Family Histories Made Simple

I am incredibly blessed to have a binder full of histories of my ancestors. It’s an amazing resource, but one I don’t often take advantage of. Unless I’m curious about a particular family member, the collection typically sits on a shelf, unused and unopened. When I wanted to teach my children about their ancestors, I knew the binder had the answers within it, but wasn’t the approachable medium I needed. It was time to get creative and make my own. I’ll show you the steps I took to make a book full of facts, memories, and photos that my family has come to treasure.

Step 1: Collect Information

I opened a document and typed out the names of those closest to me, working backward. I started with my parents, then their parents, and so on. I included birth and death dates and locations. Next, I researched each ancestor to see how much information I could get from either my binder, or Memories in Family Search. The goal was to find five interesting tidbits on each ancestor’s life.

When I got back a few generations, I couldn’t always find stories, just facts. That’s when I had to utilize vital records to create a story of their life. For help with framing a narrative when you don’t have stories, see my post on Putting the Pieces Together.

I only had census and emigration records to learn about John Gibbs.

Step 2: Collect Photos

Because photos can be difficult to come by, I limited each ancestor to two images. When the photos weren’t at a high enough resolution to print, I kept them small but on a larger background using an app like Rhonna Designs.

I used Rhonna Designs to load a smaller photo onto a 4” x 6” image and saved it to my photos.

If I had multiple images to choose from, I tried to find one when they were older and one when they were younger. Below are the ones I chose for my maternal grandmother.

Step 3: Design Your Pages

Once your information and images are collected, it’s time to design them into pages. I used Becky Higgins’ Project Life. Becky has created a simple way to organize your memories and lay them out in a clean, well-designed way. You can use the digital desktop version, but you will need Photoshop Elements. Because I use my phone and tablet so much, I downloaded the app and used that version of Project Life.

Because I was going to include so many pages in this book, I simplified things and used the same layout for each ancestor, changing the color for each gender. When I was ready to input text and images, I made a copy of my layout, renamed it with my ancestor’s name, and uploaded their information.

Step 4: Print Your Book

After I completed a page for every ancestor (all 71 of them!), I decided to compile them into a book using a local (to me) company I’m very familiar with — Chatbooks. Project Life also has an ordering option through their app, I just haven’t used it before.

I used the Rhonna Designs app to design the book cover.

Chatbooks allows me to send my family a link to the completed project so they can order a copy for themselves. So simple!

I hope you take advantage of the histories you have to create something your own family will treasure.

Including the Good, Bad, and Ugly of Family History

I remember burning all my journals when I was about 14 because I was so embarrassed of what I had written. There was no way I was going to let any of my posterity read them. Well, hindsight is 20/20 and I'm so annoyed with my teenage self for burning those notebooks!

Family history can be similar in a sense that people only want to remember the good things and leave out the bad. It's understandable that you don't want to tarnish someone's good name, but when we choose favorites and ignore some of history, we're eliminating the chance someone else will learn from that ancestor's mistakes.

For instance, I have some men and women in my own family tree that weren't perfect.

If you've read my post on Amelia Evans, you've been introduced to my third-great-grandfather, Williams Washington Camp. He was a cotton plantation owner who owned many slaves. My ancestor was his his sixth wife, and, after five years of marriage, he accused her of murdering their 5-month-old daughter. According to their divorce record, he also beat and whipped her.

Deseret News March 11, 1863

Deseret News March 18, 1863

Though I'm not Williams Washington's biggest fan by a long shot, I am a huge fan of Amelia. I admire her resilience and bravery. At almost nine months pregnant, she divorced her husband in a time when women couldn't even own property. She remarried a few months later to a man with a sense of humor who loved her. Knowing Williams' story helps me be more grateful for Amelia and the choices she made.

Williams Washington Camp, Amelia Evans Camp, and two of their children

Another of my third-great-grandfathers, John Nye Sr, moved his wife and six children to Australia in search of gold. They moved multiple times across miles of terrain to find work. He and his wife, Charlotte, didn't get along well but couldn't afford a divorce. While John and their son, Stephen, were traveling to sell supplies to gold miners, Charlotte took her other five sons and daughter and left. She felt that Stephen was her husband's favorite, so she left him with his father.

