How to Make a Family History Book (2026): 7 Steps, a Free Template, and 3 Ways to Organize It

A family history book puts your family’s names, dates, photos and stories between two covers. Most people start with the family tree, fill in a hundred names, and then stall, because a list of names isn’t a book. This guide covers what to put in one, three ways to organize it, a seven-step plan, a fill-in template, three short sample pages, and what printing really costs.

Quick answer

To make a family history book: decide whose line and how many generations it covers, gather what you already have (tree, documents, photos, letters), pick a format (by generation, by ancestor, or as stories), write your own memories first, give each person or couple a short section with facts and at least one story, add photos, a tree chart and your sources, then print a few copies or save it as a PDF. Three generations and 30 to 80 pages is a realistic first book.

About this guide

I’m Arthur Cho, founder of Memoirji, a tool that interviews people about their lives and writes up what they say. More than 250 people have finished a memoir with it. For this guide I used the standard genealogy numbering systems (Register, NGSQ and Ahnentafel), the way the large collections at FamilySearch and Ancestry describe family history books, and the hardcover prices we pulled from Lulu’s own pricing tool in October 2026. The three sample pages below are made up, with invented names, to show the format.

What is a family history book?

A family history book is a written record of a family over several generations: who they were, where they lived, what they did and what happened to them. It sits between two things you may already have:

	Family tree	Family history book	Memoir
Covers	Many people	Many people	One life
Main content	Names, dates, places, lines	Facts plus stories, photos, documents	Stories, told from the inside
Who can write it	Anyone with records	Anyone with records and memories	Only the person who lived it (or someone they talk to)
Typical length	1 to 10 pages of charts	20 to 300 pages	30 to 300 pages

There are a lot of these books. The FamilySearch Digital Library lists over 500,000 genealogy books, family histories and related records, and Ancestry’s “U.S., Family History Books” collection holds more than 64,000. You don’t need to be a professional to add to that shelf: plenty of them are short, home-made books put together for a reunion or just to get everything written down once.

What to include in a family history book

• Title page and a one-page introduction. Whose line it follows, how many generations, why you made it, and how you marked facts versus family stories.
• A family tree chart. A pedigree chart (you and your ancestors) or a descendant chart (one couple and everyone after them).
• One section per person or couple. Full name, dates and places of birth, marriage and death, where they lived and worked, and at least one story.
• Photos with captions. Who, where and roughly when. An uncaptioned photo is a puzzle for the next reader.
• A few key documents. A census line, a ship’s passenger list, a marriage certificate, a letter, a discharge paper.
• Your own memories of the people you knew. The part no record holds.
• Recipes, sayings and the family’s way of doing things.
• Sources. Where each fact came from, even as one line at the end of each section.
• An index of names if the book runs past 50 pages or so.

The part most family history books are missing is the stories. Records give you the frame: born here, married there, worked at the mill. Only people who were there can tell you what it was like in that house. That’s why step 4 below is “write your own memories first.”

Family history book format: 3 ways to organize it

1. By generation (start with the earliest ancestor). You begin with the oldest couple you can document and move forward, one generation per chapter. Genealogists give each person a number so readers can follow a line through the book. The two common schemes are the Register system, from the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and the NGSQ system used by the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Best for a large, well-researched family and readers who want lineage.

2. By ancestor (start with yourself and go back). You come first, then your parents, then your four grandparents, and so on. The usual numbering is the Ahnentafel (“ancestor table”) system: you are 1, your father is 2, your mother is 3, and anyone’s father is double their number and their mother double plus one. Your father’s mother is 5, and your mother’s father is 6. Best for a first book or one person’s ancestry.

3. As stories (chapters by place, era or theme). Chapters like “The farm outside Dubuque,” “Coming over,” “The war years,” “Sunday dinners.” The dates and charts go in an appendix. Best for readers who aren’t genealogists, and for families with good stories and patchy records.

