Family history gifts for parents who have everything
Every year somebody in the family says it. "Please don't get me anything. I have everything I need." By the time a parent reaches 70 or 80, that's usually true of things. What very few of them have is the family's story written down somewhere the grandchildren can find it.
The ideas below are gifts made from the family itself. Most cost little more than an afternoon, a few take a weekend, and the last one is a book we'd research and write for you. Any of them would suit an 80th birthday or a quiet Christmas morning.
A recorded conversation
The simplest gift on this list is an hour of your time with a recorder running. Sit down with your mother or father and a few old photographs, and ask about the house they grew up in, how they met and what their first job was. The Library of Congress suggests asking an older relative whether you may record the conversation, and it says a smartphone or a digital recorder is enough.
The gift comes afterward. Make a copy of the recording for each brother and sister, or type up a few favorite stories and print them for the grandchildren. A parent who hears their own voice played back at the holiday table tends to remember that moment.
If you'd like a little structure, StoryCorps, the nonprofit oral history project, has a free mobile app that helps you prepare questions and record the conversation, and it uploads the audio to the Library of Congress and the StoryCorps Archive. Some families love knowing their recording will be kept that way. If you'd rather keep it in the family, a voice memo on your own phone works fine.
For a parent who served in the military, there's one more possibility. In 2000 Congress passed the Veterans' Oral History Project Act, which gave the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress the job of collecting audio and video recordings of the personal histories of American war veterans. If that appeals to your family, the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project pages have the current details.
Our free guide, The Family Story Starter, has 24 questions to ask your parents and grandparents, with room to write the answers. You can print it and bring it along.
A photo album with every face named
Most families have a box of photographs that only one or two people can still identify. Sorting it with your parent, and writing down who's who, is a gift to everyone who comes after you. Go slowly. Spread a handful of pictures on the kitchen table and let one face lead to the next. Your parent will often remember the wedding, the car or the dog before the names come back, and the names usually follow. Keep a notepad handy for the stories that come with them.
Label as you go. The National Archives advises a No. 2 pencil or softer, writing only on the back edge of a paper print and never on the front. It also suggests taking off paper clips, rubber bands and sticky notes, because they can damage the image. A good caption gives a name, a rough date and a place. In our fictional sample family, the Does, John Q. Doe might write "Grandma Dorothy (Fairbanks), about 1927, Fairhaven Falls" on the back of a snapshot.
When you pick out an album, the National Archives says the quality of the pages matters more than the cover. Don't overstuff it. Keep the finished album, and the box it came from, out of damp basements, garages and hot attics.
A framed copy of a favorite photograph
A wedding portrait or a picture of the old farmhouse makes a lovely present framed, and it's a gift you can finish in a week. Frame a copy and keep the original safe. The National Archives says the best protection from light is to display copies and keep the originals in a box, and that a color scan or a color photocopy works as the display copy. Give the original back in an envelope with a pencil note of who's in it.
A family recipe collection
Recipes carry a family's history in a way few papers do. A little cookbook of the dishes that always turn up at the holidays makes a warm gift for a mother or grandmother, especially if her handwriting is in it. A photograph of the cook at the stove, or of the table set for a holiday dinner, makes a nice first page.
A Library of Congress blog post on collecting family recipes has good advice. Ask around the family for favorites. Photograph handwritten cards so you can keep the original alongside a typed version. Add the stories and the cook's own notes, since they bring back memories. Try each old recipe before you include it, because measurements and oven temperatures may not match today's. The post also suggests an index, sorted by dish, generation or cook. Printing a copy for every household means the recipes don't live in a single kitchen drawer anymore.
A family tree chart
A chart on the wall lets everyone see the generations at a glance, and you can make one without spending anything. FamilySearch, which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides free of charge to everyone, can turn its Family Tree into a printable PDF, either a seven-generation fan chart, a five-generation portrait chart or a four-generation pedigree chart. You'll need its free account to build the tree. Our Family Story Starter also has a family chart for four generations, on its own page so it prints cleanly.
Fill in only what you can back up, and leave a blank where you're not sure. Charts get copied, and a chart with honest blanks won't send a cousin down the wrong road in twenty years.
A day trip to where it began
For a parent who still talks about the old neighborhood, a day back there can mean more than anything wrapped. Drive past the house, stop at the church and walk the cemetery together. Bring a notebook and a camera, and let your parent do the talking.
Take pictures of the family gravestones while you're there. The National Archives reminds beginners not to overlook cemetery records and gravestone inscriptions, and a clear photograph of a stone, with its dates, is something the whole family can use later.
A scanned family archive
If the old photographs and papers are all in one house, scanning them is a way to share them with everyone. A small drive or a shared folder for each brother and sister makes a quiet, practical present.
The National Archives says to keep the originals after you scan them, because digital files have their own preservation risks and can easily be lost. It recommends three copies, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy kept somewhere else. A drive in each sibling's house takes care of that last part nicely.
Where a researched book fits
Each of the ideas above gathers what the family already knows. A researched book goes looking for what it doesn't. It starts with the names and stories at home, then follows them into the records, such as census returns, church and civil registers, passenger lists and naturalization files, and sets what it finds into a hardcover your family can read and keep.
That's the work we do at Root & Quill. Every fact in our books is cited to the record it came from, and you read the full draft before anything is printed, with two rounds of revisions. You can look inside one in our Sample Pages and compare the three books on Books & Pricing.
The Ancestor Portrait starts at $450 and tells the story of a single ancestor or couple in a short illustrated biography. The Family Heritage Book starts at $1,500 and follows one or two family lines back four generations, written as a single volume. The Heirloom Collection starts at $2,800 and traces your family as far back as the records allow, often to the old country, in a three-volume set.
Giving a book at Christmas
Research takes time, so a book can't be finished overnight. Every book takes about 4 to 6 weeks of research and writing, and then about 3 to 4 weeks for the draft review, the design and printing.
For Christmas, our gift certificate lets you give the book now and start the research in the new year. You have a free 30-minute call with us about who it's for and what you know of the family. We send a written fixed quote within two business days, for any of our three books. You can pay in full now, or pay 50% now and the rest during their project. Every invoice comes to you, never to them, and we email a printable certificate with your message on it. After the holidays, the person you're giving it to has their own free call, and we begin. The books, prices and terms are the same as on Books & Pricing.
The last day to give a certificate this year is Monday 21 December. It arrives by email the same week, ready to print at home and tuck into a card.
If the gift is for a birthday, an anniversary or a reunion instead, tell us the date early and we'll plan backward from it.
Is there one story in your family you'd most like to see written down before it's lost? We'd love to hear what it is.
If you're weighing a gift for someone you love, a free 30-minute consultation is an easy place to start. There's no obligation, and after the call we'll send a written fixed quote within two business days.