Talk about a jaw-dropper on both sides! John, who was constantly striving for wealth he never attained, and Charlotte, who left one of her children behind when leaving her husband. They're an example of what NOT to do in a marriage and that things work out a lot better when a husband and wife are on the same page with their family goals.

John Nye Sr

Charlotte Emline Osborne Nye Eggleston

Not all experiences are poor examples, but could be deemed as embarrassing. One of my favorites is of my third-great-grandmother Hannah Jane Jones. She married Thomas Harper when she was 22 and he was 30. After they had been married 29 years, Thomas took a 17-yr-old second wife. At this point, Hannah was 47 years old. They had six children olderthan this new wife and their youngest was just three.

Hannah put an end to the honeymoon when she became tired of doing the morning chores alone. She "dampened the flame of love" for the newlyweds by dousing the couple with a bucket of cold water while they lingered in bed.

Seriously? This woman was awesome! Not only did she show the new young wife who was boss, but reminded her husband of the same thing. I can't wait to meet her in the next life because I'm pretty sure I get some of my spunk from her.

Hannah Jane Jones Harper

Whether it's an alcoholic or a horse thief, we're all bound to have a few skeletons in our family closet. They may not be adored, but they shouldn't be ignored. If there are things in your own life that your progeny can learn from, record it. It's both the good and the bad that make us human.

Niels Peter Hendrickson

This is Niels Peter Hendrickson, my Great-Great-Grandfather on my mother's side. He was born February 7, 1877 at Glenwood, Utah to Hendrick Pederson Hendrickson and Mary Christine Madsen Hendrickson. He was the second of seven children.

Pete as a teenager

Pete's father passed away when he was 12 so he and his siblings had to step up and support the family. His job was to herd the sheep, which he did for many years. He didn't have the opportunity to attend school as most of his time was spent away with the sheep.

Dressed for herding sheep

On April 2, 1899, he married Emma Pearl Bell and they moved into a two-room wood home across the street from her parents. The next year he bought a three-room log house. When he wasn't tending the sheep, he was working on his yard and garden. Each summer, he grew almost enough food to feed his growing family.

Niels Peter and Emma Pearl

Pete was fond of the arts and purchased one of the first Edison phonographs with its large horn. In what little spare time they had, Pete and Pearl participated in the community's Dramatic Club, presenting plays in Glenwood and the surrounding towns.

With a bigger family and increased responsibilities, he sold his sheep and bought a farm in Venice. At the same time, he and Pearl purchased a two-room red adobe house on Main Street in Glenwood. As soon as he could get material, he built two more rooms and a bath onto the home.

He was a hard worker and cultivated crops during the long summer months. After the fall harvest, he would haul wood, work on the road, and do odd jobs to supplement his income. In the spring, he would shear sheep. He did all he could to make sure his eight children were fed, clothed, and educated.

Pete was a devoted husband and cared for the children whenever Pearl needed to be gone for church or other duties. After his mother-in-law was widowed, they moved in and cared for her for five years until her death.

Never one to retire, he was Town Marshall for eight years and a school custodian for 11. Whenever his grandchildren would visit, he would retire to his garden, but in the evening he would come with a cob of popcorn to pop for the family.

Pete passed away December 22, 1953 in Glenwood at 76 years old. He left behind his wife, Pearl, and their eight children—Dwain Carlyle, LaVerda, Verona, Lee H, Daryel N, Maurine, Gail P, and Kenneth P.

Amelia Evans Camp Davis

Meet Amelia Evans, my 3rd Great-Grandmother on my father's side. She was born April 8, 1838 in Gwespyr, a village on the north coast of Wales to Peter Evans and Anne Blydden Evans. Her family moved to Lancaster, England where they met missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were baptized into the faith.

Amelia Evans

Though her entire family wanted to emigrate to the United States to join members of the Church, they were victims of the economic depression and couldn't afford to travel together. Amelia, being the oldest, left her family and sailed from Liverpool on the ship "Thornton" on May 3, 1856. The rest of her family was unable to make the trip until five years after Amelia arrived in New York.

She traveled by train to Iowa City and joined the over 400 members of the ill-fated Willie Handcart Company. They left late in the season with inadequate food and supplies. Throughout their treacherous journey, Amelia was known for her kindness and given the nickname "Charity."

