Last week, I asked, "How Do You Tell a Family Story?"  In that article, I focused on a book-length treatment of your family history. Thanks to everyone who commented on how they tell their family story. Keep those comments coming because we will revisit them in a future blog post.

I focused on the written word, but there are other ways to tell a story. With today's technological advances, you can skip the book and tell a story using video. Depending on length, videos can be uploaded to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook or saved as an MP4 file to be placed on a computer or mobile device.

Your mobile device can be used to take videos for your family story. Additional accessories such as external microphones, tripods, and ring lights can help but aren't mandatory. You can make your video as simple or more complex (adding music and subtitles) as you want. However, keep in mind that a family history video should be short (ideally less than 15 minutes). Why? People (your family) are likelier to watch a short video than a long one. Consider making several shorter videos if you have a long story to tell.

To help get started in creating a family video, consider the following Legacy webinars on the topic for best practices:

• Create Your Own YouTube Channel to Store and Share Family Videos – Lianne Kruger 
• Shoot Like a Pro: How to Record Quality Videos Using Your Mobile Device – Elizabeth Swanay O'Neal 
• Rockin' Royalty-free Music for Your Family Videos – Amie Bowser Tennant 

What could you create a family video about? Just like the book-length treatment, the possibilities are endless. Some examples include:

• A recreation of a family recipe
• An interview with a family member exploring one question
• Asking several family members to share their memories of an ancestor or an event
• An overview of a family reunion
• A "field trip" to a family home, a burial place, an ancestral town.
• An heirloom and the story behind the heirloom

Will You Tell Their Story With Video?

The benefit of sharing family history via video is it can be easier and quicker than writing a book or a long narrative. Those who don't feel comfortable writing might find this alternative preferable. A brief interview with grandma (or yourself) can start you on the route of providing your shared family history with your descendants.

Have you told a family history story via video? Share the link with us in the comments below. Also, feel free to share your ideas and best practices.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

The recording of today's webinar by Roberta Estes, "Y DNA Discover Tool – What News Can Your Haplogroup Reveal?” is now available to view at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com for free for a limited time.

Stepping through FamilyTreeDNA’s fun new Y DNA Discover tool. It’s free and all you need is your haplogroup. View your migration path, see ancient and notable DNA connections along with haplogroup ages.

To ensure that your webinar connection is ready to go, click here.

Can't make it to the live event?

No worries. Its recording will be available for a limited time. Webinar Subscribers have unlimited access to all webinar recordings for the duration of their membership.

With our Google Calendar button, you will never forget our upcoming webinars. Simply click the button to add it to your calendar. You can then optionally embed the webinar events (and even turn them on and off) into your own personal calendar. If you have already added the calendar, you do not have to do it again - the new webinar events will automatically appear.

Webinar time

The webinar will be live on Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at:

• 2pm Eastern (U.S.)
• 1pm Central
• 12pm Mountain
• 11am Pacific

Or use this Time Zone Converter.

Here's how to attend:

1. Register at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com today. It's free!
2. You will receive a confirmation email containing a link to the webinar.
3. You will receive a reminder email both 1 day and 1 hour prior to the live webinar.
4. Calculate your time zone by clicking here.
5. Check your GoToWebinar connection here.
6. Click on the webinar link (found in confirmation and reminder emails) prior to the start of the webinar. Arrive early as the room size is limited to the first 1,000 arrivals that day.
7. Listen via headset (USB headsets work best), your computer speakers, or by phone. 

We look forward to seeing you all there!

The recording of today's webinar by Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, "Turning Witnesses into Evidence” is now available to view at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com/ESM with a webinar membership.

Witnesses are not afterthoughts tacked onto the end of documents. Although they filled a routine role for our ancestors, they are significant informants for us—once we learn how to use those names to develop evidence. This session approaches the topic in two ways: theory and application. It explores record types that offer witnesses, ways in which witnesses were used, situations that affected the choice of witnesses, signals that indicate whether a witness would be important to our research, and methods to apply in our development of the clues they offer. A challenging case study presents an unmarried freedwoman, never named in any census, who died about 1817—and applies key strategies to determine her death and burial sites.

