clippings from newspapers. My mom had a scrapbook (which may actually have been my grandmother's, my memory is fuzzy on that) which she eventually gave me and that is where all the newspaper clippings, the wedding invitation, etc were. 

Maybe that's why I am a genealogist. I love hearing the stories, learning about the people living their daily lives. It's not about the names or dates or going back the furthest in time. For me it's all about the people - who were they, what events did they experience, what emotions did they feel, how did they live their lives... these are important to me and finding the answers to those questions make my ancestors alive for me. 

What’s important to you as the keeper of the family genealogy?

Creating a Family Story and Memory Book

Recently Volume 2 of my McGinnis Family Story Books arrived from Shutterfly. I'm really pleased with how it turned out!

First I scanned the family photos I wanted to use in my book. After transferring the scanned photos to my computer I organized them into a directory on my laptop 

Then I uploaded them to Shutterfly. I created a different size book this time.  Usually I go with the 8x8 books because they are small, easy to pick up and glance through and I just like the look of them. But this time I went with the 8 1/2 x 11 and I'm really glad I chose that size.

The 8 1/2 x 11 allowed me to insert a census image that was legible but had room around the edges for the page background. I could have added a border around those images or embellished the page with a "sticker" but I like the larger images to be simple and plain.
 
You can read how I organized my book at Creating Memory Books on Shutterfly  It's important to plan the layout of your book before starting. 

 Decide on how you want to organize the pages and photos - by person? Chronologically? You can always switch pages around once you've created pages in Shutterfly but you need a plan to begin.


Think about how many pages you want. I create mine to be between 20 and 25 pages. If it is going to be bigger, I break the book into separate volumes. As an example, my Story Books on my McGinnis family are in 5 volumes, one for each generation starting with my father. The smaller the book, the more manageable to create and the more likely your recipients will be to pick it up and skim through it. Anything larger than 25 pages is, for me, overwhelming to create and I believe would be too much for most people to want to glance through.

Shutterfly allows me to create photo pages, or text pages or a combination of both. It's easy to quickly pick a layout for each page using their layout options. So if you want to place two photos and one text box on a page, for example, you choose from their options for 2 photos plus text.

Then by using the "customize" feature found on each page you can resize and rearrange the photo and text boxes. You can add more text boxes if you want. Then you can change the background by choosing from their options for whatever theme you are using.

In this volume of the McGinnis family story, I added scans of newspaper clippings from a family double wedding. I am lucky enough to have the actual wedding invitation so I added that to the page along with photos of the church and of the happy couples.

In the end the book is a lovely coffee table book resembling a scrapbook. But it has enough genealogical information and documents to give family members a taste of what I have found on the family. It also allows me to share the wonderful family photos, documents and newspaper clippings in my possession.

You can also refer to my video tutorials on creating books in Shutterfly. 

Creating a Memory Book in Shutterfly (Tutorial 1)

Creating a Memory Book in Shutterfly (Tutorial 2)

Creating a Memory Book in Shutterfly (Tutorial 3)

Creating a Memory Book in Shutterfly (Tutorial 4)

I have now created 5 volumes of my McGinnis family, one volume per generation, starting with me, then my parents with all their children, then my grandparents and their children, back to my great-grandparents who came from Ireland to Ontario Canada in 1846 during the Famine Years.

Telling Your Family Story on Crestleaf

Telling Your Family Story on Crestleaf

If you're looking for a place to create an online family tree with photos, the website Crestleaf might just suit your needs.

 The company states that 

Crestleaf is a free online family tree builder that has been used by tens of thousands of people to document their family history.  Along with the family tree tool, we provide free access to 90 Million+ historical records. 

 

So I checked Crestleaf out and it looks intriguing.

When you go to the website you have the option of using your Facebook login or signing up with an email account. 

Once logged in you can search for records of ancestors but be forewarned that Crestleaf is in beta mode and only has the S.S.D.I. death records at present. I decided to create a family tree.

Crestleaf walks you through this process and when you have completed a few names, you see a note that you are being given free space for 250 photos. You also have the option to purchase more space.

Here is what a Crestleaf representative told me about this option:

Users can upload up to 1 GB of photos (about 250 old photos).  In the future,  users will be able to get more storage in one of two ways:

1) Invite your relatives to collaborate with you on your tree - we'll give you more free storage for each relative that joins.
2) Upgrade to a paid account for a nominal fee (this fee amount has not yet been finalized)

My readers know that I am a huge fan of telling and preserving family stories and Crestleaf indicated that they are focusing on that same goal

We're building a place where users can add all of that information into one place where they can tell their family's story.  So, our future focus will be less on adding more historic records and more on improving the ability to tell your story via the family tree and through historic photos 

I suggest you give Crestleaf a try. They also have a blog with some interesting articles. 

New E-Book Writing Your Memoirs For Descendants

We all love to find a journal or diary or  a letter written by a great-great-grandfather or grandmother or another ancestor.  But we often forget that our own stories will be just as exciting to our children and grandchildren. It's  important for us to record our own memories and write our own journals to pass on to our descendants.

I'm very excited to let everyone know that I have written an E-Book  called Writing Your Memoirs For Descendants: Prompts for Recording & Preserving Your Family Stories and Memories available on Amazon.com for only $2.99

My 54 page E-Book provides almost 150 prompts and suggestions for guiding  you  as you record your childhood memories and stories. Each prompt has several questions designed to jog your memory of events. It also contains suggestions for publishing your journals to share with family members.

For those who have been following my Sharing Memories blog posts, you will be happy to know that my E-Book has new prompts organized by categories. For example one category is Firsts (first Kiss, first Dance, first airplane ride, first birth in family, first car, first death in family, first wedding in family, etc. )

Did you know that if family stories are not recorded and preserved, they will be lost within 3 generations? Don't let that happen to your precious family memories!