At Rocky Ridge, the company encountered a severe snowstorm that halted their progress. When Amelia and another woman saw that one of the men in the group was missing, they walked back many miles to find him. When they did, they put him in his handcart and pushed him through the snow back to camp. That same night, 13 emigrants died making the 16-mile trek up the Ridge.

Willie Handcart plaque at Rocky Ridge

A rescue group came from Salt Lake with provisions, saving their lives. The Willie Handcart Company didn't reach the Salt Lake Valley until November 9, 1856, six months after leaving England. Sixty-seven died on the journey, but Amelia survived.

Three months after arriving in Salt Lake, she became the sixth wife of Williams Washington Camp. She was 18 and he was 56. Within six years of marriage, she gave birth to five children—Amelia Ann, Williams Peter, Charlotte, Laura Jane and Mary Magdalene. Williams Peter was the only one that lived to adulthood. After Charlotte's death, they adopted a baby girl named Deseret.

Williams Washington Camp, Amelia Evans Camp, and two of their children

When Amelia was 25, she was arrested for manslaughter. Williams accused her of the murder of their daughter, Laura Jane, who had died at 5 months old. She was arraigned Monday, March 16, 1863. Aurelius Miner appeared for the prosecution and James Ferguson was appointed the defense in the case of the people of Utah v. Amelia Camp. After being in custody for a week, the jury returned a not-guilty verdict.

She returned home to her husband and stayed with him until September of 1864 when, at 8 1/2-months pregnant, she filed for divorce. According to the divorce record, Amelia was happy the first year of their marriage, but the following five years were miserable. She stated that Williams often "beat her with his fists, struck her with horse whips and inflicted wounds and bruises upon her body, head, face, and arms of the most brutal character and otherwise treated her in an unfeeling manner, and that she was living in circumstances where she was in constant fear and danger for her life."

December 16, 1864, Amelia married William Davis in a ceremony conducted by Brigham Young when she was 26 and he 25. Together, they raised Williams Peter and Deseret and had 10 children together—William Henry, Martha Ellen, Robert, Albert Franklin, John Edward, Rhoda, David L, Arthur Edward, Phoebe and Thomas Morgan. John died at Birth and David died at a year old.

In 1876, they moved to Samaria, Idaho, where William built a rock house. Amelia's children remember her as an excellent cook and seamstress. Her youngest child was just five years old when she died October 8, 1886. She was 48 years old.

Family History — Where to Begin

So you've heard family history is important, but aren't sure where to begin. Whether you have an aunt that's traced your lineage back to Noah's ark or you don't even know your grandparents' names, we're here with tips to start you off right.

When you're just beginning your family's history, you're inundated with names and dates. It can be intimidating to wade through internet search results for family or through books of remembrance with oversized pages full of old photos and handwritten information.

The best tip I've found for knowing where to start is with you. Begin with the end in mind. Create a family tree with you as the trunk and work your way up. Keep it simple with names, dates, and locations. Do this for yourself, your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

I designed a basic family tree for you to print and fill out. Just click the image below to download the FREE pdf.

After you have the foundation of your family, start gathering photos and documents for those currently on your tree. Use scanners or phone apps to digitize them. Ask those still living for their personal histories or those of your ancestors. Determine how you're going to organize and store the information. (For a post of my favorite family history apps, CLICK HERE.)

If you decide to use web applications to preserve your family's histories, there are no guarantees a company will maintain that service. (Anyone remember Google Reader?) The only website I put my trust in to remain free and online is FamilySearch. It's owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but you don't have to be a member to have an account.

I recommend saving your information to an external hard drive or archival-quality CDs. USB sticks tend to be error-prone and regular CDs deteriorate over time. Spread copies throughout your family in case something happens to your own.

Now that you've got the basics for the first three generations of your family tree, keep going! Find even more ancestors and tell their stories. Piece together their lives from the documents you discover. Get to know them beyond names and dates.

When I was a child, I didn't look forward to growing up and copying down all the information from my parents' books of remembrance. Luckily technology evolved and has revamped the way I see my ancestors and record their information.

Favorite Apps for Family History

Technology has taken over and, as far as family history goes, it's definitely for the better! It's never been easier to research and record our ancestors lives as well as our own. I'm sharing the 12 apps I use most for family history.

You'll discover apps for photo digitization, editing, and organization. I'm also including my go-to research apps for finding images and histories. Recording your own story is just as important as the past, so there are apps for that too. Finally, you're going to want to preserve all these memories in physical form and, yes, there's an app for that.