Format	Starts with	Numbering	Good for
By generation	Earliest ancestor	Register or NGSQ	Big, well-documented families
By ancestor	You	Ahnentafel	First books, one person’s ancestry
As stories	A place, era or theme	None needed	Readers who want to read it, not study it

My recommendation for a first book: start with yourself and go back three generations, and open every chapter with a story rather than a birth date. It’s the shortest path to a finished book. You can always add earlier generations in a second edition.

How to make a family history book in 7 steps

1. Set the scope: whose line, how many generations

Write it on the first page before you do anything else: “The Novak and Brennan families, from my great-grandparents to me.” Three generations back from you is at most 14 direct ancestors (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents), plus whichever siblings you want to include. That’s a book you can finish. “Everyone descended from Johann Novak, 1840” is a life’s work.

2. Gather what you already have

Make one folder (paper or digital) per person and drop everything in: the family tree from Ancestry, FamilySearch or MyHeritage, or a paper chart; certificates, obituaries, discharge papers, letters, the family Bible, funeral cards, recipe cards, and photos. Sort photos by rough decade first and scan them later. Our guide on what to do with old family photos covers scanning and labeling.

3. Pick your format and list the chapters

Choose one of the three formats above and write a chapter list. For the “start with yourself” format it looks like: Introduction, Family tree, My story, My father, My mother, My father’s parents, My mother’s parents, Earlier generations, Appendix. Seeing the list makes the book feel finite.

4. Write your own memories first

You’re the best source there will ever be for everyone you knew. Before you look anything up, write down what you remember about each person: their voice, their kitchen, what they said when they were proud of you, the car they drove, the joke they always told. Three hundred words per person is plenty to start. If you’d rather talk than type, record yourself telling it, which works better than most people expect (here’s why speaking beats writing for many people). Our memoir writing prompts are sorted by stage of life and help when you go blank.

5. Ask whoever is left

Call the older cousins, the aunt who remembers the farm, your siblings, who remember the same parents differently. Ask for stories, not dates: “What was Grandpa like when he was angry?” “What did Grandma cook when someone died?” Bring photos and ask who’s in them. Our guide on interviewing older relatives about their life stories has the questions that work and the ones that shut people down.

6. Write one section per person, then add photos, the tree and sources

A simple pattern works for every person: a short facts box, then a story or two, then a captioned photo, then a sources line. Keep proof and family lore apart in the text: “The 1930 census lists him as a coal miner” is a fact; “Family story says he walked out of the mine the day his brother was hurt and never went back” is a story worth keeping, labeled as one. Future researchers will thank you for the difference.

7. Print it, or save it as a PDF

A finished PDF is a finished book. If you want it on paper, see the printing section below. Either way, put the date on the title page so the next person knows how current it is.

A free family history book template

Copy this into Word, Google Docs or Canva and fill it in. Delete any field you don’t have an answer for yet.

TITLE PAGE
  The [Surname] Family: [Place], [Years covered]
  Compiled by [your name], [year]

INTRODUCTION (1 page)
  Whose line this book follows, and how many generations:
  Why I made it:
  How I marked facts (records) and family stories:

FAMILY TREE (1-2 pages)
  Pedigree chart: me, my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents

PART ONE: MY OWN STORY (3-10 pages)
  Born (date, place):
  The house I grew up in:
  My parents, as I saw them as a child:
  School, work, marriage, children, the places I've lived:
  Something about our family I want written down:

PART TWO: MY PARENTS (one chapter each, 3-8 pages)
  Facts: full name / born (date, place) / married (date, place, to whom) /
         died (date, place) / buried
  Where they lived and worked:
  A story I remember about them:
  What other people said about them:
  Photos (caption each: who, where, about when):
  Sources:

PART THREE: MY GRANDPARENTS (same fields, one chapter per couple)

PART FOUR: EARLIER GENERATIONS (shorter: mostly facts, any stories that survived)

APPENDIX
  Recipes, sayings, letters and documents
  Map or list of every address the family lived at
  Sources list
  Index of names
  Questions I couldn't answer (for whoever picks this up next)

Family history book examples (3 short sample pages)

These are invented, with made-up names and places, to show three ways the same kind of page can read.

