Latest Articles
How to Capture Family Proverbs from Parents and Grandparents
Proverbs are tiny time capsules that carry the moral compass of a generation. When you ask a parent or grandparent about the sayings they grew up with, you…
How to Create a Family Tree From Scratch: Free Tools and Where to Start
Building a family tree from scratch can feel overwhelming — the scope is unlimited, the records are scattered, and you may not know where to begin. The approach…
What Older Generations Said About Money — and What It Reveals
When a grandparent says, “A penny saved is a penny earned,” the words echo more than thrift. They carry the imprint of the economic storms they lived through—depression,…
Using Family Objects to Unlock and Preserve Stories
Every family has objects that carry more weight than their physical size suggests. A cracked teacup. A handmade quilt. A pair of cufflinks that came from another country…
Legacy Letters: Writing to Preserve Memory and Meaning
Letters are one of the oldest forms of personal writing, and for generations they were how people told the stories of their lives. Today, most of those letters…
Words Worth Keeping: Phrases and Sayings From Older Relatives
Every family has a rhythm of speech that feels like a private soundtrack. The way a grandmother rolls her r’s, a grandfather peppers his stories with a favorite…
A year-end review that isn’t about goals
On the night of December 31, a stack of receipts, a half‑filled photo album, and a handwritten note from a distant cousin lie on the kitchen table. The…
How Sensory Details Bring a Life Story to Life
There is something quietly powerful about writing down the small things — the smell of your grandmother’s kitchen, the sound of rain on a tin roof during childhood…
Writing an obituary
A family sits around a kitchen table, a notebook open, while a sibling reads aloud dates dates and places that will become the backbone of an obituary. The…
Writing up a life story
A family gathers around a kitchen table, a recorder humming as the oldest sibling asks about the first day of school. The conversation drifts from childhood games to…
How to Use Letters and Correspondence to Reconstruct a Life Story
Before email, before text messages, before voicemail — people wrote letters. And those letters, if they have survived, are among the most remarkable primary sources available for reconstructing…