PHOTOS

PHOTOMYNE

Photomyne is the easiest way I have found to digitize physical photos. It actually turns your phone into a portable scanner. When you use the app to take a photo, the technology detects the borders and crops accordingly, auto-rotates when sideways, color corrects, and saves it into a digital album.

PHOTOSHOP express

This is my go-to app for repairing old photos. When you have a picture with dust, creases, or other imperfections, the Spot Heal tool in Photoshop Express can help. It also has common editing capabilities like exposure, contrast, saturation, and more. Just be cautious when editing old photos. It's easy to want to perfect a picture, but it can remove the historic character when you go overboard.

GOOGLE PHOTOS

I use this app to organize all my digitized pictures. Once a photo has been edited, I transfer it to an album in Google Photos. Mine are organized by family. Within each album, I sort my photos in chronological order the best I can.

Each photo has an "Info" section where I include as much information as I have about the photo—who or what is in it, when it was taken, the location, and any applicable memories that give it more context. If you want to share individual photos or entire albums, there is a "share" option of messaging a link so others can access them as well.

RESEARCH

FAMILY TREE

This app from FamilySearch isn't just for tracking your family tree. When you select an ancestor, there's a tab for "Memories." There you may find photos of the individual, their headstone, newspaper articles, funeral programs, books they're mentioned in, even audio recordings. Because any relative anywhere on their line can upload information, you may discover new things each time you log in.

ANCESTRY

Use this app to access billions of historical photos and records. My favorite part of the Ancestry app is the "Hints" feature. Once you have your family tree in place, Ancestry will search new records for you that they think are a match for your ancestors. You can review photos, records, and stories to verify they match your relative, then attach them to their record in your family tree.

FIND A GRAVE

Want to know where a loved one is buried or, even better, see a photo of their headstone? Use Find A Grave to search more than 100 million graves in over 50 million cemeteries around the world. I don't just use this to find gravesites. On occasion users will post memories or biographies of the deceased.

GOOGLE

I know that Google isn't an app, but this search engine is probably your best source of finding family information. When I use the apps above to no avail, I'll do the same searches in Google. The trick is to refine your search. Put the name you're looking for in quotation marks so it will search the complete name instead of searching each word separately. For example, '"Mariah Jaynes" 1824' or '"Robert Hutchinson" Rockland Idaho' will give you more specific links than if you just enter their name.

RECORDING

STORYCORPS

This is, by far, the best app I've found for recording interviews. StoryCorps mission is to preserve and share stories, so they've created an app to make the experience as simple as possible. The app explains the interview process and provides questions and prompts to carry you through the conversation. All the recording is done in the app and can be downloaded to your phone as a .wav file, shared with family and friends online, or even uploaded to the American Folklife Center at the United States Library of Congress.

DAY ONE JOURNAL

This app makes keeping a journal easy with a simple interface. Day One automatically organizes each entry on a calendar, with options to look back at any time to see your memories. You can also have multiple journals, for example a "gratitude" journal or a "funny things my kids said" journal. Plus, tagging each post makes it simple to search through previous journals for people, locations, even moods. It even records metadata while you're typing such as location, time and date, temperature and weather, and if you have music playing on your phone. When you've captured your memories, Day One allows you to preserve them with its book printing services.

PAPERBLANKS

If you're stumped on what to write in your own journal, use Paperblanks Journal Prompts. They have various categories, but my favorite for personal histories are Personal/Introspective and Just for Fun. You can even save your favorite prompts. Mine is currently, "A time when I felt really strong was…"

PRESERVING

PROJECT LIFE

This is digital scrapbooking at its simplest. With built-in templates and pre-designed artwork, you can assemble pages of memories in minutes. Pull photos directly from your camera roll, add journaling notes, and you're done. Project Life allows you to export, share, and print complete pages or order them as individual pages or photo books.

CHATBOOKS

Chatbooks is the easiest way to get your photos off your phone and printed into books. You can have your everyday memories printed in 60-page volumes that are automatically created each time you add 60 photos to Instagram, Facebook, or your Camera Roll Favorites. You can also create and order custom photo books that are perfect for vacations or family histories. CLICK HERE to sign up and get your first book free!

These are my favorite apps for family history. Did I miss any? Share your favorites in the comments!