I started a family history for my mom about 10 years ago. I finished Volume One in 2004 that covered their courtship and marriage. There’s nothing fancy about this series of histories. They are based on letters and journal entries from my mom and include photos. The are all printed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, bound with wire binding and simple laminated card stock for their covers. My binding machine can only handle 100 sheets of paper so each history is limited to 200 pages. All of the volumes have the same format which speeds up the time it takes to put them together. Plus it gives a consistency to the volumes. Volume 6 covers 1994 through August 1997. It was supposed to cover more years but my mom wrote lots of letters to her sisters in those years so we have more text than we could fit in 200 pages. I’ve got all the photos placed. I still have final corrections on the text to do and I need to label the photos. Then it should be ready to print. Hopefully I’ll get that all done in the next week or so.

Doing a history like this isn’t hard. It takes time to organize, scan, enter in the text and decide on a format. It isn’t very exciting reading but it does a pretty good job of documenting our families history and it is a good source to go to for information.