“It’s impossible not to love someone whose story you’ve heard.” This truth was spoken by David Isay of StoryCorps during his keynote at the Friday Opening Session of the RootsTech conference. The message of StoryCorps left a lasting impression on me as Isay beautifully illustrated how hearing stories of even strangers creates a connection. Most of my ancestors are strangers to me – but through their stories I feel a deep connection to them. “Every story matters.” -David Isay, StoryCorps Do you believe that every story matters? I sure do. Stories have always been my favorite part of family history. When I first really delved into...
Have you tried the fun little website called Grandma’s Pie? If so, you might be wondering how I changed the pie chart it generated for me from the orange color scheme into this blue one: In this post, I’ll show you how. First, for everyone who hasn’t seen Grandma’s Pie before, here’s a little introduction. When I was in high school, I thought it would be interesting to make a list of all the native countries of my ancestors to see what percentage I was English, German, Irish etc. What I found was that most of my family lines extend back in...
Do you have a quilt in your closet with no clue who made it or why? Or maybe you have a stack of clothes from a loved one that you’d like to make into a quilt? Either way, a quilt can be a lasting way of preserving memories. I have a rich heritage of quilting in my family. Four generations of women snipped and sewed to create colorful and practical quilts that are a piece of our family’s history. Starting with my great grandmother’s, here are four different quilts and the lessons I’ve learned from each one. Quilt #1...
After Christmas, my 5 year old was devastated to take down the tree, lights, and ornaments. So we quickly replaced the Christmas tree with our Valentine’s Day decorations! A couple years ago I started decorating for Valentine’s Day with old (and new) family photos of weddings. These are some of my favorite wedding photos from our family: Here’s how I decorated last year: And this is what I came up with this year: I framed a pretty card that I saved from our wedding. The rest are pictures of my parents, grandparents, and my husband’s grandparents. At the piano I used pictures...
Our ward Christmas party was a nativity display. We decided to create a family history display in one of the rooms with Christmas family traditions and ideas from the FamilySearch Christmas campaign, 5 Ideas for Creating Cherished Memories this Christmas Season. The second idea on the list was to create ancestor photo ornaments, so I decorated a small Christmas tree with a bunch of photo ornaments. There are a lot of ways to make photo ornaments, from modge podging photos onto wood coasters to creating your own paper frame, but it doesn’t need to be complicated! Here are two easy ideas....
I’ve been searching for a way to easily illustrate a book for kids about their ancestors. I would love to have several ancestor story books that I can read to my children at Family Home Evening, bedtime, and anytime they have questions about their ancestors. It would be great to use actual photographs, but what if you don’t have any? Here’s one solution: www.storyboardthat.com! It’s a simple way to make characters and customize them with different poses, clothing, skin,eye, and hair color. I used StoryboardThat.com this week to make simple scenes and characters wearing clothing that represent the time period they lived in....
Today I want to share one of my favorite apps from the FamilySearch app gallery – Puzzilla! Puzzilla.org reads the data on your family tree and creates a compact, bird’s eye view of your pedigree. This is interesting for viewing your ancestors, but it’s incredible for viewing descendants. There is no better way to visualize your cousins than to see them plotted out in a Puzzilla descendancy chart. As you view cousins in this new way, it’s simpler to spot gaps in the research and find new places to work. For those who want to find names for temple work,...
Today is Veteran’s Day. This is a simple holiday where all we need to do is honor and remember those who sacrificed to preserve our freedoms. So to celebrate, I am honoring and remembering six of the many men in my life who joined the massive effort known as World War II. Each had unique experiences and each deserves to have their story told. All of them came home from the war and all of them have since passed away. Do I know enough about their experiences to fully tell their stories? Not by any means. But I do know enough to...
We all have them – ancestor stories that tend to be hushed up: illegitimate children, desertion, abuse, mental illness, etc. We call these life details “skeletons in the closet” because we like to imagine our ancestor’s lives as near perfect and may be tempted to bury these skeletons. What do we do when our family history research uncovers something unexpected? Recording these kind of details can be difficult. How do we tell our ancestor’s story with integrity and kindness? When we first stumble upon a skeleton in the closet we may feel many different emotions: disbelief, anger, sorrow, and denial to name a few....
Do you have pioneer ancestors who joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) in the 1800’s and came west to join the saints in Zion? The LDS church began emphasizing family history about 1890, so you may think that those branches of your family tree are complete and accurate. Just looking at your fan chart on FamilySearch’s Family Tree, it might seem that there are no more family members to discover. In reality, our pioneer lines may be reasonably accurate up to a point, but the dates, places, and relationships are often based on family knowledge and...