*** This class requires an active webinar membership to attend. ***

To ensure that your webinar connection is ready to go, click here.

Can't make it to the live event?

No worries. Its recording will be available for a limited time. Webinar Subscribers have unlimited access to all webinar recordings for the duration of their membership.

With our Google Calendar button, you will never forget our upcoming webinars. Simply click the button to add it to your calendar. You can then optionally embed the webinar events (and even turn them on and off) into your own personal calendar. If you have already added the calendar, you do not have to do it again - the new webinar events will automatically appear.

Webinar time

The webinar will be live on Friday, August 25, 2023 at:

• 2pm Eastern (U.S.)
• 1pm Central
• 12pm Mountain
• 11am Pacific

Or use this Time Zone Converter.

Here's how to attend:

1. Register at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com today. It's free!
2. You will receive a confirmation email containing a link to the webinar.
3. You will receive a reminder email both 1 day and 1 hour prior to the live webinar.
4. Calculate your time zone by clicking here.
5. Check your GoToWebinar connection here.
6. Click on the webinar link (found in confirmation and reminder emails) prior to the start of the webinar. Arrive early as the room size is limited to the first 1,000 arrivals that day.
7. Listen via headset (USB headsets work best), your computer speakers, or by phone. 

We look forward to seeing you all there!

One of the questions I have been pondering is how do you tell your ancestors' stories? How do you tell their story, whether it's an individual ancestor, a family, or a specific family line?

When I started researching genealogy, I would read Everton's Genealogical Helper. In the Helper were advertisements for publishers who would print family history tomes. I remember thinking this was the research's ultimate goal: to publish a thick hardback book tracing one's family back generations. Then one of these publishers printed the books, and you would distribute them to all who wanted to pay $50 or so to get a copy.

But that was a long time ago, before the internet and the technological tools we have today. So is this the only way to tell a family's story?

It can be, but with self-publishing, online tools, and non-genealogists creatively telling family stories, it's time to rethink the family history tome.

How Do You Tell a Story?

Maybe you've been hesitant to print or publish your family history. I can understand how intimidating it can be with the proper numbering systems, proofreading, and the hundreds of pages it may take. But that's not the only way to tell a story. First, you need to decide who will be included. It can just be one ancestor. It can be a series of small narratives; it doesn't have to be 300 pages.

I'm always looking for exciting ways people tell their family stories. Here are a few examples I have found.

Autobiographical Comic/Graphic Memoir. Yes, I wrote "comic." Though I don't possess this talent, I've read two autobiographical comics with great stories and family history. Plus, what a great way to put your family's story in the younger generations' hands (and non-kids will also enjoy it). I recommend reading Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley and I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib.

Family Cookbook: You can put together a family cookbook in many ways. It might be one of the easier ways to tell your family's story. Don't stop at recipes. Include photos, relationships, and stories. You can use cookbook publisher templates to make it easy, or you can put tougher your cookbook and have it printed via your local copy store. I like this one I picked up at a book sale that is 8 ½ x 11 and includes over 1000 recipes (that's a lot! Don't worry about having much less). It contains photos and information about "Grandma Frank." A cookbook might be an easy way to dip your foot in the family history book water.

A Biography of Their Stuff: Have you considered writing something about your memories or the history of items your ancestors or family owned? My Mother's Charms by Kathleen Oldford looks at the author's inherited charm bracelets and the stories behind the charms. This is a creative way to tell a family story. You can research inherited or just items you remember and tell your family story through these.

How Will You Tell Their Story?

How have you told your family history story? What are your plans for future stories? We can all benefit from the experience of others, so please leave a comment below.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

The recording of today's webinar by Annette Burke Lyttle, "Following a Quaker Family: New Jersey to Iowa the Long Way Around” is now available to view at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com for free for a limited time.

