Is My Book Finally Going to Happen?

I’ve been blogging for 14 years and I find it an excellent way to share my research findings and the processes I use for my family history research. Digital is my forte and I embrace it wholly! When it comes to ensuring that the work I do sustains beyond me, I am, at this point, 100% reliant upon the existence of the Internet because all of my work is digital and in places that are highly likely to have long-term sustainability. And, I’m comfortable with that.

However, I am interested in also pursuing some kind of option to preserve my family history work in printed form, in a format that I can deposit into relevant libraries (including the Library of Congress even!) and distribute to family members who are interested. Yet, I have struggled with finding a way to do it that I feel will work for me. Writing a “regular” kind of book is not appealing to me and I’ve considered scrapbooking since I do yearly family scrapbooks, but that does not quite sit right with me either for a family history “book.” Tonight I’m sharing an approach I’ve found that I’m excited to try and see if it will work for me as an option.

Several months ago, I learned about a set of templates created by Carly Morgan (familytreenotebooks.com) for recording your family history. The templates can be completed digitally (using an iPad or the full version of Adobe Acrobat) and subsequently printed if desired. Ever since learning about her system I have been quite intrigued. Her templates appeal to me as they provide structure to presenting information with MANY options for layouts. Her templates are quite varied – in fact, more than 200 of them are available. Examples include template pages for sharing details about births, marriages, deaths, family stories, newspaper clippings, census records, recipes, school pictures, and more – there are truly a ton of options and my sense is her templates will provide the flexibility I am looking for to share what I have collected in an informative and visually appealing way.

So, I decided to purchase a set of her templates, started a subscription to Adobe Acrobat so that I can edit the PDF files, and I’m going to explore using them to put together a family history book for one specific lineage of my family. I’ve only made two pages so far but I like how it is going. Here is an example page:

I will next start planning out how I will put together my “chapters” and plan out which template pages I will complete for each person in my descendancy chart. The couple I am starting this process with, Rufus Tannahill McNair and his wife Mariah Wimberly, had 15 children that I know of, so my 1st goal is to complete pages for them and their 15 children, documenting what I know at this point in time.

I need to set a specific timeline goal for this so that I keep moving forward, so wish me luck! If you are interested in learning more about Carly’s system, I very much encourage you to read her blog post describing her methods; you can also order the templates from her website. This may just be what I need to ensure my work flourishes over the years and is sustainable in an additional format besides just digital.

I am participating in Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” series and this week’s prompt is “Prosperity.”  My take on it for this post de-emphasizes the financial meaning; instead, I want my genealogy work to be prosperous, long-living, and successfully shared with many future generations. I have good systems in place for that to happen digitally and I am looking forward to building upon that and adding a printed option as well.

Stay tuned in upcoming months for updates about how this goes!