Are you writing about your Irish ancestors? Then you're in luck. There's been an enormous increase in the number of Irish records available online this past year. Recent Finds At the RootsTech...

As family history writers, many of us research the origin of our artifacts and collect the “hard facts” about them, but what we really want to uncover are the meanings and stories our ancestors associated with them.

  If you have a wedding coming up in your family circle, consider including family artifacts in the décor. Incorporating your treasured family heirlooms into a bridal shower or wedding creates...

Once you’ve selected a topic, you’re ready to choose a genre to frame it. Simply put, a genre is a format or type of writing. We suggest first adopting creative nonfiction as your overarching genre. Then, with creative nonfiction as your guiding genre, select the creative genre that will best serve your purpose and engage your reader.

Your first step in writing your family history is selecting a topic. This takes a review of your family history documents and artifacts as well as often told (or never told!) stories. Follow up by asking, “What’s here? What’s missing?”

Once you have your subject, concept, resources, and research complete, it’s time to develop your writing plan. Jump into the planning whether you have all the content you need or not. Remember, writing is a messy process, and you will probably weave in and out of the steps we suggest many times as you develop and revise your work.

Do you want to reveal your family member or ancestor as a unique human being rather than the sum of lifeless facts often found in family history biographical profiles? One way to write a family member or ancestor to life is to write a family history biographical essay.

As family history writers, we spend hours researching and re-researching online databases and digital archives to locate every last detail about the lives of our ancestors. Our goal is to write the...

In a past post, we presented writing about family artifacts as a “way in” to your family history. Curiosity about your family heirlooms as well as your ancestors’ everyday objects can lead you to a...

To commemorate National Aviation Day this August 19th, we’ve listed and summarized several aviation-related biographies and histories that we found well-written and researched—just what you might...