Producing a Story From Your Family Tree
legacy family tree
Your Story… the organized version of your memories… Matter
The story on the tip of your tongue right now will be lost forever in a generation or two. It happens to every family. Your story should be shared with those that follow.
You arrived here because you are interested in creating some sort of audiovisual presentation about your family, or translating the genealogical boxes and names in your family tree into one or more interesting stories. Even if you are going to have a professional produce the story for you, the place to start is looking closely at your own family tree and looking for stories.
Family Legacy Production Begins with You.
Every story is different but the production process is essentially the same. A family legacy production, a commissioned documentary or family story will generally take 6 to 12 months from start to completion. We meet with you and get familiar with your story. Based on your input, we define the scope of the work, from research to finished editing, item by item. This includes a timeline, completion schedule and budget for your family legacy production. We research, outline and conduct interviews with key figures. We write the script and integrate interviews with narrative. We also do any location work including archives, collections, maps and animation planning. We pull all the elements together with original music, name narrators, animation, and titles to create a finished production for you to approve.
Your Family Tree – Researching Family History For Genealogy Beginners
History is your friend when you are doing genealogy research. These interesting historical details help make an ancestor’s life vivid, more exciting and personal. Here are several ways to research your family history, in order to place your ancestors in a larger context.
Make a timeline for an ancestor’s family.
Why? This timeline will help you see what kinds of local, national, or world events may have been occurring. Now you need to add on the right side the various famines, wars, religious battles, political events, scientific discoveries, epidemics, and other examples of historical events which may have occurred during that time. This exercise will help show you more about your ancestors’ lives, and perhaps help you understand why they moved, or the challenges they faced. Search on cyndislist.com for some examples of such historical web links. Search engines may take you to a very useful list of dates and places of wars, famines, and more. Take time to search out this kind of information about your ancestors.
Look for diaries, memoirs, letters, manuscripts, and any legal documents.
Why? You may be surprised to find details of your ancestor(s) in unusual places: someone else’s diary, or in letters from one neighbor to a far-away parent discussing your ancestor’s life challenges or events. Check in Archives of the town/region or country of your ancestor, or in the holdings of a central library or possibly the regional university. Find out if and how the collections may be searched online, if you are unable to visit in person.
Review archived newspapers.
Why? Social events, epidemics, wars, politics, associations’ news, land sales, births, marriages, and deaths, travel news: all of these items and more may be found in the historical newspaper in your ancestor’s town. Many old newspapers are now available online for searching and viewing, often for free, and of course, are freely available at archives of cities, counties, colleges, museums, universities.
Join your local genealogical society.
Why? Societies may have several professional genealogists, or expert amateurs. For example, a local society may have an expert on old English handwriting and wills, or an expert on German genealogy. Invaluable resources may be found in your local genealogical society.
Look for a surname society or family association.
Why? Finding the association gave me a great deal of information, photos, gravestones, and details. Another line, the Graves line, has a very detailed family association, now using DNA testing to prove relationships between the various Graves immigrants to the US and their possible English relatives. Search online with your surname + family association, or on the Guild of One Name Studies for your surname. Check every surname in your family tree.
Your family tree will become a treasured legacy for future generations. Enjoy your searches.