Example 1: a person section, story format

Marta Novak (born Marta Kowalczyk), 1921 to 2004 Born in Hamtramck, Michigan, the fourth of six children. Married Frank Novak in 1942. Worked at the Dodge Main plant during the war and at a bakery on Joseph Campau for 22 years after. Everyone who knew her mentions the bakery hours. She left the house at 4:15 every morning, and she still made breakfast for five before she went. My mother said she never once saw her mother asleep. Sources: 1930 census; marriage record, Wayne County, 1942; my mother’s memories, recorded 2025.

Example 2: a generation entry, Register-style numbering

3. Frank Novak (Josef 2, Johann 1), born 12 March 1919, Detroit; died 3 June 1987, Warren, Michigan. Married Marta Kowalczyk, 1942. Machinist. Children: i. Helen, born 1944. ii. Joseph, born 1947. iii. Ruth, born 1952.

Example 3: your own memories of someone you knew

What I remember about Grandpa Frank He kept a coffee can of loose screws in the garage and could find the one he wanted without looking. He whistled when he was thinking and hummed when he was happy, and you could tell which by the time you reached the back door. When I was nine he let me steer the Buick down the alley, and he told my mother about it himself, before I could.

The third kind is the one only you can write. If your book has nothing else but a page like that for each person you knew, it’s already worth reading.

Family history book ideas (beyond names and dates)

• A kitchen chapter. Recipes in the cook’s own wording, with the story of when they were made. For more on getting those stories down, see 10 questions that preserve family stories.
• A map page. Every address the family lived at, in order. It often tells the story by itself.
• Then and now. An old photo of a house or street beside one you take today.
• A timeline against world events. “Born the year the stock market crashed. Married the week of D-Day.”
• One document in full. A letter home, a ship’s manifest page, a report card.
• Family sayings. The phrases that only make sense inside your family, with where they came from.
• Unanswered questions. A page of what you couldn’t find, for the next researcher.
• Title ideas. “The Novaks of Hamtramck,” “From Kraków to Detroit,” “Marta’s People,” “What We Carried,” “Sunday Dinners.”

How to print a family history book (and what it costs)

You have five options:

• Print-on-demand (Lulu, Amazon KDP, BookBaby). You upload a PDF and order one copy or a hundred. When we checked Lulu’s own pricing in October 2026, a 6x9 printed hardcover cost $11.28 for 24 pages in black and white, $19.52 for 200 pages in standard color, and $35.86 for 200 pages in premium color, before shipping, tax and Lulu’s fees. One 24-page black-and-white copy delivered in the US came to about $18. Lulu’s hardcovers run from 24 to 800 pages.
• Photo-book services (Blurb, Mixbook, Shutterfly). You design the pages online. Best when the photos lead and the text is captions and short stories.
• Ancestry’s MyCanvas. Builds a book from your Ancestry tree data.
• A local print shop. Spiral- or comb-bound copies for a reunion, often the same week.
• PDF only. Free, easy to update, and easy to send to a cousin in another state.

Genealogy libraries and local historical societies often accept copies of family histories for their collections. Each one has its own rules, so ask before you send anything.

When the hardest chapter is your own

Here’s the odd thing about family history books. Anyone with an Ancestry subscription can find your grandfather’s census line. Nobody but you can say how he whistled. Records will still be there in twenty years. Memories won’t, and that includes yours.

So whatever format you pick, write Part One. If writing is what’s stopping you, talk it instead. Memoirji asks you questions about your life one at a time, in your browser, on WhatsApp or on LINE, and writes your spoken answers up as chapters. It’s free to start, and what comes out can go straight into your book as Part One. If you want to know what that longer version looks like on its own, here’s how to write a book about your life, and what a memoir is, in plain English. Your family’s story is yours to keep for the record, whether or not anyone ever asks for it.