Successful Quaker research requires a familiarity with typical Quaker migration routes, and no two Quaker migration events are the same. This was true for the Hunt family of Burlington County, New Jersey. Once they began to move, they covered a lot of ground. Follow them from New Jersey to Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, and on to Ohio, then moving again to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. This case study will also identify when and where the family ceased to be members of the Society of Friends.

To ensure that your webinar connection is ready to go, click here.

Can't make it to the live event?

No worries. Its recording will be available for a limited time. Webinar Subscribers have unlimited access to all webinar recordings for the duration of their membership.

With our Google Calendar button, you will never forget our upcoming webinars. Simply click the button to add it to your calendar. You can then optionally embed the webinar events (and even turn them on and off) into your own personal calendar. If you have already added the calendar, you do not have to do it again - the new webinar events will automatically appear.

Webinar time

The webinar will be live on Wednesday, August 23, 2023 at:

• 2pm Eastern (U.S.)
• 1pm Central
• 12pm Mountain
• 11am Pacific

Or use this Time Zone Converter.

Here's how to attend:

1. Register at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com today. It's free!
2. You will receive a confirmation email containing a link to the webinar.
3. You will receive a reminder email both 1 day and 1 hour prior to the live webinar.
4. Calculate your time zone by clicking here.
5. Check your GoToWebinar connection here.
6. Click on the webinar link (found in confirmation and reminder emails) prior to the start of the webinar. Arrive early as the room size is limited to the first 1,000 arrivals that day.
7. Listen via headset (USB headsets work best), your computer speakers, or by phone. 

We look forward to seeing you all there!

The recording of today's webinar by Janice Nickerson, "Six Free Websites Every Ontario Genealogist Needs ” is now available to view at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com for free for a limited time.

Summer is winding down, but you may still have a few U.S. travel plans. Do you ever travel to a new place and wonder what historical sites exist? Do you want to take a staycation to visit the historical sites where you live? Clio is one way to identify what historical sites are near you, wherever you are.

Clio is a free, US-based website. The website describes itself as an educational website and mobile application that guides the public to thousands of historical and cultural sites throughout the United States along with nature trails, art walking tours, and virtual tours of museums and sites. Built by scholars for public benefit, each entry includes a concise summary and useful information about a historical site, museum, monument, landmark, or other site of cultural or historical significance. In addition, "time capsule" entries allow users to learn about historical events around them. Each entry offers turn-by-turn directions and links to relevant books, articles, videos, primary sources, and credible websites.

I decided to search their Walking Tours and Heritage Trails. I searched on the state of California, and the result listed four tours. Now obviously, four tours is not comprehensive, but the information on Clio is crowdsourced and so people and intuitions are encouraged to add to the website. This means that Clio continually expands with historical institutions, cities, and individuals adding to the database.

One of the four tours I found was called Japanese American Internment Sites 1942-1946 . Because I just watched Linda Harms Okazaki's World War II "Internment Camps" and Mass Incarceration in the U.S. webinar I decided to take a look at this tour.

The tour starts in California but then goes to other states. It stops at museums, internment camps, and assembly centers. The tour includes present-day and historical photos, text, and maps. If you want to know more, scroll to the bottom of the web page to find sources, including books, articles, and videos.

As you read through the tour, you can plan your trip using the website, the mobile app, or by printing off a customized map.

This is one of those websites you need to explore to fully understand what it can offer. It can take you on a virtual trip even if you aren't traveling.

One of their featured tours was for the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City. This tour is a virtual, 360-degree tour of the museum. By clicking on the green circles, you can read the museum exhibits just as you would if you were visiting in-person. This is an excellent feature for those who can't travel, are planning a trip, or are teaching children history.

Clio is not the only website that allows you to find historical sites where you are or where you want to go. It's not even the only site that offers virtual tours (for worldwide options, see Google Arts and Culture), but it's a great place to explore where our ancestors lived and what may help us better understand their lives.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.