Writing Your Family History: A Guide for Family Historians

Gill Blanchard’s practical step-by-step guide to writing a family history is designed for anyone who wants to bring their ancestors’ stories to life. She looks at ways of overcoming the particular problems family historians face when writing a family history -- how to deal with gaps in knowledge, how to describe generations of people who did the same jobs or lived in the same area, how to cover the numerous births, marriages and deaths that occur, and when to stop researching and start writing.

Her book provides examples to help readers find their own writing style, deal with family stories, missing pieces of information and anomalies. It also offers advice on key aspects of composition, such as adding local and social history context and using secondary material. The focus throughout is on how to develop a story from beginning to end.

Exercises are a key feature of the text. There is guidance on the various formats a family history can take and how to choose the appropriate one, with examples of format and layout. Production and publishing are also covered -- books, booklets, newsletters, websites, blogs and ebooks.

Gill Blanchard is an experienced family and local history researcher, teacher and lecturer. She has an academic background in history,sociology and politicsand has been conducting family, house and local history research on a full-time professional basis since 1992. She began her research career by working at Norfolk Record Office assisting the public with their genealogical and local history research, and she set up her own research company in 1997. She teaches a range of family history courses locally, nationally and online. Among her most recent publications are Tracing Your House History and Writing Your Family History.