How to Make a Family History Book: A Step-by-Step Guide
Image: Arun Prakash
To make a family history book, gather your family’s stories and photos, choose a structure (usually by generation, by person, or in time order), write the stories in a clear voice, pair them with images, and print it as a bound keepsake. You can do it yourself with a simple word processor and a printing service, or hire a personal historian to handle the interviews, writing, and design. Here’s the whole process, step by step.
A family history book is one of those projects almost everyone wants and almost no one knows how to start. The stories are scattered across people’s memories, the photos are in a box in the closet, and the whole thing feels too big to begin.
It isn’t. Broken into steps, it’s very doable. Let me walk you through exactly how it comes together, and help you decide whether to build it yourself or bring in help.
What is a family history book?
A family history book is a bound collection of your family’s stories, memories, photographs, and history, made to be kept and passed down. It can center on one person’s life, span several generations, or trace a whole family line.
It’s different from a genealogy chart, which maps names and dates. A family history book has the stories in it: how your grandparents met, what the old farm was like, the year everything changed. Names and dates are the skeleton. This is the flesh and the voice.
Step 1: Decide on your scope
Before anything else, pick your boundaries, or the project will sprawl forever.
Ask yourself: whose story is this? A single life, like your mother’s? A couple? Three generations? The whole tree back as far as you can reach? There’s no wrong answer, but you need an answer. A focused book that actually gets finished beats an ambitious one that never does.
Step 2: Gather your material
Now collect everything in one place.
- Stories. Interview your living relatives and record them. This is the heart of it. Our guides on recording a parent’s life story and interviewing an elderly relative walk you through how.
- Photographs. Pull them from every drawer and box. See how to organize old family photos for a system.
- Documents. Letters, certificates, recipes, news clippings, military records.
- Facts. Names, dates, and places to anchor the stories.
Gather more than you’ll use. You can cut later. You can’t add what you never collected.
Step 3: Choose a structure
Most family history books follow one of three shapes. Pick the one that fits your material.
| Structure | Best for | How it reads |
|---|---|---|
| Chronological | A single life or a clear timeline | Birth to present, in order |
| By person or family branch | Multiple relatives or a whole tree | One chapter per person or line |
| Thematic | Rich material that resists a timeline | Grouped by topic: home, work, war, love |
Step 4: A sample table of contents
Here’s a simple outline you can adapt. This is for a book centered on one person’s life, the most common kind.
- Foreword — why this book exists, written by you
- Roots — where the family came from, the generations before
- Childhood — early years, home, parents, the world back then
- Coming of age — school, first jobs, becoming themselves
- Love and family — meeting, marriage, raising children
- Working life — career, purpose, the daily work
- Trials and triumphs — the hard years and the proud ones
- Reflections — lessons, beliefs, what they hope you remember
- Photo gallery — images with captions
- Family tree and timeline — the facts, for reference
Step 5: Write the stories
Write the way the person talks. A family history book should sound warm and human, not like an encyclopedia entry.
Keep paragraphs short. Lead with the interesting part. Use the actual words your relatives used when you interviewed them, because those turns of phrase are what make readers hear the person. Don’t polish the life out of it.
If writing isn’t your thing, this is the stage where many people decide to hire help. That’s completely normal.
Step 6: Add the photos and design it
Place each photo next to the story it belongs to, and caption every one with who’s in it, where, and roughly when. An unlabeled photo becomes a mystery within a generation.
For layout, you have options at every skill level. A simple book can be built in a word processor. A nicer one can be done in a design tool like Canva. A heirloom-quality one is usually where a designer or a service comes in.
Step 7: Print and share
Finally, turn the file into a real book. Online book printers can produce anything from an affordable softcover to a linen-bound hardcover. Order enough copies for the whole family, and keep the digital file backed up in more than one place.
Doing it yourself vs. hiring help
Here’s the honest comparison, because both are valid.
| Do it yourself | Hire a personal historian | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Lower (mostly your time + printing) | Higher (professional service) |
| Time from you | Significant | Minimal |
| The interviews | You do them | Done for you, often draws out more |
| The writing | You write | Professionally written in their voice |
| Best if | You enjoy the work and have time | Time is short, or you want it done to keep |
Plenty of families land in the middle: they do the interviews themselves and hire out the writing and design, or they capture the audio now and commission the book later. There’s no single right path, only the one that fits your family, your time, and how the clock is ticking.
A quick-start checklist
- Decide whose story and how many generations
- Interview and record your living relatives
- Gather and organize photos and documents
- Choose a structure (chronological, by person, or thematic)
- Draft a table of contents
- Write the stories in a warm, plain voice
- Pair photos with stories and caption them
- Lay out the book
- Print copies and back up the file
Frequently asked questions
How do I make a family history book? Gather your family’s stories, photos, and documents, choose a structure (chronological, by person, or thematic), write the stories in a warm and clear voice, pair them with captioned photos, and print it as a bound book. You can do it yourself or hire a personal historian to handle the interviewing, writing, and design.
What should a family history book include? Typically a foreword, the family’s origins, chapters covering the subject’s life from childhood through later years, reflections and lessons, a captioned photo gallery, and a family tree or timeline for reference. The stories matter more than the dates.
What’s the best format for a family history book? The three common formats are chronological (one life or a clear timeline), by person or family branch (for multiple relatives), and thematic (grouped by topics like home, work, and love). Choose the one that best fits the material you’ve gathered.
Should I make a family history book myself or hire someone? Do it yourself if you enjoy the work and have the time; hire a personal historian if time is short or you want a polished, lasting keepsake. Many families do a hybrid: they record the interviews themselves and hire out the writing and design.
I’m Claire, a writer and personal historian on Florida’s Space Coast. I help families turn scattered stories and shoeboxes of photos into family history books they’ll keep for generations. If you’d rather have it done for you, see how legacy books work or reach out. Ready to start gathering material yourself? Begin with our fifty questions to ask.
